A greenway trail winding through Huntersville has neighbors cheering, but a parking lot proposed alongside it has them lining up in protest. The 60-space lot planned for Ferrelltown Parkway would sit next to homes and a small farm, and residents say that's simply too many cars for a quiet residential stretch.
Mecklenburg County announced plans to build the South Prong Clarke Creek Greenway, a trail extending from Concord to Huntersville, according to WSOC-TV. The project is still in its planning phases, and the proposed trailhead lot on Ferrelltown Parkway would sit adjacent to homes and a small farm. Neighbors have proposed a smaller lot or a different location altogether, and they've asked officials to pause the parking-lot portion of the project while those alternatives get a fair look.
Doug Kennerly, who lives nearby, says he has no problem with the greenway itself but objects to the scale of the parking proposal. Sixty parking spaces, he said, are simply too many for the site. Suzanne Lambert, another neighbor, said the proposed 60-space lot strikes residents as excessive for what amounts to a trail access point tucked against their backyards.
A Petition and a Push for Smaller, Scattered Parking
Nearby residents have created an online petition opposing the size of the proposed lot, according to a Change.org petition posted by Asbury Park residents in August. The petition argues the 60-space lot would be larger than any existing greenway trailhead in Huntersville and calls instead for smaller, decentralized parking areas or a commercial site rather than one large lot dropped next to single-family homes. Asbury Park is a residential subdivision built up starting around 2021, and it sits directly adjacent to the proposed parking site.
Shelle Young, another neighbor pressing for change, said the lot could bring additional traffic, foot traffic, noise, and activity into the neighborhood. She has asked that community ideas be discussed directly with the appropriate officials rather than simply absorbed into the county's existing plans. Broader safety and privacy concerns have also been raised by neighbors who worry about strangers parking steps from their front doors.
Why the County Picked This Spot
According to officials, the Ferrelltown Parkway site was selected because it can be accessed directly off Huntersville-Concord Road, a choice intended to avoid funneling greenway traffic through adjacent neighborhood streets. Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation typically provides 40 to 60 spaces at its greenway trailheads, and the exact number planned for this site remains undetermined as design work continues.
Officially, the South Prong Clarke Creek Greenway spans roughly 1.25 to 2 miles between Huntersville-Concord Highway and the Ferrelltown Parkway and Monocacy Boulevard area, according to project specifications posted on PublicInput. The alignment threads through the Vermillion, Vermillion Front, Vermillion Village and Mirabella subdivisions, and county planners are studying two additional route alternatives beyond Ferrelltown Parkway. The segment is funded for design under Mecklenburg County's Fiscal Year 2026–2030 Capital Improvement Plan, backed by a formal intergovernmental partnership between the county and the Town of Huntersville — though that funding covers design work only, not ongoing maintenance once the trail is built.
Stream Restoration and a Regional Trail Network
The greenway isn't just about foot traffic. It's paired with a joint stream restoration project run by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Storm Water Services, aimed at stabilizing eroding creek banks and curbing sediment pollution, which officials identify as the leading pollutant in county waterways. Hoodline reported on a similar pairing of greenway and stream-restoration work in a $6.3 million fix for Charlotte's Mallard Creek greenway earlier this year.
The Huntersville segment also connects to something much larger: The Seam Trail, a planned network of more than 60 miles of multi-use greenway intended to link eight downtown municipalities across Mecklenburg and Iredell counties, according to project documents published by The Seam Trail team in August 2024. Traffic safety is part of the design conversation too — engineering firm DRMP announced in February that it's designing a user-activated pedestrian hybrid beacon, known as a HAWK signal, at Huntersville-Concord Highway and Hill Street, working alongside Alta Planning + Design, to let greenway users cross the busy arterial safely.
The dispute in Huntersville arrives amid a broader greenway boom across Mecklenburg County. As of spring 2025, the county had completed 74 miles of greenway with another 20 miles under construction, a build-out driven by community surveys that consistently rank trails as the county's most-requested public amenity. Next door in Cabarrus County, Concord set a target in its June 2025 budget to grow its own greenway network to 30 miles by 2030, including segments along the same Clarke Creek watershed that crosses the county line.
Even as the parking fight plays out, the trail itself has become a selling point. Real estate listings for homes in Asbury Park and Vermillion have highlighted proximity to the planned South Prong Clarke Creek Greenway as a walking-distance amenity to downtown Huntersville, according to listings from Joan Everett Real Estate.
What Happens Next
Neighbors will get a formal chance to weigh in at a community engagement meeting scheduled for Tuesday, September 9, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the David B. Waymer Recreation and Senior Center on Holbrooks Road in Huntersville. The session is designed to gather feedback on both the greenway design and the stream restoration plans simultaneously, and the county's Park and Recreation park planning division director is expected to be available for interviews there. Project staff say they are actively seeking input from neighbors and the wider community before finalizing plans, and residents say they simply want a real say in what gets built next to their homes.
