Downtown Huntersville Greenway
Connecting a Growing Downtown Area to the Surrounding Community
- Client/Owner
- Town of Huntersville, North Carolina
- Location
- Huntersville, NC
- Services
- Engineering, Geospatial, Mapping, and Survey
- Markets
- Community Facilities
- Region
- Southeast
Huntersville, North Carolina, which is a suburban town located near the major city of Charlotte, has experienced significant growth in recent decades. While Huntersville had a few existing greenways, the town lacked a safe, multimodal connection between downtown and nearby businesses, schools, parks, and residential neighborhoods. To address this need, our firm provided surveying, planning, design, permitting, land acquisition, site/civil engineering, landscape architecture, and construction administration services for the Downtown Greenway in Huntersville.
The resulting greenway, part of the full system known as “The Vine,” includes 0.9 miles of paved asphalt trails and approximately 250 linear feet (LF) of elevated boardwalk with a timber substructure and a poured-in-place concrete deck. Additionally, the Downtown Greenway includes a trailhead with 16 dedicated parking spaces, a pedestrian plaza with a bike repair station, a sculpture, and trellis swings. Designed in compliance with Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) guidelines, the greenway is accessible to all and equipped to handle both pedestrian and bike traffic.
Our team completed thorough studies with a focus on aligning the greenway’s design to the natural topography of the local landscape. We also led community meetings to obtain feedback from and educate landowners on the benefits of this critical link within the larger greenway system. These efforts resulted in a design that balanced stakeholder needs with environmental stewardship.
Additionally, as a segment of Huntersville’s greater greenway network, the Downtown Greenway connects to the existing Carolina Thread Trail System and the Torrence Tributary II Greenway, which our firm also designed. Residents now have a safe multimodal connection to various surrounding community buildings and amenities, like Huntersville Elementary School, the local post office, grocery and other stores in the nearby Huntersville Square Shopping Center, and Holbrook Park. The Downtown Greenway serves as a gateway between downtown Huntersville and the surrounding communities, supporting the town’s long-term mobility goals.
3,200
LF greenway
250
LF of boardwalk trails
3
benches with accessible companion seating
4
trellis swings