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Conversations about Creating a Culture of Activity: Profiling the people, places, programs, and policies that help to promote a culture of activity within our communities.
Note: This transcript was exported from the video version of this episode, and it has not been copyedited
00:00:00:07 - 00:00:10:20
John Simmerman
With a little bit of TLC, we can turn something that's sitting here as an unused asset and turn it into a beloved activity asset.
00:00:10:21 - 00:00:33:05
Dabney Sanders
Yes. And I love that you pulled this photo up. This is in one of this was the second section that we built. It's this section we call Moorhead Park. And what you're seeing here overhead is a is this is a railroad trestle. And it's a very active rail line, the North Carolina Railroad, that carries freight and commercial traffic but also carries Amtrak.
00:00:33:06 - 00:01:00:09
Dabney Sanders
So our passenger traffic to and this was a situation where there had been a road that came through here. So where the downtown Greenway is, now that you see in the photo on the right, that was actually a roadway. And again, in the late 1960s, early 1970s, there was a highway built over on this side. When that highway was built, this road was closed.
00:01:00:10 - 00:01:30:18
John Simmerman
Hey, everyone, welcome to the Active Tennis Channel. My name is John Zimmerman, and that is Dabney Sanders with the Town Town Greenway in Greensboro, North Carolina. We're going to be talking about this wonderful four mile loop around Greensboro, downtown Greensboro, and kind of the success story that is this wonderful activity asset that has recently been completed. But before we do that, I just want to say, if you're enjoying this content here on the Active Towns Channel, please consider supporting my efforts by becoming an active town's ambassador.
00:01:30:19 - 00:01:46:19
John Simmerman
Hey, super easy to do. You can just click on the join button right here in YouTube, or you can navigate over to Active Towns, or click on the support tab at the top of the page. And there's several different options, including becoming a Patreon supporter. Patrons duke it early and ad free access to all of this video content.
00:01:46:20 - 00:01:53:28
John Simmerman
Okay, let's get right to it with Dabney.
00:01:54:01 - 00:01:57:20
John Simmerman
Dabney. Thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast.
00:01:57:22 - 00:02:01:08
Dabney Sanders
Well, John, thank you. I really am so glad to be here with you.
00:02:01:10 - 00:02:23:15
John Simmerman
So we're going to be talking a little bit about the Downtown Greenway there in Greensboro, North Carolina, which, by the way, my sister lives there. So I look forward to visiting you and the the Greenway in person one of these days. But what I love giving my guests an opportunity to do is just say a few words about themselves.
00:02:23:15 - 00:02:24:26
John Simmerman
So who is Dabney?
00:02:25:01 - 00:02:56:03
Dabney Sanders
Yes. So I'm Dabney Sanders, and I have served as the project manager for the Greensboro Downtown Greenway since 2007. I was hired as the inaugural project manager after this project had been envisioned in 2001. And I love doing community work. I'm not trained as an urban planner, but I have had a lot of experience working with a variety of people, and I've always loved the outdoors.
00:02:56:04 - 00:03:09:10
Dabney Sanders
I have a degree and natural resources forestry and geology from the University of the South, and so it's been nice to be able to put a little bit of that education and experience towards this project.
00:03:09:14 - 00:03:36:26
John Simmerman
I love it, I love it, and I'm going to pop right over to the history of the Downtown Greenway, because I wanted to delve a little bit into that history. So 2001, you know, there was the city, you know, the Center City master plan. And then in 2006, the the biped plan, and then you came on board along with this public private partnership in 2007.
00:03:36:28 - 00:04:04:01
John Simmerman
Let's talk a little bit about that history. I mean, I mean, obviously was one of those cities that, you know, I don't think is that unique in the sense that many downtown cities that maybe had a historical industrial past went through some kind of tough times. I'm a I'm assuming that that was a big part of this master plan in 2001 was trying to figure out, hey.
00:04:04:02 - 00:04:05:24
John Simmerman
How do we breathe life back in?
00:04:05:25 - 00:04:42:00
Dabney Sanders
Absolutely. You're you're correct about that. And what happened? A number of foundations, six local foundations in Greensboro came together in the year 2000 to address exactly what you've just described. And they ended up forming this nonprofit organization called Action Greensboro that I work for. And they were doing, just as you said, looking at the trajectory that our economy was on and thinking about what can we do and what do we need to do collectively to change that trajectory?
00:04:42:00 - 00:05:12:07
Dabney Sanders
And so Action Greensboro was founded. They in 2001, one of the first big things they did was to commission this master plan for Center City, because our downtown, like many downtowns, had been experiencing sort of a decline in activity. And we knew that downtown was really the heart of our community. And so that master plan was commissioned. It identified a couple of big physical projects for downtown Greensboro.
00:05:12:07 - 00:05:39:04
Dabney Sanders
And one of those physical projects was the idea of this downtown Greenway. And it was a really quite a big, bold idea. If you think about back in the early 2000, there were certainly some greenways across the country, but they hadn't become sort of the hot thing that they are now. So it was, I would say, Greensboro, a little bit of ahead of its time in wanting to adopt this idea.
00:05:39:04 - 00:06:07:02
Dabney Sanders
And so the foundations that support action, Greensboro started doing a lot of community engagement. They commissioned Cooper Carey Center for Connective Architecture out of Atlanta to do some additional planning and visioning about what this downtown greenway could look like, and did a lot of community meetings to be sure that this was something that our community thought was valuable and would embrace.
00:06:07:02 - 00:06:10:21
Dabney Sanders
And overwhelmingly, we found that that was the case.
00:06:10:24 - 00:06:34:18
John Simmerman
Fascinating, fascinating. And I sort of alluded to it a little bit in terms of, you know, not completely uncommon and not unique in the sense that it's one of those cities that, you know, kind of got hit hard by a lot of offshoring, of manufacturing and all that. North Carolina in general was is big in furniture and textiles and things of that nature.
00:06:34:19 - 00:06:59:07
John Simmerman
I was blown away when I was walking around downtown Greensboro with my sister the other day, a few months ago, and, and saw lots of Wrangler jeans, and I'm like, oh, wait, that takes me back, because Wrangler jeans were the genes that we were growing up as children, as we were living on a ranch in Northern California. So talk a little bit about that history.
00:06:59:08 - 00:07:00:14
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah.
00:07:00:14 - 00:07:31:06
Dabney Sanders
Well, Greensboro has an incredibly, incredibly significant textile history here. Cone Mills, the historic white oak plant at Cone Mills, was the largest denim maker in the world for many, many years. And that plant finally closed down in 2019. It was interesting. It it held on longer than many because they had not updated their looms. They had the old draper looms that were on a wooden floor.
00:07:31:10 - 00:08:04:24
Dabney Sanders
And so when this idea of these genes that had a lot of texture to the fabric and selvage became such a hot commodity, many of the modern looms were not able to produce the kind of denim that people were interested in. And so they went back to these old looms. So Greensboro really benefited from that. But that historic white oak planet at Cone Mills eventually did close down in about 20, I would say 17 or 2018.
00:08:04:26 - 00:09:03:00
Dabney Sanders
But your reference to Wrangler, we had VF Corporation was headquartered here for many, many years, and two of their brands were Wrangler and Lee, in addition to many other brands. And they ended up moving their headquarters sadly, back in 2019, I think it was to Denver. And as a part of that, they split off a piece of their company, which was the Wrangler and the Lee brands, and that company is that took those brands is called contour Contour, and they are headquartered here and amazing company, very engaged and involved in the community and have been they've actually just sold off the Lee brands, but they've kept Wrangler as sort of their signature signature brand.
00:09:03:02 - 00:09:09:00
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. I was always partial to to the Wrangler over the league.
00:09:09:02 - 00:09:10:12
Dabney Sanders
And I think they felt.
00:09:10:12 - 00:09:11:03
Dabney Sanders
Like that too.
