The city says Charleston will see "a much more obvious physical transformation of the corridor" once crews return to the old rail line under Interstate 26 on Oct. 19. City spokesperson Bay Sheehan told The Post and Courier that the 1.6-mile stretch from Mount Pleasant Street to Line Street is moving into its major earthworks phase.
Anyone who has walked under the overpass near Romney Street this year has seen the same scene since the groundbreaking. There's yellow signage, fencing beside the skatepark, a basketball hoop, and a narrow path that turns into a puddle after rain. The paper's Sept. 22 photographs show all of it. The bulldozers are the easy part to follow. The paths, medians, and stormwater work are set in a city contract. What the park will hold on an ordinary weekday hasn't been decided yet, and right now that's the one part people who live nearby can still shape.
Ten Months of Work You Couldn't See
The city and Friends of the Lowline broke ground on Monday, Dec. 15, 2025, at the future Lowline Park site behind The Daily Café. Guests were told to park in the Sheppard Street Parking Lot South. At the ceremony, Friends of the Lowline Executive Director Courtney Olson called it "a project that's more than a decade in the making," according to the Charleston City Paper. The idea was first proposed in 2015.
Since then, Sheehan said, the work has been "largely behind the scenes." That means design, permitting, and construction coordination, plus erosion control, site protection, and grading. The Lowline's three parking lots were also upgraded. Records show the stormwater design had "changed drastically" since preconstruction began in April 2025. On Sept. 22, City Council voted unanimously for a $2 million update to the contract with Edifice Construction. That was the fifth change to the contract, which now totals more than $10.3 million.
The stormwater piece explains why the project slowed down. Sheehan called the Lowline "a critical downtown stormwater infrastructure project," not only a park. Redesigning the way water moves through a corridor takes time before any visible work can start.
The Same Project, Measured Twice
These are the milestones as announced at the groundbreaking and as they read in the September change order.
| Milestone | At groundbreaking, Dec. 2025 | As of Sept. 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Phase 1 completion | First quarter of 2027 | Substantial completion in August 2027 |
| First section open to the public | Not separately dated | Sheppard to Mount Pleasant streets, early 2028 |
| Bradford Park | Not separately dated | Possibly summer 2028 |
| Money | $15 million earmarked; $6 million authorized Dec. 2 | Edifice contract above $10.3 million; total cost expected to top $20 million |
At the groundbreaking, Phase 1 was expected to be finished in the first quarter of 2027. The change order moves substantial completion to August 2027 and dates the first public opening to early 2028. According to the Post and Courier, the benchmark it replaced was "February." The Friends of the Lowline Get Involved page gives "fall 2027" as a general Phase 1 opening estimate. Neither that page nor the Post and Courier explains how the two estimates relate.
The city's share comes from the Cooper River Bridge TIF district, and Friends of the Lowline is raising private money on top of that. The Speedwell Foundation has pledged to match the first $2.5 million Friends raises, which would bring in $5 million in total. The group's site reports $900,000 raised so far, with $1.6 million of the match still available. Matched dollars go to Bradford Park, named for Tom Bradford, founding board chair of Friends of the Lowline and a longtime Charleston cycling advocate.
What the Earthworks Are Building Toward
The physical plan has been stable through every update. According to the City Paper's groundbreaking coverage, the path will have a 10-foot walkway and a 12-foot bike trail, separated by a landscaped median. The September update adds better lighting and safety improvements at street crossings. The full route breaks into three parts:
- North Central Corridor, from Romney Street to a planned transit hub on Mount Pleasant Street. It calls for several pocket parks under the elevated interstate, with space for a neighborhood market.
- Parks district, from Romney to Line streets, with a park at each end. Newmarket Creek, to the north, will be a passive park designed to hold millions of gallons of floodwater. Lowline Park, to the south, will have a large open space behind a King Street strip for events and gatherings.
- Urban Core, the remaining stretch toward Marion Square, running through alleys between buildings.
Friends of the Lowline describes Bradford Park as the anchor at the southern end of Phase 1. The plan calls for open lawn, shade, and "room for a whole neighborhood to show up at once," and the group calls it the first place on the corridor built for gathering rather than passing through.
The construction contract covers the paths and the lawn. It doesn't decide who uses the neighborhood market space in North Central or what happens on the event lawn behind King Street on a Tuesday.
The Programming Question Is Open Now
Olson spells out how the organization sees that question in a Sept. 14 post on the Friends blog. Before taking the job, she was Director of Programs for the Charleston Parks Conservancy. She also lived in Boston before and after the Rose Kennedy Greenway opened. In the post, she says big annual festivals don't make a park part of people's routine. "A weekly yoga class or a Tuesday morning market brings the same neighbors back to the same spot, again and again," she wrote.
"Build the everyday rhythm first, and the big moments take care of themselves."
The post names the parks Friends has "pinned to the vision board." Klyde Warren Park in Dallas runs more than 1,300 free programs a year. Toronto's Bentway, which sits under an elevated expressway much as the Lowline sits under I-26, rents out space for private events to pay for free programs and upkeep. Olson describes Friends as sitting "at the center of eight neighborhoods" and as the nonprofit partner that would plan and run that kind of calendar alongside the city. The group's homepage describes the corridor as connecting North Central to Radcliffborough.
That planning has started. The community survey on the Friends of the Lowline Get Involved page takes about five minutes. It covers:
- Your neighborhood and how you relate to the corridor
- The programs you'd want, and when and how often you'd attend
- What makes it hard to get there
- Whether you'd pay for programs, rent event space, buy from vendors, lead a program, or volunteer
- How you'd like to hear about events
The survey was open as of this writing, and the page doesn't list a closing date. The same page doesn't yet list any fall events or volunteer days. The volunteer section reads "Coming Soon!"
What This Fall Will and Won't Answer
District councilmember Aaron Polkey said at the Sept. 22 council meeting that peninsula residents had been asking where the project stands. Mayor William Cogswell said a more detailed update would go to the Traffic and Transportation Committee on Oct. 27, eight days after crews return. The Post and Courier's Sept. 30 news roundup repeated the Oct. 19 start and the 2027 and 2028 dates.
Some practical questions aren't answered anywhere public yet. Nothing published says whether the skatepark, the basketball court, the informal path, or any of the three parking lots will close during earthworks. No street-by-street detours or crossing closures have been announced either. The Oct. 27 committee meeting is the next scheduled chance for those details to come out. Until then, the clearest dates for anyone who uses the space under the interstate are Oct. 19 for the heavy equipment and early 2028 for the first section to open.
At Oyster Point Real Estate Group, we follow projects like the Lowline street by street, from its changing timelines to the parks planned behind King Street. If you'd like to talk through what the corridor's progress means for your part of the peninsula, Contact Us.
