news-record.com

GREENSBORO — It’s one of the great but depressing truths of public life: Build something really nice and then count the days before the morons arrive with spray paint.

One or more imbeciles showed up to deface the tunnel on the newest section of the Atlantic & Yadkin Greenway — formerly known as Battleground Rail Trail — before the new pathway for biking and hiking is even officially open.

“We don’t know if somebody did it because they don’t like the trail or what,” said Peggy Holland, manager of the city transportation department’s bike and pedestrian program.

The malefactor painted the walls and floor of the $1.2 million underpass beneath Cone Boulevard using orange paint and “a very limited four-letter vocabulary,” Holland said.

The city might have to spend hundreds of dollars removing the offensive text and symbols in time for a ceremony Thursday afternoon to formally unveil the greenway.

The language will either be painted over or pressure-washed into oblivion by then, Holland said.

“The timing makes you wonder” if the defacement was done by someone who doesn’t like the project and hoped to spoil its big debut, she said.

The project has seemed widely popular since its inception more than a decade ago. It goes 1.3 miles from the greenway’s current end near Pisgah Church Road and Battleground Avenue to Markland Avenue, just behind the Lawndale Crossing shopping center.

The entire new section cost about $2 million. The tunnel is its centerpiece, a nice amenity sparing users the long wait and peril they otherwise would face crossing heavily traveled Cone Boulevard at street level.

City staff members had no inkling someone might hold a grudge, Holland said.

But municipal planners weren’t born yesterday; they know any public edifice can become a target for graffiti. They were taking steps to prevent it at the time the bad guy struck.

Greensboro College art teacher Ray Martin and some of his students are in the early stages of painting a mural in the tunnel.

Their handiwork then will be covered with a thick gloss of urethane to protect it from malicious graffiti. The protective topcoat will make it so maintenance workers need only wipe away any unwelcome additions, Holland said.

Meanwhile, if you like the tunnel and think its defacement is really moronic and hateful, Holland has a request.

“If you see somebody doing something like this, just call the police,” she said. “They will respond.”

Contact Taft Wireback at 373-7100 or taft.wireback@news-record.com