Work begins on ‘transformational’ project in downtown Greenville

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Walking and biking between downtown Greenville and the city’s cultural amenities — including museums, theaters and the main library — will soon be safer if a new plan works.

Greenville Mayor Knox White and Greenville City Council members were joined recently by State Reps. Bruce Bannister and Chandra Dillard for a groundbreaking on the Cultural Corridor road improvement project.

The Cultural Corridor is the section of College and Buncombe streets between Main Street and Heritage Green. The project, currently under construction, will include street resurfacing, landscaping, multi-use paths, traffic signal upgrades and street/pedestrian lighting.

“Navigating urban areas like this can be dangerous, particularly for pedestrians and bicyclists, and as our community continues to grow, we need to share the roads,” said Dillard. “We need to improve our existing roads to accommodate other users and ensure they share the roads safely and effectively.”

In October, the Greenville City Council voted to accept a $20 million allocation from the state budget for infrastructure projects while setting aside $6 million for the Cultural Corridor project.

“This is transformational,” said White. “We’re going to expand the footprint of downtown Greenville. Now, when you cross Main Street, you lose the tree canopy, but that will change radically with the addition of wide, safe sidewalks for people to connect downtown hotels and restaurants and come into the library and museum district.”

Related story: Here’s the latest on the Cultural Corridor project in downtown Greenville

The four-lane College Street functions like a highway with nearly 15,000 cars traveling it daily, without adequate accommodations for pedestrian safety, the city says. Using $4.3 million, College Street will be reduced to three lanes to slow traffic. Wider sidewalks and additional trees will be added. Both the Downtown Master Plan and the Downtown Traffic Master Plan recommend improving pedestrian access and connectivity from downtown to the Heritage Green campus.

“It’s not a secret that downtown Greenville is one of the gems of South Carolina,” said Bannister. “It is a place where people come to say, ‘Wow, how did you do this?’ We’re going to bring our people back and visit to figure out how we can do the same thing somewhere else.”

Another portion of the project, funded by the remaining $1.7 million in state dollars, will encourage drivers to use Academy Street as a “downtown bypass.” Work on portions of the bypass is already complete, including traffic signal retiming and the addition of turn lanes. Overnight on Tuesday, crews will remove of the traffic light at Elford Street to improve the flow of travel.

The Cultural Corridor project should be complete by the end of 2024, according to the plan.