00:09:11:04 - 00:09:12:13
Dabney Sanders
So yeah, yeah.
00:09:12:14 - 00:09:43:19
John Simmerman
Yeah, that's pretty funny. So again, you come on board in 2007 and you know this vision has been put forth now. You referenced, you know, other greenways and that were emerging out there nationwide and even globally. Were there any specific innovations or any specific locations and inspirations that you were turning to to look to and saying, yeah, we like what they're doing.
00:09:43:20 - 00:09:47:04
John Simmerman
Well, let's benchmark off of some of their learnings.
00:09:47:07 - 00:10:13:18
Dabney Sanders
Yes we did. I would say one of the big ones was the Indianapolis Cultural Trail. And that trail is a little different from ours in several ways. It doesn't actually form a loop around their center city, but it does connect about seven different major cultural institutions there. And they also have more right of way space than we do.
00:10:13:19 - 00:10:50:07
Dabney Sanders
And so they are able to have a separated walking facility that is directly adjacent to bicycle facility. Our standard is a 12ft wide trail that can accommodate both bicyclists and pedestrians, as well as other non-motorized means of transportation rollerblades, skateboards, you know, all those sorts of things. But we went up and visited Indianapolis because we liked the idea of the connection of these assets in a community.
00:10:50:07 - 00:11:14:24
Dabney Sanders
And so that was one we certainly looked at locally. We looked at the American Tobacco Trail here in North Carolina. And again, we really liked that for the connections it was making. Our trail is very different from the American Tobacco Trail one, and maybe visiting that trail helped us think about how we wanted to set ourselves apart from other trails.
00:11:14:24 - 00:11:50:08
Dabney Sanders
And we decided to do that through public art. We knew we could tell our community stories through public art, and that would create these places of destination and inspiration, and would be providing a little history to people along the way, as they were either using the Downtown Greenway for transportation or whether they were using it for recreation and exercise, or whether they were using it for kind of social gatherings, you know, meeting friends and family for either getting to and from a place or for just general social interaction.
00:11:50:14 - 00:12:11:02
John Simmerman
Yeah, I love it, I love it. And when we look at where we're at now with the Greenway, we see that we have four miles open. You just alluded to it. This is a circle trail. This basically encircles the the downtown area. And that was a part of the vision is, hey, let's let's take a look at some stuff.
00:12:11:02 - 00:12:27:09
John Simmerman
I would imagine that there were probably bits of either right of way or maybe pathways that where you were like looking, going, oh, we can, we can like loop this together. We can. Is that kind of the case is that there were little assets.
00:12:27:12 - 00:12:39:15
Dabney Sanders
That's exactly the case. In fact, I would say that there were two major kind of physical circumstances. And at some point, if we want to go to the map, we could take a little look at that.
00:12:39:17 - 00:12:41:16
Dabney Sanders
But there were yeah. Okay.
00:12:41:18 - 00:13:09:18
Dabney Sanders
Perfect. And let's zoom in there. And if you look at so so I'll talk about the, the major features that I think really were existing that made us think, okay, we have the ability to do that. If a lot of cities were trying to define their downtown and encircle it with a downtown greenway, if you had to purchase all of the right of way to do that, it would almost be cost prohibitive.
00:13:09:18 - 00:13:32:04
Dabney Sanders
It would be too expensive. But we had a couple of circumstances that made us think we could do it. One is, if you look on the, I guess, the right hand side, it's the east side of this loop, the line in purple, that is a road called Murrow Boulevard. And it was built in the late 1960s, early 1970s.
00:13:32:07 - 00:13:59:15
Dabney Sanders
It was built as a six lane divided highway with no sidewalk and no landscaping, and it was intended to be part of a vehicular bypass around downtown Greensboro. And of course, back at that time, people were very concerned with moving cars as quickly as possible. There was not a whole lot of thought given to pedestrians or cyclists. And so the plan happened.
00:13:59:18 - 00:14:26:04
Dabney Sanders
The east side was built, and then the rest of that bypass was never completed. And so there was some excess right of way along the south and along the north of the edges of downtown. And we knew because that road, that six lane divided highway really didn't lead from one significant place to another, very underutilized in terms of the kind of traffic that it uses.
00:14:26:06 - 00:14:49:18
Dabney Sanders
So we knew that we could take at least a full lane of traffic out of that six lanes. And and that's exactly what we did. So that's that was an opportunity we saw on that east side, on the west side, the yellow or the orange line. There was a railroad corridor that Norfolk Southern Railroad Company owned and operated.
00:14:49:19 - 00:15:30:27
Dabney Sanders
There was only one commercial user on that line. That line had been a very extensive active line in past history. But some of that Norfolk and Southern, it used to be called the Atlantic and Yadkin Greenway actually, or Atlantic and Yadkin Railway. Some of the northern section of that had been abandoned back in the 1970s and had been converted into a greenway called the A and Y Greenway, but there was a three mile section that had never been abandoned, and there was an active user on that section, just one single user.
00:15:30:27 - 00:15:52:24
Dabney Sanders
So we felt that there was an opportunity to see if that user would be willing to relocate or no longer use the rail, and that would open that up. And sure enough, that happened along that west side. So that was two very significant pieces in the south, the blue line.
00:15:52:26 - 00:16:22:04
Dabney Sanders
As I mentioned, there was some excess right of way in anticipation of this further highway bypass. And so we had the ability to get that southern section in the most complicated and difficult section by far was the northern section that you see there in green, because a lot of traffic comes in and out of downtown Greensboro, through that corridor along.
00:16:22:07 - 00:17:01:10
Dabney Sanders
There's some one way roads there. Smith Street is one way heading east, and Fisher Avenue is one way heading west. So we looked at about 14 different options along the north to think about how we could connect. And we wanted to maintain that connection in that zone sort of between the central business district and all the residential that surrounds, because we knew that at that edge we would have the opportunity for economic development and for Greensboro.
00:17:01:13 - 00:17:33:07
Dabney Sanders
One of the big appeals of pursuing this downtown Greenway is that we knew it would bring private economic development projects in and around it, and we were really interested in that for our community. And we have have seen to date, we're tracking over $612 million in planned and completed projects of projects in which the developers have cited the Downtown Greenway as part of their reason for for developing.
00:17:33:09 - 00:17:57:28
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And going back to the vision as to what we were thinking about and what y'all were trying to achieve, that's very much a part of it is, is like you're trying to breathe the life back into the community. So let's go back to some of the bullet points that we see here. Now walk us through the details now.
00:17:58:01 - 00:18:04:06
John Simmerman
And these are the 2025 numbers. So the year that we just wrapped up yes.
00:18:04:06 - 00:18:35:04
Dabney Sanders
So we have trail counters that are scattered along the all sections of the Downtown Greenway. And just in 2025, when in which we only had three miles open at that point, the final mile along that western branch was not completed yet, but we had over 150,000 trail usage counts during 2025. Programing has been something that has been really important to us, not maybe from the very beginning, but from the early days.
00:18:35:04 - 00:19:02:06
Dabney Sanders
In 2010, we put on our very first run for the Downtown Greenway, and at that time we only had a half a mile of the Downtown Greenway opened and completed, and we were busy designing and planning the rest of it. But we wanted the community to continue to be excited about not only what we had opened, but what was to come.
00:19:02:08 - 00:19:30:08
Dabney Sanders
And there wasn't a lot to see on the ground because we weren't under construction. And so we started this run for the Greenway, and it was so successful. And our programing, we just saw that opportunity to talk about things that the assets of the Downtown Greenway and how can we incorporate programing into that. And so that's really grown to in 2025, we had 188 different programs.
00:19:30:12 - 00:20:07:12
Dabney Sanders
Of those 188 programs, all of those except for three were free and open to the community. And that's been a real core value of ours to offer as much free programing as possible. We have a very small team that puts that programing on, and so we really rely on community partners to help us with that. We partnered with 158 of those to help do that programing, and that those programing partners include places like the YMCA that helps us put on our fitness classes.
