Cleveland Park Gets Its Playground Back as It Starts a Second Century

"The park did not begin on one tidy date." That line comes from the history page Friends of Cleveland Park wrote for the park's centennial. This fall the line holds again. The playground below the Greenville Zoo, the Swamp Rabbit Trail stretch beside it, the new tree canopy and the Green Line bridge over Verdae Boulevard are all coming back or being finished. Each one has its own schedule.

Cleveland Park has always been built in pieces, and its second century is starting the same way. Seeing the park that way helps with planning a Saturday this fall. It also explains why one opening date doesn't tell the whole story.

A Park With More Than One Beginning

The Friends group traces two starting points. One is a Cleveland-family parcel. A city historic-resources survey says the land was deeded to Greenville in 1909, following the wishes of W. C. Cleveland. Newspaper accounts from May 1908 described the gift and the Civic League's plans to add plantings and benches.

The second start came in 1925. That year J. A. McPherson, chairman of the Park and Tree Commission, described a sweeping boulevard, connecting roads and a planting program. A published proposal showed ball fields, tennis courts and a proposed zoological garden, and it expected the park to open in early 1926. The Friends group says these overlapping records are why different accounts give different dates and acreage figures.

The Friends group describes its current work as marking the park's first century as it enters its second. The 2026 projects follow the 1925 plan closely. There are new plantings, a new play area tied to the zoo, and a trail that runs through the park the way the 1925 boulevard was meant to.

What Returns Below the Zoo

The City of Greenville broke ground on the $3 million Cleveland Park Zoo Playground Revitalization Project on June 3. The work closed the playgrounds and shelters below the zoo and a portion of the Prisma Health Swamp Rabbit Trail. Minnesota-based Landscape Structures worked with the city on the redesign. It splits play by age and adds features from the zoo next door:

• Ages 2 to 5: a separate play area with equipment sized for them
• Ages 5 to 12: a 27-foot accessible tower with slides, including what the city calls one of the largest slides in Greenville
• Tweens: a ninja-style obstacle course
• Everyone: 10 swings with built-in shade, a zoo-inspired "Seek and Find" adventure, animal educational panels, and two new picnic shelters, one on each side of the playgrounds
• Trail users: a realigned and widened Swamp Rabbit Trail next to the playgrounds, with bike parking and water fountains at the shelter entrances

The grading and landscaping are meant to reduce flooding. This project adds to recent work nearby. The city opened its first inclusive playground in Cleveland Park in September 2025 and finished a $1.66 million renovation of the park's tennis, pickleball and basketball courts.

The rest of the park stayed open during construction. In late August, the Greenville News confirmed that the zoo, Brooks' Playground, the other shelters and the sports courts were all still available.

Every Piece Has Its Own Date

The various announcements give dates that don't fully match. Read together, they show which pieces are confirmed and which are only expected.

The Oct. 15 date comes from the Friends group's event page. That page says the time and other details have not been confirmed yet. The latest city timeline in news coverage, reported Aug. 24, says "through October," so Oct. 15 is the date to plan around, and it could still change. The Friends listing covers the playground celebration only. It does not give a reopening date for the trail section. The city said a detour would be available around the closed trail stretch and released a Swamp Rabbit Trail detour map when it announced the closure in June.

Why the Work Ran Through Summer

A summer closure of the city's oldest and largest public park was not ideal timing, and Councilmember Wil Brasington said as much in June. He said the schedule was set by time-sensitive grant funding the city had to act on. That grant was $500,000 from the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund. Councilmember Dorothy Dowe said the grant's rules required the city to start the renovation when it did. Hospitality tax money, neighborhood infrastructure bond funds and trail funding paid for the rest.

So the playground followed the grant's calendar, not the park's anniversary. The two happen to line up this year, which puts a city construction project and a volunteer centennial campaign on the same October date.

A Planting Program, One Hundred Years Later

The 1925 plan called for an organized planting program. The Friends group's centennial campaign, 100 Trees for 100 Years, sets the same kind of goal, with 100 new trees for the park. The idea came from Greenville native Jessica Wyche, who proposed marking the park's first century by planting for its second.

Hurricane Helene made the campaign more urgent. It took more than 40 trees from the park's canopy. The Friends group says the campaign is about more than replacing those losses.

The campaign is still at the planning stage. The Friends group has not published a planting date or a verified count of trees planted. Its tree illustration is marked as illustrative, not a site plan, and the page notes that "Unknown is not zero." There are three ways to take part. You can give through the campaign's Donorbox form, register interest in planting so you hear when volunteer days are announced, or start a partnership inquiry on behalf of a business or community group. Donations are not assigned to specific trees. The Friends group plans to share the campaign at the playground opening on Oct. 15.

The Trail Beyond the Park

Cleveland Park is also where the Green Line begins. That section of the Swamp Rabbit Trail opened in 2023 and runs from the park to the Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research. When it opened there was no money for a bridge over Verdae Boulevard, so the city put in a signalized crossing. The Greenville News reported that about 15,000 vehicles and 1,000 pedestrians use the Green Line extension each day.

The 1,180-foot pedestrian bridge replaces that crossing. Contractors set the span overnight on July 6. The bridge is funded with $4.5 million from the city's capital improvement program and $2.9 million from the state. "By eliminating the at-grade crossing, we are creating a safer experience for trail users while also improving traffic flow for drivers," said assistant city engineer Nick De Palma.

In July, paving and safety features still had to be installed before the bridge could open, and the city gave only a "fall" target. Once it opens, Greenville County plans to pave the extension to Millennium Boulevard, with that work expected to finish within 60 days. A further extension from Millennium Boulevard to Innovation Drive is in planning.

The trail on the other side of downtown shows how this kind of work usually finishes. The Willard Street Bridge on the west side of Unity Park was built in 1950 to connect the West Greenville and Southernside neighborhoods. It was damaged by Hurricane Helene, closed in March and reopened Aug. 7. The new bridge has a nine-foot multi-use path and was redesigned with Greenville-based Michael Baker International. That opening was announced the day it happened, and the Verdae bridge and the trail section by the playground may well open the same way.

October and December on Cleveland Park Drive

The zoo's fall and winter events fall on either side of the playground opening. Prisma Health Boo in the Zoo returns for its 40th year at 150 Cleveland Park Drive, with a schedule split three ways:

1. Evenings, Oct. 14–18 and Oct. 21–30: admission from 3 to 8 p.m. The last timed entry is 7:30 p.m., and the event closes at 9 p.m.
2. Halloween afternoon, Oct. 31: a new session from 1 to 4 p.m., with last entry at 3:59 p.m.
3. Tickets: $12 for zoo members and $15 for nonmembers, the same for adults and for children ages 2 to 12. Each guest who wants to trick-or-treat also needs a $3 upgrade. Children under 2 get in free but need the upgrade to receive candy. Bring your own bags, and every child must be with an adult.

Boo in the Zoo opens Oct. 14, the day before the playground's listed grand opening, so the area below the zoo could be busy both days. In December, Holidays at the Zoo runs from 4 to 8 p.m. on Dec. 12–14, Dec. 18–23 and Dec. 26–31. It is closed Dec. 24 and 25.

If you'd like to talk about the streets and neighborhoods around Cleveland Park, or about how projects like the Green Line bridge change a part of town once they're finished, Tom Marchant would be glad to hear from you. Let's connect.