Why the Lowline's Opening Keeps Moving, and Where Its Next Date Gets Set

Under the I-26 overpass near Romney Street, yellow construction signs say the Lowline is "forging a new path." When a Post and Courier photographer walked the corridor on September 22, 2026, fencing ran along the route and along the edge of the skatepark under the interstate. Dust prints from a basketball were still visible on the backboard of the hoop nearby.

Half a mile south, the Lowline name is already open for business. The Lowline Hotel welcomed its first guests at 560 King Street on July 15, 2026. It has 197 rooms, plus Leeward Restaurant and its patio, Lowline Spirited Coffee & Provisions, The Long Game at Leeward, Pour Taproom and Sterling Hall, according to Hyatt's opening announcement.

The path the hotel is named for runs on a different clock, and that clock no longer counts in seasons. Since the groundbreaking, the Lowline's cost has grown past the money committed to it. The opening date now moves with each council vote that covers the difference.

The promise made at the groundbreaking

The pitch in December 2025 was simple. Phase 1 would be 1.6 miles of walking and biking path on the old rail corridor between Mount Pleasant Street and Line Street. Live 5 News reported that construction would take about a year, and the finish was set for the first quarter of 2027.

That timeline came after a decade of patience. The idea dates to 2015, and credit for it goes to Tom Bradford, the cycling advocate behind Charleston Moves. The city finished buying the corridor from Norfolk Southern in 2017 for $4.6 million, according to CHS Happenings. A construction start felt like the hard part was finished.

Ten months later, the Post and Courier reported that the path "doesn't visibly look much closer to completion." Much of the early work was easy to miss from the street. Friends of the Lowline explains that the first site package covered demolition, clearing, fencing and three adjacent parking lots, with that work done between January and April 2026.

How the finish line moved

By early October, the dates had shifted. CHS Happenings summarized the Post and Courier's reporting. Substantial completion has slipped from February to August 2027. The stretch between Sheppard and Mount Pleasant streets would open to the public in early 2028, and the Bradford Park phase could be finished that summer.

The Friends of the Lowline Phase 1 page still describes the project as under construction and "on track to open in Summer 2027." That season lines up with the reported August 2027 substantial completion. The early-2028 date covers when the public can walk the northern stretch.

What the latest $2 million paid for

The newest schedule is tied to a specific vote. On September 22, 2026, City Council's Committee on Ways and Means unanimously approved Change Order #5 for the "Lowline Revised Early Site Package Scope of Work." The committee minutes list the amount as $2,006,204 and say the purpose was "to facilitate a remobilization date of 10/19/26." They add that the change order "must be approved by COB September 22, 2026 to maintain revised Early Site Package construction package."

Council approved the money on the same day the change order set as its deadline.

The Post and Courier also reported that the stormwater design has changed drastically since design work began in April 2025, CHS Happenings noted. On a design-build project, changes like that come back to council as change orders, one at a time.

Here is how the funding stood on the figures reported in early October:

• City commitment: $15 million in tax increment financing at groundbreaking. The latest change order also draws on the Cooper River Bridge TIF.
• Private support: $3 million announced by Friends of the Lowline, including a $2.5 million gift from the Speedwall Foundation in Bradford's honor.
• Projected cost: more than $20 million for the whole project.

Taken together, those figures leave at least $2 million uncovered, and more money may have come in since the October summary. At the September meeting, Mayor William Cogswell said the city would give council a full update on "the aggregate sources." That update would also cover the memorandum of understanding with the Parks Conservancy and the Lowcountry Lowline. Councilmember Polkey said many people in District 4 had been asking questions about the Lowline.

What the finished path is meant to hold

The funding matters to people who live nearby because of what Phase 1 will become. The city's solicitation for a design-builder describes an approximately 1.6-mile multimodal path, two surface parking lots, neighborhood and mid-block crossings, and a new park.

The details reported so far:

1. A 10-foot walkway beside a 12-foot bike trail, separated by landscaped medians.
2. Pocket parks and rain gardens along the route that catch water and clean runoff.
3. Bradford Park at the southern end of Phase 1, which Friends of the Lowline describes as the main gathering space, with an open lawn and shade.

Phase 1 is only the first piece. The full Lowline is planned to run nearly two miles toward Marion Square in three sections. The first is a corridor under the interstate with a neighborhood market. The second is a parks district around Newmarket Creek, and the third is an urban core that threads between downtown buildings. Every later section depends on Phase 1 finishing, so any slip in the first 1.6 miles pushes back the rest.

The City of Charleston owns and will operate the Lowline. Friends of the Lowline is its 501(c)(3) nonprofit partner. Friends is asking residents what they want in the finished park. Its Get Involved page has a survey about future classes, markets, concerts, children's activities and gatherings. The programming will be planned around the answers from people nearby long before the first event on the lawn.

Where the next date gets set

The schedule depends on the next round of funding decisions, and this fall's calendar shows where they get made.

• October 19, 2026: the remobilization date written into Change Order #5, set for crews to go back to work on the corridor beneath I-26.
• October 27, 2026: a Lowcountry Lowline project update from Capital Projects' Chase Anderson was on the Traffic and Transportation Committee agenda for 3 p.m., following the September request for a briefing to that committee.
• Committee records: agendas and minutes are posted to the city's Traffic and Transportation Committee page.

For now, the only part of the Lowline open to the public is the hotel. Coffee at Lowline Spirited Coffee & Provisions or dinner at Leeward is available now. The path behind the fencing near Romney Street is reported to open from August 2027 through summer 2028, assuming each funding vote comes in on time.

Big public projects like the Lowline gradually change how the upper peninsula works. Houses near the corridor will someday sit a short walk from a park that exists today mostly on paper and in council minutes. If you own on the upper peninsula and want to understand how the Lowline's timeline fits into your home's value, Handsome Properties will give you a quiet, detailed read. Request a Free Home Valuation and we will walk you through it.