00:20:07:13 - 00:20:44:01
Dabney Sanders
We partner with the Piedmont Bird Club that helps us host bird watching walks. We partner with a variety of arts organizations that help us with our arts and programing kind of work. And then finally, the volunteer hours contributed. We had 209 volunteers that contributed 418 hours for us. And that's another core value of, you know, a way that we can allow people an opportunity to feel a part of what we're doing and give back.
00:20:44:03 - 00:21:12:24
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, we see that, you know, if we're looking at a $54 million project with about $14 million in the private sector, how was this paid for? I mean, is this is this something where you took it to the public and said, hey, this is our vision dating back all the way to 2001 and then the subsequent years of the planning and all of that, we have to figure out how to pay for it, guys.
00:21:12:26 - 00:21:43:18
Dabney Sanders
Yeah. So the way that funding happened, I think it's a great model that other communities can use and learn from the foundations that support action. Greensboro committed some initial seed money to get the project off the ground, and this was before we had formally established our public private partnership with the city of Greensboro. So these are the action Greensboro Foundations saying, we believe in this plan.
00:21:43:18 - 00:22:10:24
Dabney Sanders
We think it's going to be great for this community. We've done some community engagement. The community agrees. We're going to pursue it. They put in about $4.5 million in seed money so that we could do some continued visioning and master planning, community engagement. That money was contingent upon there being public money put towards the project. And that happened in 2008.
00:22:10:26 - 00:22:43:22
Dabney Sanders
Our city agreed to put a referendum on the ballot under a transportation bond. And that was really important to us because in our community, we have an incredibly strong network of greenways and trails, but none of them are in an urban environment. And we knew that building this downtown greenway, in this urban environment, we knew it would be a transportation facility as well as a recreational facility.
00:22:43:22 - 00:23:15:04
Dabney Sanders
And we wanted to really get that distinction in the minds of the community, because people just typically think of greenways as as recreational facilities. So we wanted it to be in that transportation bond. The city agreed to put it on the bond. It passed overwhelmingly in the fall of 2008. And when that happened, we had that public private partnership in in the funding as well as then subsequently the additional planning.
00:23:15:04 - 00:23:48:09
Dabney Sanders
And so following that, the action, Greensboro put together a major gifts campaign that we ran in 2011 and 12. Our initial goal was to raise $2.5 million. We had a memorandum of understanding with the city that sort of divided up responsibilities. We said that the city would pay for engineering drawings. They would pay for the actual construction of the trail itself.
00:23:48:10 - 00:24:11:27
Dabney Sanders
We said that Action Greensboro, the private sector, would pay for all of the public art. We would pay for the private fundraising efforts, and we would pay for the communications and the programing. And so we raised in that major gifts campaign. We ended up raising a little over $5 million, which was a good thing because we ended up needing more money.
00:24:11:27 - 00:24:46:19
Dabney Sanders
And we did that major gifts campaign. Then the city came back and put another referendum on the ballot in the fall of 2016, and this time it was on a Parks and Recreation bond that dedicated additional public money to the project. And then our city's transportation department just did amazing work in pulling together that public and private local funding and using that to leverage funding from the state of North Carolina through our North Carolina Department of Transportation.
00:24:46:19 - 00:25:16:09
Dabney Sanders
And then they also leveraged getting some federal highway funds for the project. And so that funding ended up making up the rest of that $54 million. So the private sector. Oh, and I forgot we did at the at the very end. And in 2021, we did a what we called the Final Mile campaign, and we raised over $1 million from the private sector to kind of finish out those funding needs that we knew we had.
00:25:16:10 - 00:25:41:19
Dabney Sanders
So in the end, 14 million from the private sector, which were from foundations, businesses, lots and lots of individuals, and we had gifts everywhere from, you know, $100 up to millions of dollars privately. And then the public support came from local bond referendums and state and federal funding.
00:25:41:21 - 00:25:57:04
John Simmerman
I love it, I love it. I pulled up the website here so that we could see that. Now, you referenced Action Greensboro several times. Talk a little bit about Action Greensboro. Is that part of the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce?
00:25:57:07 - 00:26:26:26
Dabney Sanders
Yes. Action Greensboro. It started as its own organization back in 2000. And then probably in, I think, about maybe 2005 ish, the action Greensboro was actually a part of kind of taking a look at all the different organizations that were working on economic development for our community, and they found that there were many, many organizations kind of working in their own silos.
00:26:26:26 - 00:27:07:16
Dabney Sanders
And there was a recommendation that some of those organizations come together. And Action Greensboro, who also was working on economic development, ended up joining the Chamber of Commerce. And they joined an organization that was I think it was I'm forgetting what the name of it was, but it was a economic development organization separate from the chamber. And those three organizations came together under the chamber's umbrella, and we've been operating under that ever since, although we still have now the the foundation, those original six foundations, the makeup of those foundations has changed a little bit.
00:27:07:18 - 00:27:18:14
Dabney Sanders
We've had a few foundations drop out, and we now have a total of ten local foundations who are supporting the work of Action Greensboro.
00:27:18:16 - 00:27:56:21
John Simmerman
What I love about this, too, is it's once again a good example of these efforts having a very broad tent. I mean, you've got a lot of different people involved. It's not just the bike ped people trying to put a trail together or a pathway together. It's like, no, this is very, very diverse. I mean, you're able to, you know, leverage many different private entities and foundations and groups across a wide variety of, of different interests.
00:27:56:21 - 00:28:07:15
John Simmerman
And I think that gives it a lot more stability and sustainability, because it's not just one thing. It's not just public health, it's not just the bike ped people.
00:28:07:18 - 00:28:26:00
Dabney Sanders
Correct. And I think that's really you've really hit the nail on, I think one of the reasons that we've been able to be so successful, you know, I think when when I talk to other communities who are interested in this sort of thing and they hear that we raised $14 million from the private sector to support this project.
00:28:26:01 - 00:28:49:21
Dabney Sanders
You know, that's that's a lot for a community the size of Greensboro to put towards a public infrastructure project. And I think it's for the the reasons that you suggest we really appeal to a lot of of different interests. And I do think that that public art piece has been a real distinguished and something that, as I said, does set us apart.
00:28:49:21 - 00:29:05:28
Dabney Sanders
We have about 50 works of public art along the Greenway, and they really vary from functional pieces like bike racks and benches up to major works of public art by nationally recognized artists.
00:29:06:04 - 00:29:06:16
Dabney Sanders
Yeah.
00:29:06:18 - 00:29:38:15
John Simmerman
Yeah yeah. Now, you referenced the Indianapolis Cultural Trail. It's it's the obvious example. Been around for about 20 years now of of making a difference out there and really a very similar type of story of the downtown area really needing to to get some life breathed into it. The cultural trail, as you mentioned and pointed out, you know, helps connect a lot of the different meaningful destinations that exist there in downtown Indianapolis.
00:29:38:15 - 00:30:13:08
John Simmerman
And and again, it was a wonderful, innovative, private, you know, public partnership that took place, the city ending up ceding over excess automobile space. Basically, Elaine was was sort of deeded over to this group, the Indianapolis Cultural Trail, to be able to build out a very, very high quality, you know, facility that was able to link all of these different cultural destinations together.
00:30:13:08 - 00:30:40:00
John Simmerman
And then they continue to manage it over time, and they're gradually expanding it and getting bigger and bigger and bigger. But it was one of the greatest, I think, examples of being able to demonstrate a return on investment. You had mentioned it earlier. They you know, you're starting to see that same thing of people are willing to then relocate and develop and invest money because your trail now exists.
