Walk the Preston Village Greenway far enough and you eventually hit Louis Stephens Road, cross it, and find yourself feeding into something much bigger: the Black Creek Greenway, the trunk line that has quietly connected this side of Cary to Lake Crabtree for a quarter century. For most of that quarter century, though, the connection was more theoretical than reliable. The trail through this stretch was built over 25 years ago to a narrower, older standard, and it ran low enough through the flood plain that heavy rain could put sections of it underwater or under construction fencing for months at a time.
That changed this spring. In May 2026, the Town of Cary confirmed that Phase 2 of the Black Creek Greenway renovation was complete, reopening the segment between Livingstone Drive and Weston Parkway with a redesigned trail and a new bridge that fundamentally changes how exposed this crossing is to the next big storm. If you live in Preston and use the greenway to get to Bond Park, Lake Crabtree, or just to walk the dog somewhere with tree cover, this is the update that actually affects your Tuesday evening.
What the town actually changed
The old bridge sat close to the water. The new one does not. At 285 feet long, it now spans Black Creek near Cary Parkway at a height of 50 feet above the creek bed, making it the tallest pedestrian bridge in Cary. The town's design brief leaned into the setting rather than fighting it, with panels cut to echo the surrounding tree canopy so the structure reads more like a piece of the woods than a piece of infrastructure dropped into it.
The bridge features large leaf-patterned panels that interact with natural light, creating a dynamic experience for pedestrians and cyclists.
That height is not a design flourish. Cary officials were direct about the reason for it, saying the realignment and elevation work was done specifically to reduce the trail's exposure to flooding, a problem that had shut this section down repeatedly in past years. The rebuilt trail was also widened to Cary's current 12-foot greenway standard and re-routed to soften some of the sharper curves that had made the older path awkward for cyclists and stroller traffic alike.
| Before Phase 2 | After Phase 2 (as of May 2026) | |
|---|---|---|
| Bridge height over Black Creek | Low-clearance, flood-prone | 50 feet, tallest bridge in Cary |
| Trail width | Built to older, narrower standard | Widened to 12-foot current standard |
| Route | Sharper curves, sections in flood plain | Realigned, relocated away from flood-prone ground |
| Status | Closed intermittently after storms | Open, Livingstone Drive to Weston Parkway |
None of this shows up if you glance at a map. It shows up the next time it rains hard on a Thursday and the trail is still walkable on Friday instead of taped off.
What's still closed, and for how long
Not the whole system is done. Phase 3 covers the stretch from Weston Parkway up to the Old Reedy Creek Trailhead, hugging the edge of Lake Crabtree, and it remains under construction. As of May 2026, AllTrails users were still flagging that section as closed on the east side of the lake, and the town's own timeline points to a winter completion. If your usual loop runs all the way up to the lake, expect a detour sign somewhere past Weston Parkway for a while longer. The good news for Preston residents is that the piece closest to home, the Livingstone-to-Weston stretch that most local trips actually use, is the piece that's already finished.
Zoom out and the payoff is a genuinely long trail. Once fully reconnected, Black Creek Greenway runs 7.1 continuous miles from Lake Crabtree in the north down to the greenway hub at Bond Park, where it links into White Oak Greenway and, eventually, a corridor that's part of the East Coast Greenway, the trail network that's meant to eventually stretch from Maine to Florida. Preston's own connection into that system runs through the Preston Village Greenway, which the town notes ties into Louis Stephens Road, with plans to keep building out the street-side connections that link the neighborhood's pockets to nearby parks and schools. Preston's neighborhood association also points to direct greenway access off Norwell Boulevard reaching toward Lake Crabtree and the rest of Cary's recreational network, which is the more direct entry point for most of the neighborhood.
Everything else within reach of the trail
A finished greenway is only half the reason to get outside this month. The other half is what's actually open along the way.
Preston residents heading toward Davis Drive and High House Road will find Stone Creek Village doing what it's always done well: Lugano Ristorante and Bella Monica remain the anchor dinner spots for the neighborhood, and the shopping center at Cary Parkway and High House Road still covers the errands end of things with a Harris Teeter and a CVS a short drive or ride from most of Preston's subdivisions.
Further out, a bigger shift has been happening at Fenton, the 92-acre mixed-use district across from the old Cary Towne Center site. Fenton bills itself as North Carolina's first vertically integrated mixed-use district, and the tenant list has kept moving. Sweet Paris, a Houston-based creperie and cafe making its first appearance in the North Carolina market, opened on Fenton Square this spring as part of a wider retail push that also brought in YogaSix. If you were at Fenton last year and haven't been back, the mix has changed enough to be worth a second look, especially if your evening plans usually default to the same two or three spots.
None of this requires driving across town. It's the version of "what's new nearby" that a Preston resident can actually use this weekend, not a list of openings clustered somewhere across the county.
Why this is worth tracking at all
Greenway construction updates rarely feel urgent when you're in the middle of them. Detour signs go up, everyone grumbles, and eventually the trail reopens and life moves on. But the Black Creek project is one of the more meaningful upgrades Cary has made to its trail system in years, not because it added mileage but because it made an existing, heavily used stretch dependable in a way it hadn't been. For a neighborhood like Preston, where the greenway is the quiet infrastructure behind a lot of daily walks, runs, and bike commutes to nearby parks, a bridge built to actually clear the flood line is the kind of change that pays off every time it rains.
If you're weighing whether Preston still fits the way you want to live, day to day access like this is usually a better gauge than a listing photo ever could be. Triangle Premier Properties has spent years watching how neighborhoods like Preston actually function for the people living in them, not just how they show on a map. If you're curious what your Preston home is worth given how the area keeps evolving, Let's Connect — Request a Free Home Valuation.
