Walk the new stretch of trail north of the Highway 98 Bypass this fall and you will cross Wait Avenue on a footbridge that did not exist a year ago. The path underneath is precast concrete, not wood, built that way on purpose so it will not turn slick after a rain. On the other side, the pavement threads into Ailey Young Park, past a restored wetland where a failing dam used to sit, and keeps going until it reaches the trail network that Traditions residents have been using inside their own neighborhood for years.
That connection is the actual news. On May 8, 2026, the Town of Wake Forest held ribbon cuttings for Dunn Creek Greenway Phases 3 and 4, and for the same reason those two ceremonies happened on the same morning: three separate capital projects, funded by three separate sources, on three separate timelines, finally landed at the same finish line. For anyone living in Traditions, Del Webb, Orchards at Traditions, or the Flaherty Farms apartments, the practical result is that a set of trail segments which used to dead-end into their own subdivisions now link to each other and to Flaherty Park, on the edge of downtown.
What Actually Opened on May 8
The morning started at Flaherty Park Playground on North White Street, where Mayor Ben Clapsaddle and Parks, Recreation and Cultural Resources staff cut the ribbon on Dunn Creek Greenway Phases 3 and 4. Two hours later, a second ceremony behind Town Hall marked the reopening of Miller Park, a two-acre wooded park at the corner of South Franklin Street, Elm Avenue, and South Taylor Street.
Phase 3 adds 1.8 miles of paved trail, starting where the greenway used to stop north of Dr. Calvin Jones Highway and running to Ailey Young Park, tying into the greenway network already built inside Traditions. Phase 4 adds another 0.62 miles, and its job is narrower and more useful for daily life: it connects Flaherty Park, Orchards at Traditions, Flaherty Farms, and the Del Webb community directly into the Dunn Creek system. Combined, that is 2.42 miles of new paved trail, funded through the $14.35 million greenway package that Wake Forest voters approved as part of the 2022 Bond Referendum, which also covers ongoing work on the separate Smith Creek Greenway.
Miller Park's overhaul ran on a different clock entirely. It was paid for through the American Rescue Plan Act and the Town's 2024 General Obligation Public Improvement Bonds, and it addressed a stream running through the park that had become unstable, along with new boardwalk features and updated trails. Two projects, two funding streams, one ribbon-cutting morning. That kind of scheduling coincidence is not something a listing sheet will ever tell you, but it is exactly why this particular spring mattered more than most for people who live along this corridor.
Ruben Wall, the Town's PRCR Director, put the point plainly at the ceremony: "Increasing the walkability of the community benefits the overall health and wellness of the community as a whole." The Town also used the day to recognize three longtime greenway advocates, Jan Ammons, Candace Davis, and former Mayor Vivian Jones, for pushing the project years before Crowder Construction ever broke ground.
The Neighborhoods That Got Wired Together
Before this spring, Traditions had its own internal path network. Del Webb had its own. Orchards at Traditions and Flaherty Farms were close to Flaherty Park geographically but not connected to it by anything you could walk or bike without hitting a road. Phase 4 changes that by name. The Town's own description of the project lists Flaherty Park, Orchards at Traditions, Flaherty Farms, and Del Webb as the four points it ties together, and that list matters because it tells you exactly which front doors are now within a continuous paved walk of each other for the first time.
This is different from what happened on the Heritage side of town, where the existing Smith Creek and Sanford Creek greenways already ran behind the neighborhood's own schools and clubhouse. Dunn Creek Greenway serves a different part of Wake Forest, closer to the NC 98 Bypass corridor and the newer subdivisions that grew up around it. If you live in one of those four communities, this is the first year that a bike ride from your driveway to Flaherty Park, or from Flaherty Park into Ailey Young Park, does not require a car in between.
The Date That Didn't Hold
Wake Forest's own construction paperwork gives a useful lesson in how to read a town project timeline. When Crowder Construction received its notice to proceed on Phase 3 in December 2024, the contract allowed up to 480 days, which put the projected finish at March 26, 2026. Around the same time, the Town's public-facing announcements described the completion window more loosely, as "late spring 2026."
The ribbon cutting happened May 8. That is comfortably inside "late spring." It is also about six weeks past the specific date the construction contract had penciled in. Neither number was wrong exactly, they were just two different ways of measuring the same uncertain thing, and the vaguer estimate turned out to be the one that held. For this project, the contract's 480-day clock pointed to late March, while the "late spring" language in the Town's announcements pointed to a window that included the May 8 opening.
What's Still Waiting at Ailey Young Park
The wetland you pass through on the new Phase 3 segment did not always look like this. For years, the dam holding back what locals call Peggy's Pond had deteriorated, the downstream channel had eroded, and a sewer line running alongside the stream had come close to being exposed. Kimley-Horn, working under contract with the Town, led the redesign that removed the failing dam, restored roughly 340 linear feet of stream, and rebuilt about 0.4 acres of wetland in its place. The new observation deck at the park connects directly to the greenway extension, so the wetland restoration and the trail opening are the same project viewed from two different angles.
That is not the end of the story for this stretch. The Town's own project list carries a separate line item labeled "Ailey Young Park Improvements," budgeted at four million dollars and currently targeted for 2027. Given what just happened with Phase 3's timeline, that year is worth treating as a direction rather than a promise, but it does mean this corridor is scheduled for a second round of work, not a one-time ribbon cutting and then nothing.
Where to Actually Start Walking
If you want to try the new stretch this fall, the entry points are specific enough to just go find them.
- Flaherty Park, 1100 N. White St., is the closest starting point if you live downtown or along White Street, and it was the site of the morning's first ribbon cutting.
- Ailey Young Park, 800 E. Juniper Ave., puts you at the wetland restoration and the observation deck, and it is the midpoint of the new Phase 3 segment.
- The Wait Avenue crossing is worth walking even if you are not continuing the whole route. Crowder's work there included new stormwater infrastructure, curb and gutter, driveway aprons, and a ten-foot-wide multi-use path alongside the new pedestrian beacons, so the road itself got safer at the same time the trail crossed it.
- Del Webb and Orchards at Traditions connect in from the Phase 4 side, which is the segment most directly relevant if your daily walk starts inside one of those communities.
None of these require a car to link together anymore. That is the part of this story that a construction announcement will not spell out on its own, and it is the part that actually changes what a Tuesday evening walk looks like for a few thousand households on this side of town.
If you're weighing how a project like this affects day-to-day life in a specific part of Wake Forest, Carolina Elite Realty Group pays attention to this kind of local change because it shapes how a neighborhood actually lives, long before it shows up anywhere official.
