Additional funding is expected to help push plans for the first phase of the Downtown Trail forward, following a pause.

The Wilmington City Council unanimously approved appropriating $431,200 in funds from the N.C. Department of Transportation (NCDOT) and entering into an agreement with NCDOT for the design of the trail’s first phase on Tuesday night.

The Downtown Trail is a proposed 5.9-mile multi-use path set to connect downtown Wilmington with parks and neighborhoods to the east. The trail’s first phase is an approximately 1.7-mile segment that begins downtown at Third Street, runs east within the NCDOT-owned rail corridor to McRae Street, abuts Dorothy B. Johnson Elementary School and continues north through Archie Blue Park before ultimately ending at Love Grove Bridge.

The project’s second phase would connect Archie Blue Park to Market Street, and the final phase would connect Market Street with Forest Hills Drive.

In 2022, the project became federally funded after the Wilmington Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (WMPO) allocated $680,000 in funding from money received through the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act. 

Work on the project began in late 2022, according to agenda documents, with coordination between property owners, including NCDOT Rail and CSX. The resulting proposals resulted in a nearly two-year pause on design, and new design elements were added to the project.

That delay and the new elements caused a “significant increase” in the cost to complete the project’s design, agenda documents state. 

In March, the Wilmington City Council voted unanimously to authorize the city to apply to the WMPO for the additional $431,200 in Surface Transportation Block Grant Program - Direct Attributable Funds, providing a 20% local match or $107,800 from the city’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Committee funding.

In late March, the WMPO board unanimously voted to allocate the additional funding toward the completion of the project.