More than three years after the initial groundbreaking, Danville’s riverfront park opens Friday as the latest in a string of developments along the Dan River. A community party will celebrate the opening of the park at 5:30 p.m. with a DJ, live music, food trucks and family-friendly activities.
With a playground, outdoor seating, a splash pad, green space for concerts and activities, a kayak launch, ping-pong tables and a pier overlooking the river, the park is the “premiere downtown public space,” said Bill Sgrinia, the city’s parks and recreation director.
On 4 acres of previously vacant land along the Dan River, the public park is meant to enhance quality of life for Danville residents, increase tourism and contribute to the continued revitalization of the River District, Sgrinia said.
“This is for our local community,” he said. “We certainly want people to come visit, but this is for our citizens to come and enjoy.”
The $14 million park is adjacent to Dan River Falls, a former textile mill building called the White Mill that has been redeveloped into apartments, office and commercial space. Also underway is a project to create a whitewater channel out of the former Danville Canal.
These three projects represent an effort by the city to revitalize its riverfront and provide recreational and residential opportunities along the Dan River, which was historically used only for commercial and industrial purposes.
The premiere downtown public space
All great cities have great parks, Sgrinia said.
The parks and rec department and other city officials researched or visited riverfront parks in Chattanooga, Tennessee; Louisville, Kentucky; and Raleigh, North Carolina.
“All those parks are really city drivers,” Sgrinia said.
As part of the downtown revitalization effort, limited parking at the park itself is intentional, Sgrinia said. By visiting riverfront parks in other states, “one of the lessons we learned was, don’t eat up your park with parking,” he said.
There’s a paved turnaround where a handful of cars can park, but mostly, people visiting the riverfront park will park on adjacent blocks of the River District.
“You want people to walk through your downtown, visit the shops, walk by a restaurant or ice cream shop,” Sgrinia said.
All city parks are open from dawn until dusk, though the riverfront park may have a later closing time seasonally, he said.
“We expect people to be in here until maybe 10 o’clock at night or so, because it is lit up,” Sgrinia said. “You can go have dinner downtown and come over here.”
Sgrinia said the standout feature of the park is a 200-foot pedestrian pier that stretches out into the Dan River. Plans for the pier resulted in the removal of a century-old low-head dam in the river in 2024.
The view from the overlook is “unlike any other view in the city,” Sgrinia said. “I think we’re going to see a lot of prom and graduation photos out here.”
The park also features a playground with a 14-foot slide inside a large otter sculpture, a climbing net, a climbing wall, an enclosed slide and seesaws. There’s also a splash pad, riverfront seating, additional seating near ping-pong tables and a place to put kayaks into the river.
A circular green space can be used for a variety of activities, and the parks and recreation department will encourage events there, Taylor Roberts, special events program coordinator, said in a statement.
“We’re excited to bring consistent, engaging programming to the space, from Toddler Tuesdays for our youngest visitors to outdoor fitness classes that get people moving along the river,” Roberts wrote. “You’ll also see more park parties and live music.”
The park also connects to the Riverwalk, over 10 miles of paved walking trails along the Dan River.
From groundbreaking to grand opening
Conversations about a riverfront park started about a decade ago, Sgrinia said. Between 2016 and the March 2023 groundbreaking, funding was secured and plans were developed for the project.
The park was initially scheduled to open by the end of 2024, but construction took longer than anticipated because of delays with the groundwork at such an old site, Sgrinia said.
Construction crews found old building foundations and the remnants of a canal and had to either remove those remains or make sure they were safe to build on top of, Sgrinia said.
Despite the delays, the $14 million project cost remained essentially the same, though there have been additional project management and materials costs, he said.
That funding comes from a variety of sources, including fundraising campaigns, donations and a grant from the Danville Regional Foundation.
[Disclosure: The Danville Regional Foundation is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions. See our policy.]
Though the park is now finished, it will likely evolve further as the parks and recreation department makes adjustments based on feedback from the community, Sgrinia said.
“It’s a beautiful space, but we have to have things here for people to do,” he said. “As we see how people use the spaces, we’ll figure out what things we need to rearrange.”
For example, a large circular green space in the park near the overlook could be used for activities like concerts and yoga classes. Sgrinia said he anticipates people bringing chairs and sitting in the shade of the overlook in the summer.
“So do we come back with a hard surface under there, do we think about synthetic turf?” he said.
Parks and rec will gather community feedback through a survey, Samuel Howarth, the department’s facilities and services planner, said in a statement.
“The opening isn’t the finish line for us,” he said. “It’s just the beginning. We’re always paying attention to feedback and looking for ways to make our parks and facilities even better.”
Signs around the park will direct people to the survey, according to Howarth.
“We’ll see a different park in five years,” Sgrinia said.
