If you walk the Greenway on a Wednesday morning, you already know something changed on June 17. A stretch of the trail near Wesley Drive is fenced off, orange signs point toward Culbertson, and the usual line of dog walkers has been rerouted through the neighborhood streets of Windermere.
That closure is being read locally as a nuisance. It is closer to the truth to read it as the first visible chapter of a two-year rebuild, one that ends with the Greenway becoming the West Ashley end of a new pedestrian and bike bridge into downtown. The detours this summer are not a problem the trail is having. They are how the trail gets to 2027.
The closure, in specifics
The City of Charleston has temporarily closed the West Ashley Greenway between Campbell Drive and Wesley Drive, beginning Wednesday, June 17, 2026, to safely complete critical drainage infrastructure improvements and associated utility relocations that will reduce flooding impacts in the Windermere neighborhood. That is the practical framing. The trail is not being resurfaced for its own sake. It sits over the drainage system that Windermere needs rebuilt, and the corridor has to open up to reach the pipes underneath.
The work moves in two phases, and the second one matters more than the first if you are trying to plan around it:
| Phase | Dates | Where the work is happening |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | June through July 31, 2026 | Active construction along Culbertson Drive and at the intersection of Culbertson Drive and Chadwick Drive |
| 2 | August through fall 2026 | Construction continues eastward along the Greenway through fall 2026 |
Read that second row carefully. The most-used eastern segment, the one that ties the trail into the South Windermere Shopping Center and the Wesley Drive parking near Earth Fare, is where crews are heading after July. If your regular loop starts at the eastern end, the closure area will follow you inward through late summer and into fall rather than clearing up in August.
Why this segment, and why now
The Windermere drainage work is not a standalone project. It is one of a cluster of West Ashley connectivity and stormwater efforts that include the West Ashley Greenway, Maryville Bikeway, Better North Bridge, Old Towne Road, Sam Rittenberg Boulevard, Ashley Landing redevelopment, and the Ashley River Bicycle and Pedestrian Bridge. The city has been staging these in sequence because the Greenway corridor is the shared spine underneath most of them.
There is a reason the trail is being torn up now rather than in 2028. The pedestrian bridge across the Ashley River will land on the same corridor, and the drainage system under the eastern Greenway has to be modern by the time the bridge opens. Doing the underground work first, while the bridge is still being built out over the marsh, is the only sequence that avoids closing the trail twice.
The bridge is the reason the detours will keep coming
If you have driven Highway 17 across the Ashley River recently, you have seen the new pilings marching south of the vehicle bridges. That is the Ashley River Crossing, and its status as of this summer is worth knowing in some detail, because it changes what the Greenway means to a West Ashley resident.
As of late November 2025, Charleston's Capital Projects section chief said the West Ashley span is moving along quite nicely, with 1,600 linear feet installed from the river's edge almost to where the bridge will land, and the surface of the portion of the bridge over the marsh now visible. On February 10, 2026, City Council approved an additional $437,500 to finalize the landing design on the downtown side, including a "Doughnut" elevated circular roundabout for pedestrians and cyclists near Lockwood Drive, and a re-established direct, protected connection from the bridge landing into the MUSC and Medical District corridor.
The bridge is scheduled to open in mid-2027, and when it does it will be the first cable-stayed movable swing bridge in the United States. What that means at ground level in West Ashley is that the eastern end of the Greenway, the same stretch being dug up this summer, becomes the on-ramp. The bridge will provide a safe connection between the West Ashley Greenway, Brittlebank Park and the Ashley River Walk, with a crosswalk at Wapoo Road and the West Ashley Greenway, and at the US 17 Ramps, Lockwood Drive, and Bee Street intersections. The Greenway is not a recreational trail with a bridge attached. It is being finished as a commuter path with a recreational trail attached.
One more number to hold onto. The Ashley River Crossing is projected to save roughly 66,210,000 vehicle miles over 30 years. That is the argument the city is making for putting the neighborhood through a summer of trail closures now.
What still works this summer
The closure is contained. Most of the Greenway is untouched, and a few standing programs continue through the construction window:
- The main trail runs about 8.25 miles between Main Road on the west end and Folly Road on the east end. West of Campbell Drive, everything is open. The Greenway sits on a former railroad bed between Albemarle Road and Main Road, leased by the city on a long-term basis as an eight-mile linear park through neighborhoods, woods, fields, creeks and marshes.
- Charleston Parks Conservancy continues to run bird walks and cleanup programs along the corridor, part of the same volunteer effort that produced the wayfinding signage installed in early 2024 for the Greenway and the Maryville Bikeway. Fall migration typically pushes bird counts higher, and West Ashley Park is a common gathering point.
- The WOW (Women Out Walking) Wednesday Greenway Walk is a standing weekly meetup that predates the construction and has not been cancelled. It moves to the open segments of the trail during the closure.
- Access on foot to Avondale is unaffected. The Greenway does not run through the commercial strip itself, but the eastern trailheads sit inside a short walk of the Triangle, and the connected pedestrian network is part of broader plans to improve access through the West Ashley Greenway network.
- Parking at South Windermere Shopping Center and the Wesley Drive lot near Earth Fare remains open, but the trail entrances immediately adjacent to those lots are the ones affected in Phase 2. If you start there in September, expect a walk-around on Chadwick or Wappoo before you hit continuous pavement.
- Ackerman Dog Park and Charles Towne Landing State Historic Site, the two outdoor anchors most West Ashley residents pair with a Greenway walk, are not part of the construction footprint.
A note on trail condition west of the closure. Longer riders should know that the 10.5-mile out-and-back is flat and easy, with a paved 8-foot asphalt section giving way to a hard-packed dirt corridor that parallels US 17 past neighborhoods, schools, parks, and a marsh before reaching its southern terminus with a small parking area. That gravel and dirt stretch is where most out-of-town riders turn around. Locals often keep going.
How to read the next two summers
Here is the part that matters if you live here. The construction pattern you are seeing on the Greenway is going to repeat, and it has a rhythm you can plan around.
Between now and fall, work stays in the Windermere segment. Through 2027, the bridge continues to build west toward the trail from the river side, and the eastern Greenway will be the staging area for tying the two together. On the downtown side, City Council still has to approve additional funding, in the range of $8.5 million, to account for the landing changes at Lockwood and Bee. Every meaningful update on that funding, and on the exact detour maps, will come through the City of Charleston's Capital Projects office and be reported by outlets like The Post and Courier and Holy City Sinner. Those are the two feeds worth watching if you want to know when your section of trail opens back up.
The Greenway you have been walking since the paving campaign is not the Greenway that exists in 2028. The one in 2028 has more feet on it, connects to the peninsula without a car, and starts, for a lot of West Ashley households, at the same trailhead you park at today. The summer of detours is the price of that.
If you are thinking about how a home's distance to the Greenway or to a trailhead like Wesley Drive or South Windermere might factor into a move within West Ashley, or from another part of the region into it, I'm glad to walk through what the corridor looks like block by block. Reach out through Michele Moriarty and let's connect.
