Durham Belt Line

Hi all. Have been lurking on this forum as we wait on news for ATC2, South Bank building project, etc. Curious if anyone has heard anything about the greenway project. Some completely unsubstantiated rumors were going around not long ago that there were some significant issues with the project. The third party website for the project now appears to be private and there hasn’t been any news in nearly a year. There also doesn’t appear to have been much work, if any, done on the Ellerbe Creek wetlands project that is supposed to connect to the belt line.

I realize it’s the government and all but am surprised there is uncertainty around this after the city council adopted the master plan and the city officially purchased the land. IMO would be a real shame if it gets dropped. Would be a terrific way to add green space, enhance walkability and create a greater connection between neighborhoods in the heart of downtown.

Realize this is a slightly different topic than much of the commercial development discussed here but thought this group might have some thoughts or insight.

Very timely, actually. I am planning a short update post on this later, but I was able to get in touch with some project managers on the city side because I heard similar rumors.

It sounds as though the project is progressing, relatively on schedule, which is great. But I will provide more updates and exactly what was said in a couple of weeks on a blog post.

Awesome — thanks Dave. Looking forward to the full post.

There is what looks to possibly be a new page on the City of Durham website dedicated to the Durham Belt Line Trail. It has what appears to be an expanded version of the adopted master plan and an estimated completion date of winter 2022. I could have missed this before but don’t recall seeing it previously. Apologies if old news.

FYI the current status on the city website now says “ON HOLD pending NCDOT funding authorization” and expected completion is listed as “TBD” rather than the summer 2023 that was previously listed. Sounds like another setback/delay for this project. Hopefully it’s a minor one.

Yikes! Thanks for the update. I may try to do a little digging to see what the full story is. I know that NCDOT is hurting financially right now, but I'm not sure exactly how reliant the full beltline project is on that funding.