00:30:40:01 - 00:31:16:14
John Simmerman
They saw the same thing there at the Indianapolis Cultural Trail. We're seeing the same thing in the Northwest Arkansas region with the Razorback Greenway, a tremendous amount of investment. And I had to smile when you said, yeah, we're putting lots of art in. And that's exactly kind of what's happening, especially in the portion of the Bentonville segments of the Razorback Greenway with a tremendous amount of art being installed all along the way, leading right up to the Crystal Bridges Museum and some of.
00:31:16:14 - 00:31:20:09
Dabney Sanders
The goods, which is such an amazing it's really it's exciting to see. I mean.
00:31:20:10 - 00:31:35:07
Dabney Sanders
That's a great example of what can happen even in a small community that has a big vision. And of course, in Bentonville, it's it's nice having that corporate support and that family support there.
00:31:35:07 - 00:31:35:21
Dabney Sanders
But they.
00:31:35:21 - 00:31:48:26
Dabney Sanders
Had a vision for what they thought that community could be. And I think that their vision and the execution of that vision you're now seeing in the incredible growth of that community from a population standpoint to.
00:31:48:28 - 00:32:14:12
John Simmerman
Yeah, we're seeing like a tremendous cultural shift that's happened where a community that previously, 25 years ago didn't really see themselves as an active population. And then you started to see the seeds being planted of mountain bike trails being, you know, put into an environment that was just perfect for it. It was just like, oh, let's activate this space.
00:32:14:12 - 00:32:45:15
John Simmerman
The next thing you see is that momentum is rolling and the flywheel effect of, oh, well, now we're getting more and more attracting more and more people that want to live this healthy, active lifestyle. And you start to see a culture of activity starting to form. And then they're saying, well, let's double down on this. Let's make paved pathways, let's make the streets safer so that kiddos can literally ride their bikes to school and to the park and to other meaningful destinations, including the mountain bike trails.
00:32:45:15 - 00:33:12:14
John Simmerman
And so it's a really interesting positive flywheel effect in that momentum that happens when you start just investing a little bit of money, and it's not very much money. I mean, that's the key thing that I try to emphasize so much is that when we're looking at the built environment of active mobility, it may seem expensive, but it's not comparatively to the motor vehicle infrastructure.
00:33:12:14 - 00:33:33:00
John Simmerman
It's a drop in the bucket and it's a tremendous impact when you take, you know, a before and after look at something like this and say, hey, with a little bit of TLC, we can turn something that's sitting here as an unused asset and turn it into a beloved activity asset.
00:33:33:01 - 00:33:55:14
Dabney Sanders
Yes. And I love that you pulled this photo up. This is in one of this was the second section that we built. It's a section we call Moorhead Park. And what you're seeing here overhead is a is this is a railroad trestle. And it's a very active rail line, the North Carolina Railroad, that carries freight and commercial traffic but also carries Amtrak.
00:33:55:14 - 00:34:28:27
Dabney Sanders
So our passenger traffic to and this was a situation where there had been a road that came through here. So where the downtown Greenway is, now that you see in the photo on the right, that was actually a roadway. And again, in the late 1960s, early 1970s, there was a highway built over on this side. And when that highway was built, this road was closed and it was deemed kind of no longer necessary for that north south travel through downtown.
00:34:28:27 - 00:34:53:03
Dabney Sanders
And it had become completely overgrown. And even though you've you're seeing this before picture on the left, I have to say this is really not the full before picture. And I just I'm so sad that we don't have the real before picture because you could not see through this area. It was so overgrown, it was so dense with vegetation.
00:34:53:06 - 00:35:18:18
Dabney Sanders
There was a lot of mud here. So if you walked down there, you would think up to your hips in muck down here. And the city had kind of forgotten that this trestle existed because it was so covered up. And as we were planning the route, we knew we had to cross this rail line. And no way you could do an at grade crossing to too busy and too wide.
00:35:18:19 - 00:35:42:20
Dabney Sanders
Doing an overpass would be incredibly expensive because of the height you'd have to go because of the trains and also the topography of this land. And so an underpass was the most likely way we were going to do it. Of course, that's expensive if you have to dig out that underpass. And as we were talking about it, somebody in the city's Department of Transportation said, you know what?
00:35:42:21 - 00:35:52:14
Dabney Sanders
I think there maybe had been a trestle down there. Let's go look. And sure enough, we uncovered it. And that's now our downtown greenway.
00:35:52:16 - 00:36:25:24
John Simmerman
Diamonds in the rough, literally. I mean, and people I want to emphasize this is that they're hiding in plain sight. They really are. There's all sorts of utility corridors and abandoned railway corridors. In this case, it's an abandoned road that goes underneath the railway. And it's like, again, a little bit of TLC and you can transform what was just derelict and forgotten and hidden into something that's truly beloved.
00:36:25:26 - 00:36:27:24
John Simmerman
Absolutely beautiful story.
00:36:27:26 - 00:37:01:07
Dabney Sanders
Yeah. This is another kind of infrastructure piece. This was a roadway that was an active road. You can see the railroad trestle sort of in the background there on the photo on the left in particular. And that's another active rail line. And the trestle is incredibly low. And so trucks were constantly hitting the trestle. And the railroad was very supportive of us shutting down that one block section of the road.
00:37:01:07 - 00:37:25:16
Dabney Sanders
And it was one that really didn't impact. There was no frontage of access to surrounding properties from this section of the road, and so we were able to close that down. And then in the in the photo on the right, you see what it looks like today with this just incredible vegetation. And some of you can see some of our site furnishings there.
00:37:25:16 - 00:38:02:08
Dabney Sanders
We didn't want it to just look like an abandoned road. We wanted people to remember you're still on the downtown Greenway, and so you can see that stamped green line that just sort of simulates a little trail running through there. And of course, this also then sets us up for a really nice place when we do events that have a little more of a festival kind of feel, we can easily pull a food truck on here and have other vendors here so that we have room for all of that, but there still is access for people to actively use the Greenway at the same time.
00:38:02:10 - 00:38:25:08
John Simmerman
Love it, love it. Yeah, a little bit of creativity again. I mean, another example of, you know, it's it's kind of hiding in plain sight is like, okay, let's let's take this because it's functionally not all that useful, as you mentioned, because of that low railroad trestle there. It's like, yeah, we can do better. We can we can put something else in here.
00:38:25:10 - 00:38:28:10
John Simmerman
Is this the one we were referencing earlier, the six lane.
00:38:28:13 - 00:38:51:07
Dabney Sanders
This is this is Mural Boulevard. And I always say to people that when you look at these, the before and after photo, it's not as dramatic as some of the other photos until you look closely and you can see the incredible difference. And of course, the photo on the right. The after this was taken very soon after construction.
00:38:51:07 - 00:39:28:26
Dabney Sanders
So you see those trees that are in between the downtown Greenway and the roadway. And just imagine, we've already seen a lot of growth. But just imagine in another ten years when those are providing this incredible tree canopy and shade in this area. The other thing that I didn't mention about this Mural Boulevard section on the east side when that highway was planned, we do recognize now, as we think about things, maybe a little more carefully, that this highway was planned as a racially motivated highway.
00:39:28:28 - 00:40:09:25
Dabney Sanders
That was happening a lot in the 60s and 70s in many communities. And the east side of Greensboro is our historically African-American part of town. And so this highway really served as a divider and a separation between East Greensboro and the rest of downtown. And I think this section, what we have done here is probably the most significant in many ways, because we have now really started to help to bridge that gap between East Greensboro and the rest of our town.
00:40:09:27 - 00:40:44:18
Dabney Sanders
We have a a woman, Ellen Moore, who owns a small business nearby, and she it's a hair salon. And so she spends a lot of time kind of looking out the the window as she's doing people's hair noticing. And she said to me, she's a woman owned, black woman owned business. And she said, wow, to see all of these young white girls traveling and running along this downtown greenway, she said, that is significant.
