Ed Harris and Dave Cable knocked on a door east of Davidson, looking for a signature on a right-of-way agreement. They were told to leave. Not asked. Told.
That was one stop among many in a negotiation that ran nearly two decades before the Davidson Lands Conservancy and the Town of Davidson finally closed it out in 2025. The prize was not a highway or a new subdivision. It was half a mile of trail. A stretch of greenway meant to connect the path that already runs north from River Run to the Narrow Passage community along Shearer Road, closing the last gap before the trail reaches Fisher Farm Park.
If you live in River Run and walk or bike the West Branch Rocky River Greenway, you already know where this trail currently stops. What you may not know is why it took eighteen years to get this far, or that the project still has a construction phase ahead of it.
Why a Half-Mile Took So Long
The obvious explanation is bureaucracy. The real one is property rights, negotiated parcel by parcel, with people who had every reason to say no.
Harris, a retired real estate investor who now serves as the conservancy's treasurer, and Cable, the conservancy's former executive director and current senior advisor, spent years working through the list of landowners whose property sat along the proposed route. Some were happy to help once they understood the project. Others were mid-dispute with the town over unrelated matters and wanted nothing to do with it. Trent Gazzaway, whose family owns three acres off Shearer Road, took his time deciding whether to let the trail cross his back boundary. His concern was practical: would strangers start parking on his private street and cutting across his yard to reach the path. The town's answer was a fence line along the trail, plus the fact that streetside parking on his road isn't allowed in the first place.
This is the part of trail-building that never makes it into a press release. A greenway on a map looks inevitable. On the ground, it is a series of individual conversations, some of which end with someone asking you to leave.
What "Design Phase" Actually Means Right Now
Here is the detail worth knowing if you assumed this project was close to finished: it isn't. The right-of-way agreements are done, but the Town of Davidson's own project page, last updated in February 2026, lists the connector as currently in the design phase, with construction estimated to begin in 2027.
That gap between "agreements signed" and "shovels in the ground" is normal for public trail projects, but it means anyone picturing a ribbon-cutting this year or next should reset that expectation. The town budgeted $2.1 million for the connector, funded through general obligation bonds that voters approved, and a request for design and construction services went out to firms in 2025. The design work happening now determines exactly how the trail threads through the remaining private land, which is where the next detail comes in.
Why the Route Bends Around a Gas Line and a Creek
The reason property owners eventually said yes had less to do with persuasion and more to do with where the trail actually sits on their land. Harris and Cable's pitch worked because the route was drawn to run along the farthest edges of each property, on the far side of a creek, through wetlands, and past a 100-foot natural gas easement, rather than anywhere near a home. Much of this half-mile will be built as boardwalk specifically to limit the ecological footprint through that low, wet ground.
The money involved tells you where the friction actually was. The town paid about $62,900 for one of the two final parcels needed to complete the link, with Mecklenburg County covering the other. Mayor Rusty Knox called those two properties the linchpin of the whole eighteen-year effort. A $2.1 million construction budget against a roughly $63,000 land cost is a useful ratio: the hard part was never money, it was consent. Once the last two owners agreed, the dollars were the easy part.
Cable has also pointed out that the connector fits into a larger vision under the Carolina Thread Trail, the regional network spanning 15 counties, and Knox has floated a second future route linking Abersham Park to downtown Davidson by way of Grey Road, essentially looping the whole system into a circle. Neither of those is funded or designed yet. They are ideas for after this half-mile is finished.
What You Can Already Walk To
None of this means River Run residents are waiting around with nothing to do in the meantime. The existing trail system is larger than the missing link makes it sound. Abersham Park and Fisher Farm Park together already offer 3.6 miles of trail with connections reaching into Iredell County, and an additional 2.66 miles of Fisher Farm and West Branch Rocky River Greenway trail is accessible with parking on Shearer Road and Ryker Way.
Fisher Farm itself is 200 acres of natural area, open from dawn to dusk, with four miles of mountain bike trail ranging from beginner to advanced and an archery range. Narrow Passage residents already have direct trail access into that park. The piece that's missing is simply the half-mile that would let someone start from River Run and walk the whole way there without getting in a car.
Closer to home, River Run Athletic Park at 19000 Robert Walker Drive already serves as a trailhead for the South Prong Rocky River Greenway, part of the six miles of paved trail and sidewalk that lace through Davidson, including the 2.8-mile Randall R. Kincaid Trail, shaded by sweetgum, tulip poplar, and eastern red cedar. If you've walked the West Branch stretch toward Fisher Farm, you've likely noticed the small birdhouses along the path and the frogs in the wet sections near the river. Those are the same wetlands the new connector is being engineered to protect.
If you want a reason to put the whole network to use before the connector is even built, the Davidson Lands Conservancy's Run for Green happens every September, with 2026 marking its 21st year. The course winds through neighborhoods and out onto the greenway itself, which means the same conservancy that spent eighteen years negotiating trail easements also hosts the race that celebrates them.
What This Actually Means for River Run
The short version: the hardest part of this project, getting eighteen years of private landowners to agree, is finished. The visible part, an actual trail connecting River Run to Fisher Farm Park, is still roughly a year or more away. In between is design work, permitting, and a construction bid that hasn't gone out yet.
That's a useful thing to know if you've been telling out-of-town guests that the trail to Fisher Farm is "almost done." It's closer than it's been in eighteen years. It isn't done yet.
If you're weighing what a neighborhood like River Run means for your own next move, from a golf-course lot near the country club to a home closer to the athletic park and greenway access, Preston Realty Group can walk you through what different pockets of River Run actually offer day to day. Let's Connect and talk through what fits.
