Daniel Island's Trails Have a Repaving Calendar. The Footbridge Is Still Waiting on the State.

"The permit review is in the State's hands, and we can't give you a firm reopening date yet." The Daniel Island Property Owners' Association said that in an October 19 update about the wooden footbridge behind the tennis center, which has been closed since an engineering inspection found structural problems.

Nine days later, the same association published a schedule for the rest of the island's paths that runs almost to the day. Repaving was set to begin Monday, November 2. It is broken into four named phases, each with a start date and an end date, and holiday breaks are already written in.

Put side by side, the two notices show how trail work on Daniel Island gets scheduled this fall. Pavement that the POA manages and hires for comes with a calendar you can plan a morning walk around. The crossing and the open land owned by the City go through state permitting and public input, and those steps set their own pace. The POA describes a network of more than 25 miles, so most of it falls on the dated side.

The asphalt, one segment at a time

The repaving moves in short pieces. The contractor mills, or grinds off, the old asphalt on one segment, paves it the next day, and mills the segment ahead at the same time. According to the POA, that keeps each section closed for a day or two, not weeks. Crews work Monday through Saturday, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., with no work on Sundays.

Under that schedule, Thursday, November 5, falls in the first week of Phase 1, with crews working in the northern neighborhoods. Central trails follow the week of November 17. The park loops at Pierce and Smythe and the pond trails don't start until after Thanksgiving.

The POA also asks walkers to treat milled trail as a work zone even when no equipment is there, because the ground-down surface is rough and uneven. Coned and barricaded sections should be left alone until the barriers are gone, since fresh asphalt stays soft for a while.

The schedule also builds in pauses. The contractor will stop completely, and every trail will be open, during these breaks:

• Thanksgiving, November 26 through 29
• Christmas, December 24 through 27
• New Year's Eve and New Year's Day

The POA expects to finish by mid-December, weather and unforeseen circumstances permitting. It says it will post any significant schedule changes by email and on its website.

The river trail, on weekdays only

A second contractor was scheduled to start the same Monday on the northern Wando River Trail, above Waterfront Park and behind the Tennis Center and Recreation Center. This is a separate job with its own method. The crew breaks up the old, hardened surface and tops it with fresh material for a smoother, more even finish.

The POA lists this stretch as the Riverfront Loop. It runs 1.78 miles of unpaved gravel, sand and wooden boardwalk from a trailhead at 1 River Landing Drive, follows the Wando River behind the LTP Tennis Center, and passes under the Wando bridge toward Governors Park. Along the way are a cemetery, the Pritchard Shipyard marker and the Fairbank Plantation site, with benches throughout.

The work happens on weekdays only, between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., so the trail stays open in the evenings and on weekends. It comes in three pieces:

1. Under the I-526 bridge. Starts Monday, November 2, and runs about four to six days along the river beneath the Wando bridge.
2. Between the tennis center and the I-526 bridge. A short riverside section of about one day, starting Friday, November 6, or Monday, November 9.
3. Seven Farms Drive to the back of the tennis center. The longest section, starting Wednesday, November 11, for about four to six days, from Seven Farms Drive around the pond and behind the stadium. Materials will be staged in a coned-off area off Seven Farms Drive, cleared out over the weekend, and work picks back up Monday, November 16.

The river trail is expected to be finished in the third week of November, just before Thanksgiving.

Loops the POA lists with other surfaces

The POA's interactive parks and trails map lists more routes than the repaving phases name, along with each one's surface.

• The Edgefield Loop runs 1.17 miles on a mix of gravel nature trail and paved sidewalk.
• The Smythe-to-Townsend Loop runs 1.37 miles on gravel nature trail and paved sidewalk.
• The Watroo Point Loop is mostly paved, with a short unpaved section and a boardwalk across the marsh.
• The Island Park Loop covers 2.6 miles of paved trail and sidewalk, the Ralston Creek Loop 1.9 miles of sidewalk, and the Grove Park Loop 0.9 miles of sidewalk.

These pages say "paved" without saying whether the surface is asphalt. Some named streets in the repaving phases, Smythe among them, sit near these loops. Before heading out on a weekday, check the phase table against the street names on your route.

City-maintained Governors Park has waterfront trails, a dog run and a playground. The POA's parks and trails page lists the Farr Street Dog Park separately.

The crossing with no date

The footbridge is where the second timeline starts. It belongs to the City of Charleston and is maintained by the Daniel Island Town Association, or DITA. Engineers decided repairs weren't practical, so it is being replaced entirely.

According to the POA's October 19 update, design and engineering are finished. Because the bridge crosses a tidal area, the project falls under the state's coastal critical area rules. Surveyors have marked the critical line, the state's boundary for tidal water and marsh. The City signed the permit application as owner and named the POA's director of operations, Tony Elder, to manage the project through construction. The application is going to SCDES, and the replacement is being bid at the same time so a contractor can start once the permit comes through.

Mayor William Cogswell sounded more hopeful the next evening. At his State of the City stop at the Daniel Island Recreation Center on October 20, he told residents that construction on the closed footbridge was about 30 days away, according to The Daniel Island News. The paper described the bridge as sitting on the Waterfront Park leisure trail behind Governors Park and Credit One Stadium.

Those two statements don't fully match. The POA says it will give a real timeline once the permit is in hand and a contractor is chosen, and until then it asks everyone to stay off the bridge and follow the closure signs.

What the City has scheduled, and what it hasn't

The same State of the City visit set out the island's next public decisions, and they have different levels of certainty.

A crosswalk has the nearest start date. Holy City Sinner reported the mayor's announcement that curb extensions and flashing beacons at Seven Farms Drive and Pier View Street were expected to start as soon as the following week. Wildwood is the contractor, and the project costs $182,000. The outlet noted that residents have raised safety at that intersection again and again. The Daniel Island News reported that the City is also preparing a roundabout at Seven Farms Drive and River Landing Drive.

The Brumley family gave the City 62 acres off Oak Leaf Street, and Holy City Sinner reported that the City will open public input on the site in January. Staff have raised athletic fields, trails and parking as early ideas. The Daniel Island News placed the parcel near Oak Leaf Lane, south of the soccer fields, and quoted Cogswell saying, "There's a lot of different ways we can go there." Holy City Sinner also quoted his reason for taking it slowly: "That growth makes every open acre worth more. We want to get this one right, and that starts with listening to what residents want."

Further out, the City is exploring a public pier behind the Daniel Island Recreation Center, looking into it as a way to add connections across the island. According to Holy City Sinner, it is still a concept that would have to go through the City's standard public process.

Questions submitted for that evening that didn't get answered are set to receive written replies on the City's State of Our City page or by email within 10 days. For the trail work, the POA takes questions at [email protected].

Owners who spend the season away still want to know which week the crews reached their street and whether the barricades came down on time. Through Handsome Homes, Handsome Properties runs weekly on-site checks for absentee Daniel Island owners. If you'd like someone local keeping an eye on your home while the paths around it are being redone, we'd be glad to talk.