00:40:44:19 - 00:41:10:12
Dabney Sanders
Ten years ago, that would have never, ever, ever happened. And she sees a lot of benefits to her business being in proximity to that greater level of activity there. So we're really proud of what we've done with this Mural Boulevard section. And we also have a lot of our public art along. This section really speaks to some of our civil rights history.
00:41:10:12 - 00:41:42:08
Dabney Sanders
Greensboro has an incredible civil rights history. Our sit in movement that happened here in on February 1st of 1960, when four freshman students from North Carolina Aunt State University walked from their campus to our Woolworth's downtown, which had a lunch counter and asked to be served a cup of coffee. This was during segregation, and that was the beginning of what then became the national sit in movement.
00:41:42:08 - 00:42:17:09
Dabney Sanders
That then led to so much of the national civil rights legislation. And so we talk about that history here. We have a story in another section called Modern Love that talks about a number of young African American architects who were working mid-century. And they were hired in 1951 by an architect here in Greensboro at Lowenstein, who was the first architect in the entire state of North Carolina to hire black architects to work in his firm.
00:42:17:09 - 00:42:44:28
Dabney Sanders
And he was a great teacher and mentor. And so many of these young architects would work for him. And then, with his encouragement and blessing, went on to establish their own practices and many of them award winning careers as architects. So we're really proud of that history here in Greensboro. And we love on the Downtown Greenway being able to tell some of those stories, particularly the ones that maybe aren't quite as well known as others.
00:42:45:04 - 00:43:29:13
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. This next before and after I'm on a show is brings a huge smile to my face. And I'm sure it does to you too. Given your background, whenever possible folks add greenery, add some color, soften things up. We have paved over too much. And from a behavior change perspective, from a public health perspective, I try to remind cities that when you are able to create a truly safe, inviting, welcoming, beautiful environment, it helps establish habit patterns because it creates a better sense of belonging.
00:43:29:13 - 00:43:36:12
John Simmerman
And and the beauty really helps reinforce the habit formation. So talk us through these two photos here.
00:43:36:16 - 00:44:04:24
Dabney Sanders
Yes. So this is an area along what we call northern passage, that northern section. And you can see the before photo. I mean who would even want to be in the vicinity of that area. Just pretty, pretty desperate looking there. And this is right on the edge of, as I said, the northern part of our downtown and the Fisher Park neighborhood, which is a wonderful historic neighborhood just on the north edge.
00:44:04:24 - 00:44:35:22
Dabney Sanders
And there had been an old city county gas station at this site, where both city and county police and firemen could could fill up their cars. So it was not a public gas station, but it was a very well used by the city. In the county. There was also a car dealership here that had surface parking lots and kind of a crummy looking service center, and that car dealership had actually gone out of business and had been empty.
00:44:35:25 - 00:45:05:04
Dabney Sanders
The family had just been sitting on that property for about a dozen years before we announced our plans for the Downtown Greenway here, and we knew that we had just an amazing opportunity in this section in particular to create this real hub of activity. Lots of things happened. The photo that you see on the right with all the green is a park that we call lo fi park.
00:45:05:06 - 00:45:34:25
Dabney Sanders
We had some excess right of way because we also closed down a very small section of a street, had 100% approval to do that from the community and the surrounding neighbors, and the county ended up selling that city, county gas station, which we we thought they would do. And the family that owned the car dealership ended up developing residential apartments.
00:45:34:25 - 00:46:00:27
Dabney Sanders
And they call those apartments Greenway at Fisher Park and Greenway at Stadium Park, which overlooks our ballpark nearby. So they were there really using the greenway and the name because they want to attract people who are interested in that kind of amenity. And we also, in this area had the first grocery store to open in downtown Greensboro in over 30 years when it opened in 2013.
00:46:00:27 - 00:46:25:14
Dabney Sanders
And it's a market called Deep Roots Market. It's a locally owned co-op grocery store that had been in existence. It had had a wonderful, long history, but it was located outside of downtown, and the co-op members were interested in having a presence downtown, and they wanted to build on their facility, add some amenities, and increase their square footage.
00:46:25:14 - 00:46:48:20
Dabney Sanders
And they picked a site, this site on the Downtown Greenway, because they knew that we would provide good access to people who were interested in traveling by bike or foot to get there. And some of the values of the Downtown Greenway really fit within the same kind of values that this cooperative market had. So this is kind of our poster child for economic development.
00:46:48:20 - 00:47:02:21
Dabney Sanders
With the addition of grocery stores residential, we have bars and restaurants that have opened up nearby, and it's just a real hub of pedestrian and bicycle activity.
00:47:02:24 - 00:47:12:12
John Simmerman
I love it, I love it, such great stories. And again, here's an example of a right of way that's underutilized and brought to life.
00:47:12:14 - 00:47:40:13
Dabney Sanders
Yes. So this is that railroad corridor along the western side. And we did use the federal rails to trails rail banking legislation. The city has an agreement with Norfolk Southern that is allowing us to convert that, and we have converted that from rail use to trail use. And this is the last section that we thought at the very beginning that it would be the first section we would do.
00:47:40:14 - 00:48:04:10
Dabney Sanders
We called it the Magical Mile because we thought, oh, we're going to do this first mile and it's going to be so incredible and magical. It'll really help sell the community. On doing the rest of the four miles as, as you probably know, and our listeners know that negotiating with the railroad can be a very difficult and time consuming process.
00:48:04:10 - 00:48:39:24
Dabney Sanders
And we experience that. But we finally we we first started talking to them in 2003, and we finally reached an agreement in 2019. So we started calling this instead of the Magical Mile. We started calling it the Miracle Mile and thinking it might be a miracle for us to get it completed. And we and then we, we called it the Final Mile when we started construction, and we now call it Western Branch.
00:48:39:24 - 00:49:13:20
Dabney Sanders
And there's a beautiful stream, the College Branch stream that runs alongside this section that we did a lot of stream restoration work on. And it's really wonderful to have a water feature like that downtown. We don't have an outright river that so many communities have that they've revitalized around. We really look at this downtown greenway sort of as our, you know, kind of river that that we've developed that provides some of those same kinds of feelings and amenities.
00:49:13:22 - 00:49:44:16
John Simmerman
Yeah, I love it, I love it. That's great. And here's just a collage of of beautiful, beautiful photos of what this looks and feels like. You've got to be pinching yourself a little bit. You know, from 2007 when you started working on this project, fast forward nearly 20 years later and being able to see this on the ground, finally complete that four miles sort of encircling.
00:49:44:18 - 00:50:08:16
John Simmerman
Yeah, it's kind of a square. It's not really, truly a circle, but it encircles it. There's there's some rounded edges at the corners there. Yes. As you as you look at these, these photos, you've got to be left with a sense of just joy and, and really proud of of what you and the whole team and the whole community has, has put together.
00:50:08:19 - 00:50:51:27
Dabney Sanders
Yeah, it feels really good. And I have to say, it's been such an incredible team effort. I oftentimes have been sort of the face of, of this effort, but we really have a true public private partnership. We have worked with almost every department within the city of Greensboro to make this happen. Of course, transportation and parks and recreation have been really key, but we've also worked very closely with our water resources department, with our police department, our engineering and inspections department, which has managed the actual construction of the greenway itself, the planning department.
00:50:51:27 - 00:51:24:06
Dabney Sanders
And one of the nice things has been that we have sort of provided a vehicle for those departments to work more closely together. It's kind of funny. You know, a lot of those city departments sometimes work in silos, and they've had to come together on this project, and I think they've really seen the value in that. But when I look at these particular photos, I just love the fact that the experience when you're on the Greenway offers such a different experience depending on what sections you're on.
00:51:24:06 - 00:51:50:13
Dabney Sanders
We have some incredibly urban sections like that in the upper left. You know, basically the Downtown Greenway in some cases is acting like a sidewalk. It's a city sidewalk. We have replaced the sidewalk with this 12ft wide facility, which is, of course, much wider than our traditional sidewalks are to accommodate the two way traffic and strollers and cyclists, as well as walkers.
