Davidson's Half-Mile Greenway Gap: Funding, Land and Next Steps
Walk or bike the West Branch Rocky River Greenway north from Fisher Farm Park and the pavement holds for a while. It threads through the park's 200 wooded acres, past the mountain bike trails and the archery range, and keeps going through Abersham Park before it simply stops. Not at a trailhead. Not at a parking lot. It stops at a property line, roughly half a mile short of where a second greenway segment picks up again near the Narrow Passage neighborhood off Shearer Road.
If you've made that trip on foot or by bike, you already know what happens next. You either turn around or you finish the half mile on Shearer Road itself, a rural two-lane with no shoulder to speak of. For a town that has spent two decades building out its greenway network, that gap has been the one piece nobody could quite close.
The project had funding available, but completing the route also required agreements for the land it would cross.
Davidson voters approved general obligation bonds that set aside $2.1 million specifically for this connector. That funding has existed for a while now. What the town didn't have, until last year, was permission to build on the ground the trail needed to cross.
According to News of Davidson, Mecklenburg County bought the first parcel for this project back in 2007. Reaching right-of-way easement agreements with the remaining seven property owners along that rural stretch took most of the eighteen years that followed. The land east of Davidson sits outside the town's voting boundary but inside its planning authority, so owners there don't vote in town elections even though town planning decisions affect their property.
The Davidson Lands Conservancy, the nonprofit that ended up brokering most of these agreements on the town's behalf, helped secure the land agreements. Conservancy treasurer Ed Harris, a retired real estate investor who spent years working this specific half mile, told News of Davidson:
"It just takes a long time. Keep knocking your head against that rubber tree plant."
He and former executive director Dave Cable were told to leave after knocking on one landowner's door during the search for easements. Other conversations went better. Some owners donated the easement outright. Others were compensated for privacy landscaping or fencing, and by the conservancy's account, a few of those agreements ended in genuinely happy moments, with champagne opened in living rooms once the paperwork was signed.
The breakthrough came in the spring of 2025, when Mayor Rusty Knox and the town negotiated the final two agreements standing between the project and construction. The town paid about $62,900 for one parcel. Mecklenburg County bought the other.
In its report, News of Davidson quoted Knox: "Those two properties were the linchpin to getting it done." He added, "It's a huge connection, at the end of the day."
Those two agreements completed the land arrangements needed for the connector. The project remains in the design phase, with construction bidding still ahead.
Davidson's greenway system, in total, covers roughly six miles of paved walking and biking space, anchored by the 2.8-mile Randall R. Kincaid Trail that loops through town. The Abersham and Fisher Farm section alone runs 3.6 miles with connections reaching into Iredell County, and parking for that stretch is available off Shearer Road and Ryker Way. None of that is new. What's new is the plan to stitch it together with the Narrow Passage segment so the whole thing works as one continuous route instead of two separate ones you have to drive between.
Here's where things stand heading into fall 2026, sorted by what's real right now versus what's funded but not yet built:
If you're expecting a ribbon-cutting any time soon, temper that. As of the town's most recent project update, the connector is still listed as being in design, with construction bidding still ahead of it. What's changed isn't the trail surface. It's that every legal and financial obstacle standing in front of it is gone.
This project shows one practical part of greenway planning in Davidson: completing a route can require agreements with landowners outside town limits as well as public funding. Securing those agreements for this connector took most of the eighteen years after the county bought the first parcel.
The connector is part of the Carolina Thread Trail, the 15-county greenway network. In Davidson, two property agreements in the spring of 2025 completed the land arrangements for this half-mile route.
So the next time you're on the Kincaid Trail downtown, or parked at Ryker Way for a run through Fisher Farm, you're standing inside a system that is still being connected. The gap you can't yet ride through is still awaiting design work and construction bidding, though the project has funding and the needed land agreements. It's closer to completion than it's ever been.
If you're weighing a move to Davidson, or already call it home and want a clearer read on how the town's growth decisions actually play out on the ground, Logan Ruffin and the team can walk you through what's changing here and what it means for the neighborhoods around it. Contact us anytime.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
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