Athens-Clarke County commissioners are considering rerouting Firefly Trail, diverting a portion of it from the railbed onto Moores Grove Road and mixing people on foot and bikes with speeding cars.
A handful of landowners there have resisted selling segments of their property to complete the trail. The commission voted in 2021 to approve the current route along the abandoned railbed and in 2022 to authorize the use of eminent domain to acquire the necessary property. But now, Commissioner Patrick Davenport wants to reverse those decisions.
Flagpole could not reach Davenport for comment, but he said on the AthChat podcast, “I still believe there’s other ways we could finish it… We’re not going through peoples’ backyards, we’re not eminent domain-ing anybody.”
Davenport submitted paperwork last week to force the issue on the agenda for the commission’s Oct. 7 agenda. (Ordinarily the mayor sets the agenda, but a rarely used clause in the unified government’s charter allows six commissioners to override the mayor.) Commissioners Tiffany Taylor, Allison Wright, Dexter Fisher, John Culpepper and Ovita Thornton also signed on. Davenport represented the Winterville area until redistricting in 2022; currently, Firefly Trail straddles Thornton and Taylor’s districts.
Davenport and Mayor Kelly Girtz subsequently agreed to discuss the issue in closed session—allowed for matters involving real estate—most likely at the Oct. 21 meeting, with a potential vote at the Nov. 4 meeting. That will give staff time to put together a presentation for commissioners, according to Girtz. “This will bring down the temperature,” he told Flagpole. “What I want is for everyone to have good information and to have time to absorb it.”
The commission does not take public input on items discussed in executive session, but residents can speak during the free-for-all at the end of the Oct. 7 voting meeting, or at the Nov. 4 meeting, assuming it does come up for a vote then. However, Girtz encouraged concerned residents to contact their commissioner directly.
In 2021, ACC staff presented the commission with three options in response to nine landowners’ reluctance to sell: Keep trying to acquire those properties so that the trail could stay on the railbed, possibly requiring eminent domain; divert it to a new path along the south side of Moores Grove; or divert it to the north side of Moores Grove, where there is an existing sidewalk, requiring cyclists to cross the street. Three sitting commissioners—Melissa Link, Carol Myers and Mike Hamby—voted for “Route A,” the railbed, while Davenport, Wright and Thornton voted against it. They also voted against authorizing eminent domain, along with Hamby. The public also preferred Route A by a three-to-one margin when ACC solicited input four years ago.
“Moores Grove Road is a fast road; a signal crossing is not appropriate,” Scott Long, executive director of BikeAthens, told the Athens Politics Nerd blog. “If you have the number of people who regularly use the Firefly Trail crossing that road, you’re just asking for something to happen. One of our volunteers was killed a few years ago near Winterville. You have people who get killed or seriously injured on our roadways out there. I would want to hear that we can prevent people from being hit.”
Long was referring to Tobias Smith, a 19-year-old who was killed by a driver while riding his bike on Winterville Road in 2014.
It’s unknown how much rerouting the trail would cost, nor is it clear whether diverting the trail would violate the wording of the transportation sales tax referendum funding Firefly Trail that voters approved in 2018. In addition, shifting a portion of the trail to Moores Grove would still involve property acquisition to build a 10- to 12-foot-wide multiuse path, according to Alex Bond, interim director of the Leisure Services Department. It would just be in residents’ front yards instead of back yards. “No matter what, there’s going to be somebody who wants their distance from it,” Bond said.
Crime has been a concern for some who live along the trail from the beginning, although studies show that areas near trails and greenways actually have low crime rates, and they raise property values.
Bond did not know how long shifting the trail’s route would delay the project, which has been under construction for a decade. At a recent retreat, commissioners discussed ways to speed up capital projects that take an average of four and a half years to finish. “This is an example of how we can forever delay a project,” Girtz quipped.
The ACC government acquired the Athens branch of the Georgia Railroad in 1999 after R.E.M. fans locally and worldwide rallied to save what was left of the trestle featured on the back cover of the Murmur album when railroad company CSX Transportation began to demolish it. The structurally unsound remnants of the Murmur Trestle over Trail Creek were replaced with a new steel bridge echoing the original design in 2023.
The nonprofit Firefly Trail Inc. eventually intends to extend the 39-mile trail from Winterville through Oglethorpe County to Greene County. So far, sections have been built in Maxeys, Woodville and Union Point. Firefly Trail Inc. has stated it does not have a preference for the route near Moores Grove Road.
A contractor is currently working on the section between Hancock Road near the Hallmark mobile home park and Ranick Road, Bond said, so a final decision on the route will need to be made soon. The county has either purchased the necessary land between Hancock Industrial Way and Moss Road or has it under contract, he said.
Recently a steel firefly sculpture was installed near the RaceTrac gas station. Upcoming improvements include a small plaza with a water fountain near Ranick Road and shaded benches near the intersection of Winterville and Spring Valley roads.
Meanwhile, eight miles of paved trails have been completed along the North Oconee River Greenway—another decades-long project—running from Sandy Creek Nature Center in the north to College Station Road and Barnett Shoals Road just south of the Loop. The greenway is well-used, with an average of 156 people a day accessing it via College Avenue alone, according to Bond.
Two future projects are in the works: One involves constructing a path in the linear park along Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, where the greenway is currently routed along the sidewalk. Another will create an underpass beneath Oak/Oconee Street when the Georgia Department of Transportation finishes bridge work there. Bond also hopes to one day rebuild Cook’s Trail, destroyed by storms, running from the nature center to Sandy Creek Park.
Eventually, plans call for the greenway to run along the North Oconee from county line to county line, but there is currently no funding for further expansion. Nor is there funding for a future Middle Oconee Greenway. The Oconee Rivers Greenway Commission submitted a proposal to build a path connecting Ben Burton Park with a future nature park at Beech Haven off Atlanta Highway. However, it was not recommended by the TSPLOST 2026 advisory committee, and at over $29 million, it’s likely a longshot to be added to the project list by the mayor and commission. A $17 million proposal from Friends of the Greenway (Full disclosure: The author’s wife is a member of the group) to build a pedestrian bridge connecting Firefly Trail to the greenway via the Oconee Street park-and-ride lot, thus avoiding crossing a five-lane highway, also did not make it past the first round of vetting.
“Their projects did not get much traction,” Bond said. “I don’t think we’re going to see any greenway projects on the next TSPLOST as it currently exists.”
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