00:51:50:15 - 00:52:16:08
Dabney Sanders
But then you have these amazing park like settings. The photo in the middle on the left is the very first section we built called Five Points and it is absolutely gorgeous with mature trees as well as trees we've planted. We have a lot of roses and other flowering shrubs in this area. You are not road adjacent, so very very park like.
00:52:16:09 - 00:52:46:28
Dabney Sanders
And we have some pocket parks where we have intensely planted native plants that are specific for pollination. We have an area that is a public orchard. It's Greensboro, very first public orchard. We have 19 different varieties of fruit trees planted that are under planted with other edible plants. And we encourage people that when fruits are ripe, encourage people to come pick.
00:52:46:28 - 00:53:12:13
Dabney Sanders
We say, don't bring a bucket with you. Just pick a little something you can enjoy and leave it for the rest of folks. That garden really provides us with a wonderful opportunity for education, for the community, great volunteer opportunity and then a great amenity for the public as well. So I really love the fact that you have a lot of different experiences along this four mile loop.
00:53:12:14 - 00:53:43:02
Dabney Sanders
The other thing that I don't think I have mentioned so far, that's important, is that this Greenway was conceived as the central hub of the city's entire greenways and trails network connection. So we had a lot of greenways already existing that were kind of outside of the downtown, and there was a lack of connectivity to those trails. And with the Downtown Greenway being built, we now have these connections to all these other trails, and that's a really important feature of it as well.
00:53:43:04 - 00:54:00:04
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And again, features and amenities. We've got the public art. We've got this concept of the parks and gardens. I look at these and say, when you create such a beautiful environment and experience, this is a linear park.
00:54:00:07 - 00:54:04:25
Dabney Sanders
Absolutely. Yes. That's a great way to describe it. Yeah I agree.
00:54:04:27 - 00:54:41:18
John Simmerman
Yeah. Fantastic. Shifting gears a little bit to the art again, we had mentioned it earlier. That's a major feature of the Razorback Greenway there in Northwest Arkansas. Also, the Indianapolis Cultural Trail has beautiful art all along the way. Talk a little bit about that. That inspiration of saying, not only are we going to do this and we're going to bring some green into people's lives because there's such incredible benefits from a health and wellness and mental health perspective of reconnecting humans to, to green infrastructure.
00:54:41:18 - 00:54:50:10
John Simmerman
But as part of this greenway, we're also going to make this beautiful with public art. Walk through that inspiration.
00:54:50:12 - 00:55:14:22
Dabney Sanders
Yes. So the idea for public art was an early part of that original concept that Cooper Carrie presented to us, and we really latched on to that idea. And we decided early on that it was going to be important to us to commission works of art that spoke specifically to Greensboro and to the sites in which they were located.
00:55:14:22 - 00:55:40:16
Dabney Sanders
So we weren't interested in just finding pieces of public art that we could purchase and bring here. We wanted the artists to connect with our community and design based on those community connections, and we laid that public art out sort of in a general framework of having four major works of public art that would mark the four corners of the downtown Greenway, we call those are cornerstones.
00:55:40:16 - 00:56:11:02
Dabney Sanders
And you see in this slide one of those cornerstones, Woven Works Park, which is in the northeast corner. It's our innovation cornerstone. And that really looks at that textile history that we talked about earlier. And so those themes for those cornerstones, in addition to this innovation, you see here, we have one called motion that looks at the intersection of highways and railroads that came together to form Greensboro.
00:56:11:02 - 00:56:37:20
Dabney Sanders
And also the thinking about the forward movement of people's minds, the fact that we have seven colleges and universities here. We have a cornerstone whose theme was tradition. And it was kind of looking at the role that Greensboro played in the Revolutionary War with our Battle of Guilford Courthouse National Military Park. And then the last cornerstone, the theme was freedom.
00:56:37:20 - 00:57:03:10
Dabney Sanders
And that was looking back on that civil rights history that we talked about a little bit earlier, the sit in movement that happened here, the strong presence of the Underground Railroad here as well. So we had the idea for those major works of public art. And here you see those cornerstones. Yes. Thank you for pulling that up. You can see the gateway of the open book in the upper left there.
00:57:03:12 - 00:57:39:28
Dabney Sanders
That's the motion cornerstone. We talked about woven works, park innovation. I just love this one in the center meeting place. This is the reference to Greensboro role in the Revolutionary War through our Battle of Guilford Courthouse. And the artist. This was a husband and wife team Harries and Hayter Collaborative from Cambridge, Massachusetts. And they found letters that General Greene, General Nathanael Greene, who was commanding the troops here for the Americans in that battle, he wrote letters to George Washington while he was here.
00:57:40:02 - 00:58:07:00
Dabney Sanders
They took pieces of those letters, cut them out in stainless steel in General Greene's actual handwriting, and applied those to the roof of this structure that you see here. That is a structure in the shape of the tent that the men would have been camping in when they were in battle. And you notice, though, if you look up at the top of the structure, you can't read the letters, you can't read the words backwards.
00:58:07:00 - 00:58:36:14
Dabney Sanders
And that's because as the shadow, as the sun is overhead, it casts the shadow on the ground and you can see that incredible, beautiful wording that you can read in full, in shadow on the ground, which we love. Yes. And then the final one, the freedom cornerstone there on the right that was done by an internationally recognized artist, Radcliffe Bailey.
00:58:36:14 - 00:59:03:08
Dabney Sanders
And what you see here is a concrete base that is in the shape of the hull of a ship that's been dry dock. So that's referencing Middle Passage. On top of that is a metal structure that you can interpret as a railroad track. That's another historic divide between black and white communities, or a reference to that Underground Railroad that had such a strong presence here.
00:59:03:08 - 00:59:30:07
Dabney Sanders
But you can also interpret that as a ladder, and you can think about people ascending beyond their circumstances. And this piece is actually called Ascension. And at the top of that is a blue neon star that's lit at night and that's referencing the North Star. Because if you were traveling on the Underground Railroad, of course you would be using that North Star to make sure you were continuing in the right direction towards freedom and safety.
00:59:30:14 - 00:59:37:08
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. Absolutely beautiful. And again, it's more of the special features here.
00:59:37:10 - 01:00:06:10
Dabney Sanders
Yes. So we have everything from that over underpass piece, which is that railroad underpass that we looked at the before and after picture of. We received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts to produce this piece. Beautiful interactive piece that's lit with this LED lighting, that's motion censored. And so as you walk through here, your motion actually changes the color and the patterning of the lights below that.
01:00:06:10 - 01:00:52:13
Dabney Sanders
This piece, Cairns course, I have to say, is one of my favorites is by a Raleigh based artist, Thomas Sayer. And Thomas is known for these large scale earth castings. He actually created a. Using a five foot wide tree spade. He created a hole in the ground in which he or multiple holes in the ground, about 20, in which he then poured concrete that had been colored with iron oxide, that gives it this terracotta color, and let those cure for about three weeks in the ground, and then pull those out of the ground and stack them in these beautiful stacks.
01:00:52:13 - 01:01:27:22
Dabney Sanders
And these are connected with the spiral walkway that has you can you can see where this sidewalk ends here. This was before we had completed that western branch. And so we had to cut the sidewalk off there. It's now connected, but terrazzo stones with little critters that you can find in the nearby College Branch stream. We worked with a local biology class from Uncg, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, who had been studying the health of the stream, and they had a listing of all the living things here.
01:01:27:24 - 01:01:56:24
Dabney Sanders
And Thomas wanted to sort of make that make that connection because of the proximity there. So lots of beautiful, interesting, very, you know, diverse pieces. We have a lot of murals along the way as well. We we pass through eight different neighborhoods on this four mile loop. And for each of the neighborhoods, we commission a North Carolina artist to create a bench that reflects that neighborhood.
