A good idea can solve a problem. Offer a solution.

A big idea can solve a dozen problems. Offer a vision.

In 2001, Action Greensboro had a big idea: reimagining the city’s urban core around walking and biking trails, parks, public art, urban nature, and in-town economic development.

The private nonprofit organization is dedicated to enhancing the city’s quality of life. It commissioned a Center City Master Plan with the aim of being as bold as the city could realistically achieve. A downtown greenway was conceived as part of the Plan. The 4-mile multi-use paved trail encircling downtown would become the Plan’s signature project.

“It was envisioned as the central hub of our entire greenways and park system here in Greensboro (NC), and we have a very strong parks and greenway system, something people really value,” Dabney Sanders, project manager since 2007 of Greensboro's Downtown Greenway, told me via video interview. “We also knew that it would bring economic development to our community. We knew that private development would want to come in and around this downtown greenway, and at that time, in the early 2000’s, we were a community that had a vision for ourselves. We wanted to see that Greensboro continued to grow and thrive and be economically viable.”

Keep in mind, Greensboro’s idea for a downtown greenway predates the visioning for New York’s High Line by two years. The High Line’s success is often credited for changing the way American cities think about adaptive reuse and public spaces. Greensboro’s Downtown Greenway wasn’t High Line-inspired, it was a prequel.

Community buy-in was initially slow and steady, then rapid and overwhelming as promises and renderings gave way to the Greenway’s first section opening in 2010. A proof of concept the public went wild for.

“As we would open sections, the community could go from something that they saw on a map, something they heard about, to something that they could experience,” Sanders said. “We also began to see economic development, private development that was coming in and around the Downtown Greenway and that had a big impact.”

Local co-op grocer Deep Roots Market relocated adjacent to the Greenway in 2013. It became the first grocery story to open in downtown in over 30 years.

“That provided a real value to people that live and work in and around downtown and so the message that we had been sending was something people could understand physically,” Sanders added.

Deep Roots Market now anchors the LoFi Park neighborhood where an abandoned car dealership with surface parking lots and service warehouses, a used appliance repair shop, and a gas station are now home to a number of greenway friendly businesses with heavy pedestrian and bicycle use. Two apartment complexes were built on the site of the former Chevy dealership and have seen high occupancy rates since day one.

The entire greenway was created from out of service railroad infrastructure, through the narrowing of overbuilt roads and excessively large right of ways, and other unused public space.

As public interest swelled in the project’s early days, Greensboro’s City Council bought in, the city’s philanthropic foundations stepped up with money, state and federal dollars were secured through transportation and highway programs, and citizens approved two local bond referendums related to transportation and parks and recreation adding more city money.

Ultimately, $54 million was brought to bear in completing the project, an enormous amount of money for a city of less than 250,000 residents when the idea was hatched 25 years ago. On May 16, 2026, the ribbon will be cut on the Greenway’s final section.

‘Bringing Us Together, And Setting Us Apart’

To receive sustained support from thousands of citizens, dozens of different city council members, multiple mayors, foundations, and private businesses over two decades, years that saw the collapse of America’s financial and housing markets and a global pandemic to name two catastrophes, the Greenway couldn’t serve just one constituency. It couldn’t be built only for nature lovers or bikers or even local businesses. It had to touch everyone.

Greenway proponents pitched economic development ($612 million and counting), health, wellness and recreation, arts and creativity, sustainability (the system includes more than 175 bioswales, curb extensions, and rain gardens to manage stormwater), trees, a fruit orchard, a daylighted creek and native plant gardens, neighborhood redevelopment, and transportation interconnectivity depending on the audience. Each pitch was equally as authentic and effective because the Greenway’s bold vision had been cast to address all of these concerns simultaneously.

Big.

Big can be scary, but it’s also exciting.

“The vision for this project that was established at the very beginning through that master plan, we really stuck with that vision,” Sanders said. “To have a bold vision is important, an ambitious vision, to be able to stick with that vision, to be able to communicate to your community why that vision is important, to learn from the community. We do a lot of community engagement, and the community itself has helped inform what we have done.”

Early on, when Action Greensboro began its initial private fundraising efforts, the organization put an information pack together with a tagline that perfectly encapsulated the project’s mission: “bringing us together and setting us apart.”

“We wanted to bring the community together, both literally and figuratively, and we also wanted to do something that would set our community apart, and the public art is an incredible example of how we've done that,” Sanders explained.

Public Art On Greensboro’s Downtown Greenway

Greensboro’s Downtown Greenway integrates more than 40 works by artists including the late Radcliffe Bailey and sculptor/painter Thomas Sayre. Artworks are sited directly into trails, bridges, and gathering spaces along the new corridor. The result: an outdoor exhibition where civil rights history, industrial heritage, and contemporary design are experienced in motion.

“The economic development piece was a big one that in the early days we talked a lot about, however, with the community itself, one of the things that really resonated with members was this idea of using public art to tell our community stories. We pass through eight different neighborhoods along the four-mile loop, and people were really intrigued by being able to tell their story through public art along the way,” Sanders said. “I don't want to say it was controversial, but there were people who questioned, should you be spending your time and money on public art? Why don't you just get the trail down? We knew that it would be really powerful if we did it, and that has proven to be true.”

Just get the trail down.

The trail is central, but concrete isn’t an attraction. Gray can’t produce a greenway. Visions aren’t made from concrete. Visions are made from art and parks and trees and native plant gardens and new grocery stores.

Greensboro’s Downtown Greenway is infrastructure, sure, but much more. A public amenity. A community attraction. A point of pride. A park. A lifestyle. An art gallery.

Unlike traditional public art programs, Greensboro’s approach prioritizes deep integration over standalone installations, with artists working on-site alongside community stakeholders to create pieces that function as seating, lighting, wayfinding, and even ecological design–in addition to aesthetic insertions.

Four signature “Cornerstone” hubs anchor the loop’s “corners” with large-scale artworks. These cornerstones represent important elements of Greensboro’s history, showcased through four themes: Freedom, Innovation, Motion, Tradition. Bailey’s Ascension–the last piece created before his untimely death–is a sculptural rail line rising skyward reflecting the city’s famed civil rights sit-ins.

Artistic benches represent the eight neighborhoods that the Downtown Greenway passes through, while murals highlight Greensboro’s civil rights impact, and sculptures reveal unknown or underrepresented community stories. Benches are commissioned from North Carolina artists, bike racks are commissioned from local artists, and larger pieces are commissioned from a national pool.

An Art Selection Panel composed of art professionals, city staff, and community members guides the process. All public art is funded by donations from the private sector and through grants. Over $3 million has been invested in public art along the Downtown Greenway.

Give Greensboro a hand. A round of applause to residents who had the patience to think generationally and twice voted to tax themselves to have nice things. Applause for city government, philanthropic foundations, and private business for ponying up and getting on board. Applause for Action Greensboro which, when asked to envision the future, went big.

“We hope that in the future, (the Downtown Greenway) becomes a very integrated part of people's daily lives,” Sanders said.

Lives full of trees, and local shops, and bike rides, and art, and community, just the way life should be.

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