01:01:56:24 - 01:02:24:12
Dabney Sanders
And those artists are commissioned just based on their previous work and their artist statement. They then have all come to Greensboro, done meetings with the community, with these neighborhoods themselves, and then they come back with a proposed design based on those community meetings. And you can see these benches are really fun and really diverse in terms of materials and shapes and messaging.
01:02:24:12 - 01:02:34:18
Dabney Sanders
And it's a nice way to have a place to stop and rest along the Greenway and also learn a bit more about the neighborhood in which you're sitting.
01:02:34:20 - 01:03:08:08
John Simmerman
What I love about this, too, is it continues to reinforce that community engagement and community by in by activating these neighborhoods and getting their input and helping co-design these things. Absolutely brilliant. Yeah. Beautiful stuff. And we've got some bike racks that are in all sorts of different creative approaches to this. When you think about this process, again, reinforcing the fact that this does not happen overnight, it seems like a slog.
01:03:08:08 - 01:03:39:09
John Simmerman
It took you a lot longer than you thought to negotiate with the railroad to, to be able to make this happen. If we take a look, we've got more stuff coming. Here's coming soon, we've got more fun things. When you think about this concept of getting the hardware done, getting the physical infrastructure done, I call that the hardware activity assets, the things that you can put a pin in a map and say, here is the pathway.
01:03:39:09 - 01:04:11:24
John Simmerman
It goes all the way around the city. Here's our connecting greenways and trails, and here's the infrastructure that we're trying to get in place in. The city is going to be reinforcing and trying to connect these neighborhoods down to this beloved activity asset that has now been developed. The software activity assets are the engagement activities, the programing that takes place, that brings these this infrastructure to life and engages the community and reinforces that.
01:04:11:25 - 01:04:27:13
John Simmerman
When you think about this whole process over this past 20 years, what are some of the key learnings that you have that you'd love to share in terms of pearls of wisdom for other cities, thinking and conceiving these types of activities?
01:04:27:16 - 01:05:07:06
Dabney Sanders
Sure. Well, I have a couple of things that come to mind right off the bat. One is the value and importance of community engagement, getting that buy in from the community, and everything from broad community engagement in which you're talking to elected officials, business leaders, foundation leaders, residents, neighborhood folks, that I think the fact that we put so much effort in the early days into that, and we continued to have that a key part of our process throughout has been really important.
01:05:07:06 - 01:05:38:21
Dabney Sanders
So that community engagement, people want to feel that they're a part of either decision making or influencing decision making. So that's that's one thing. I would also say that we we made the decision when we had a donor, a significant donor, who had the idea that they wanted us to just concentrate on getting the four mile pavement down.
01:05:38:24 - 01:06:05:08
Dabney Sanders
And they said, don't mess with public art, site furnishings, all that stuff. Just get the four miles down and then come back later with all those amenities. We knew that this was going to be a process, that we were going to be opening small sections at a time, and we really wanted to have each section that we open show the full breadth of what it could be and should be.
01:06:05:08 - 01:06:33:10
Dabney Sanders
And so we went against that donors recommendation. It was hard to do that because it was someone who was an incredibly well respected member of our community, somebody who was putting a significant amount of funding towards doing it. But I will say in credit to that person, they understood our decision and continued to support us and and later ended up saying they thought we were right and they were glad we did it that way.
01:06:33:10 - 01:06:57:27
Dabney Sanders
But that was the right thing to do because we shared with people when we opened that very first, only a quarter mile section, we were presenting to the community what they could expect on the entire four miles. And that was meaningful because some of these neighborhoods we were working in really weren't familiar with greenways. They hadn't traveled to other places to see.
01:06:57:28 - 01:07:46:21
Dabney Sanders
Greensboro didn't really have a greenway like this in this urban setting before. So that was that was really important. And then I guess the third thing I would say is, you know, being patient and persistent people, people who have never worked on a project like this can't fathom that it would take you 25 years to do something. And just when you look at the complications of infrastructure and right of way acquisition and planning and working with the city and the private sector, these kinds of projects, you really have to be in it for the long haul, and you have to establish a vision that you were then willing to stick with and bring the community
01:07:46:21 - 01:07:52:26
Dabney Sanders
along with you.
01:07:52:28 - 01:08:14:22
Dabney Sanders
I would say it was I would say it was kind of these small successes, you know, you might have a you might have a little hiccup and you might get frustrated about something, but then you have something positive happen and you see the community's reaction to that.
01:08:14:24 - 01:08:20:14
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah. And I see that it's puppy approved. The doggies love it too.
01:08:20:16 - 01:08:22:18
Dabney Sanders
We love dogs. We have a.
01:08:22:20 - 01:08:29:24
Dabney Sanders
Fun event called Yappy Hour that we host, and we invite the dogs to particularly enjoy that one.
01:08:29:26 - 01:08:43:01
John Simmerman
Yeah. So this does represent a major transition, a transition for you personally as well as for the Downtown Greenway. Walk us through this shift.
01:08:43:02 - 01:09:12:14
Dabney Sanders
Yeah. So we we knew that in this MOU that we established with the city between action Greensboro in the city, as I mentioned earlier, it out lined things that that action Greensboro would do things that it was city would do. And in that MOU, each of the open sections were maintained by the city's parks and rec department. And eventually, when we envision when the whole thing was complete, of course, the city would be maintaining that whole thing.
01:09:12:14 - 01:09:40:15
Dabney Sanders
So about, I would say, three years ago, as we were preparing to get this final section under construction, we started thinking about that transition, and we've been having those transition meetings so that we have a smooth transition. And so my job is now complete now that we have this four four miles open. And so my position is ending at the end of this month.
01:09:40:15 - 01:10:19:01
Dabney Sanders
I've just got a few days left here, and the city's Parks and Recreation department is taking primary responsibility. They have a team, a maintenance crew of four full time members and then two part time roster members that are responsible for the maintenance of the four miles. They have a greenway, greenway and Gardens program coordinator who has been on board at the city for about four years now, who does all of our programing, communications, volunteer coordination and that position will continue during this transition.
01:10:19:01 - 01:10:57:00
Dabney Sanders
And we are in concert with the city working on establishing a friends group. And that will sort of what we hope it'll do is maintain that private engagement and participation, even with the four, four, four full miles open. So we are partnering actually with another nonprofit that manages our downtown parks. We have two significant parks Downtown Center City Park and Laborer Park, and they're managed by an organization called Greensboro Downtown Parks, Inc..
01:10:57:01 - 01:11:27:28
Dabney Sanders
And what we found is that those city parks, when you described our downtown greenway more like a linear park earlier, we find that that the Downtown Greenway is much more like those two urban parks than many of the other parks and rec facilities throughout the community. And so we are partnering, hoping to partner with this group to run this friends group eventually that will continue to have that.
01:11:27:28 - 01:11:30:03
Dabney Sanders
As I said, that private engagement.
01:11:30:04 - 01:11:58:09
John Simmerman
Yeah, that's that's fantastic. And there's some precedence to this as well. We lived in the city of Austin, Texas for many years before moving back here to Hawaii. And I can think of two separate, actually three separate greenways part nonprofits, the Trail Conservancy, which is the Lady Bird Lake Trail that goes around the Butler Hike and Bike Trail.
01:11:58:09 - 01:12:31:01
John Simmerman
There's a nonprofit that kind of stewarding that. They have an MoU with the city's parks department, also the Shoal Creek Conservancy, which is a trail that goes along the Shoal Creek and then also the Waterloo Greenway. So they had three different downtown things. So I think that that's a wise thing to do, to sort of make that partnership, that long term stewardship, because ultimately our parks and Rec departments, within our municipalities, within our cities here in the United States are oftentimes underfunded.
01:12:31:01 - 01:12:50:04
John Simmerman
So being able to have other groups that are really helping to bolster and help cure it and steward, that is a wise thing to do. I want to pull up a couple of save the dates here. Some of these have already passed, but we have the up and coming September run and also the community picnic.
01:12:50:07 - 01:13:25:24
Dabney Sanders
Yes, yes. So those are two of our sort of core signature events. The other one is that wheels on the Greenway event that happened in May. That always happens the first Saturday in May. But we have these big, big community events. And then sprinkled through that or lots of other of the programing that we talked about before when you mentioned that ongoing stewardship, I should also mention that part of our private fundraising, we raised $1 million for a maintenance endowment that we hold at our local community foundation, the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro.
01:13:25:24 - 01:13:50:25
Dabney Sanders
And that's designed because of the public art we have here, and some of the enhanced landscaping and some of the features of our downtown Greenway trail that are maybe a little above and beyond what the city might normally do on a trail. And so we wanted to establish that maintenance endowment as a supplement to their basic maintenance. And so we raised $1 million for that.
01:13:50:25 - 01:14:06:21
Dabney Sanders
It has grown over the years. And so we have about $1.8 million in that. We're really proud that we can offer that as a resource for the city in that ongoing maintenance of the Downtown Greenway.
01:14:06:24 - 01:14:38:06
John Simmerman
I'm going to pull up the last two slides here. This this one here is the let's connect and talking about, you know, volunteer opportunities again, reinforcing that connection with the with the community and continuing to reinforce that. But as we sort of wind this down, I also want you to address a little bit of what you alluded to earlier, which is connecting to the other greenways, and also how this articulates with the surrounding communities.
01:14:38:07 - 01:15:20:15
John Simmerman
I'm again thinking to the example that I gave in Bentonville, where they started to transform the streets and the built environment within the neighborhoods to help get people to the Razorback Greenway, get people to the Art walk, get people to the the mountain bike trails. And when I say get people to them, I mean all ages and all abilities helping to, you know, maybe bring the temperature down on the neighborhood streets, do some traffic calming, make it easier and safer for families to be able to take advantage of this without necessarily feeling like if they're within walking and biking distance to a trailhead, that they don't have to drive to the trail to go on
01:15:20:15 - 01:15:22:08
John Simmerman
a walk or a bike. Talk a little bit.
01:15:22:08 - 01:15:23:15
Dabney Sanders
About that.
01:15:23:18 - 01:16:07:08
Dabney Sanders
Yeah, well, the city in 2006, the city adopted their very first master plan that we that we now call the biped plan, the bicycle and pedestrian master plan, and that master plan in 2006 identified the Downtown Greenway as the Central connector, but it also identified lots of other trails and greenways to add to the existing system. The city is actually doing a major update of that biped plan that they're working on this summer, and I think the Downtown Greenway has really inspired the city to think about greenways a little differently than they did before.
01:16:07:08 - 01:16:32:20
Dabney Sanders
And there are a couple of really important connections that are in process that we're very excited about. One is I mentioned that railroad corridor that we use the rails to trails legislation. That corridor that we reached the agreement on is a three mile corridor, a mile of it. The southernmost mile is that western branch of the Downtown Greenway.
01:16:32:20 - 01:17:05:14
Dabney Sanders
But then there is a two mile portion that represents a gap between the Downtown Greenway and the existing Atlantic and Yadkin Greenway, which is probably Greensboro most well used greenway. And so the city is currently working on plans to develop that two miles to fill that gap and make that connection with the A and why Greenway. And that is going to be tremendous, because not only does it connect that a and why Greenway.
01:17:05:14 - 01:17:34:09
Dabney Sanders
But if you get on the A and why Greenway and continue to head kind of northwest I guess north you connect up to the mountains to see trail eventually. And that's an incredibly important trail that runs across the state of North Carolina from Murphy to Maniu. If you get on the Mount Sissy Trail and you travel east to Durham, North Carolina, you connect with the East Coast Greenway, and that is a 3000 mile greenway running from Maine to Florida.
01:17:34:10 - 01:18:15:18
Dabney Sanders
So that connection is really, really important. And I believe that we will see a lot of additional bicycle tourism coming here when we get that connection made. And then the other important connection is what the city is calling the East Greensboro Greenway. And they have a functional design for a greenway that will connect our transportation depot. We have a beautiful historic train and bus depot that is right in the heart of downtown, and it'll connect that out to Barbour Park, which is an amazing city park.
01:18:15:18 - 01:18:52:14
Dabney Sanders
And on the east side of town. And this East Greensboro Greenway is envisioned to connect a number of cultural locations and amenities, sort of along the way. And of course, that East Greensboro area is a part of our community that has not always received the same kind of amenities that the rest of the community has, and there is a lot of community excitement about taking this functional design for that greenway and finding the funding to do the detailed design and then ultimately build that greenway.
01:18:52:20 - 01:19:00:00
John Simmerman
I love it, I love it, and that transportation, that transit depot there, is that where the Amtrak station is?
01:19:00:02 - 01:19:28:25
Dabney Sanders
Yes, that's where the Amtrak station is. So it's just and it's a beautiful historic building that has a lot of opportunities. The city and our downtown organization are talking about ways to continue to activate that as more than just a transportation depot. If you think about so many great communities that have these incredible train stations with restaurants and our hubs of activities, and we envision that for the future here in Greensboro.
01:19:29:00 - 01:20:05:02
John Simmerman
Yeah, yeah, I did walk over that way and saw that beautiful old building and historic building. I'm looking forward to making that trip, because one of the great things that you can do with Amtrak and I did this last summer, was I traveled coast to coast on Amtrak with my Brompton folding bicycle, stopping off in major cities of Chicago and Pittsburgh and Providence, Rhode Island, all the way back to Denver and and Salt Lake City and then on to California, is that I can visit my sister there in Greensboro, then jump on the train and go into New York City.
01:20:05:04 - 01:20:06:02
Dabney Sanders
That's incredible.
01:20:06:03 - 01:20:06:22
Dabney Sanders
Yeah. Well.
01:20:06:22 - 01:20:15:09
Dabney Sanders
We would welcome you here, and I hope you'll be able to enjoy the full open four miles of the Downtown Greenway when you make it back here.
01:20:15:09 - 01:20:31:09
John Simmerman
I look forward to it. And I will look you up again. The website is the downtown Dot, and then also out on Facebook and Instagram at Downtown Greenway. What are you going to do is you take a bow. What are.
01:20:31:09 - 01:20:32:24
John Simmerman
You going to do to celebrate?
01:20:32:27 - 01:20:59:21
Dabney Sanders
Well, we have lots of celebrations. We had our big ribbon cutting and grand opening in earlier in May. We had a gala that was just beautiful that celebrated this opening, and we've had lots of fun events. As we've been winding down my time here. I'm taking a little bit of time off over the summer, and then I'm going to kind of figure out my next steps in the fall.
01:20:59:22 - 01:21:20:07
John Simmerman
Okay, I could see a book in your future. I mean, the amount that you have learned from this experience is, is going to be so incredibly valuable to the next DAB needs that are out there that you could learn from this. And so I am just so happy to have had this opportunity to to meet with you and chat with you.
01:21:20:07 - 01:21:30:01
John Simmerman
I look forward to meeting you in person and maybe going out and exploring the the four miles together. And again, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast.
01:21:30:03 - 01:21:33:06
Dabney Sanders
Thank you. It was a real pleasure to chat with you today.
01:21:33:08 - 01:21:48:20
John Simmerman
Hey, thank you all so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this episode with David Sanders. And if you did, please give it a thumbs up. Leave a comment down below and share it with a friend. And if you haven't done so already, I'd be honored to have you subscribe to the channel. Just click on the subscription button down below and ring that notification bell.
01:21:48:20 - 01:22:12:03
John Simmerman
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01:22:12:03 - 01:22:33:25
John Simmerman
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01:22:33:26 - 01:22:39:28
John Simmerman
Well, this is John signing off by wishing you much activity, health and happiness. Cheers and aloha.