If you've walked or biked toward the zoo entrance any time since early June, you've hit the orange fencing. Two playgrounds gone, a chunk of the Swamp Rabbit Trail rerouted, and the kind of construction quiet that makes a familiar park feel unfamiliar. It's easy to round that up to "Cleveland Park is closed for the summer" and just avoid the place until the sawdust settles.
That read is wrong, and it's worth correcting before fall makes it moot anyway. The playground near the zoo and two of the park's picnic shelters have been closed since work began on June 3, 2026, but that's a fraction of what Cleveland Park actually offers, and most of it never stopped running. Understanding what was really affected, and what's coming when the fencing comes down, changes how you use the park between now and October.
What actually closed, and what didn't
The construction zone is specific: the playground areas immediately next to the Greenville Zoo entrance, plus the large group shelters known as Shelters 1 and 2, and a section of the Swamp Rabbit Trail that runs through that stretch. That's it.
Everything else has been open the entire time. Brooks' Playground, the city's first fully inclusive playground, opened in the park in September 2025 and has stayed open through the whole project. The Rock Quarry Garden, built into the walls of a pre-Civil War granite quarry, is untouched. So is the Fernwood Nature Trail, a mile-long loop through hardwood forest on the park's quieter end. The tennis, pickleball, and basketball courts, which the city finished renovating in a separate $1.66 million project not long before this one started, are open and in regular use.
So if your Cleveland Park routine has been dog walks on the Fernwood loop or an evening at the courts, nothing has changed for you all summer. If your routine centers on the playground by the zoo, you've been displaced to Brooks' Playground, which was built to handle exactly that kind of overflow.
What's actually being built, and why it's not a small fix
The project carries a $3 million price tag, which is a serious number for a playground rebuild, and the scope explains why. The new play area splits into distinct zones for ages 2 to 5 and 5 to 12, plus a dedicated tween space built around a ninja-style obstacle course. The centerpiece is a 27-foot accessible tower, described by local reporting as the first of its kind in South Carolina, with netting that lets kids of different mobility levels climb, crawl, or rest their way to the top rather than requiring a single standard route up.
Around that, the design adds ten swings with built-in shade, a "Seek and Find" trail woven through the play area featuring 13 zoo animals and educational panels on ten species, and two new picnic shelters on concrete pads to replace the ones that came down. The adjacent Swamp Rabbit Trail section is being widened and gets new bike parking and water fountains, along with regrading meant to fix the standing-water problem that's dogged that stretch of trail for years.
City Councilmember Wil Brasington framed the project as part of a broader pattern rather than a one-off fix. As he put it, the city has "wonderful parks positioned throughout the city," and the intent is for every investment in one park to pull the others up to the same standard.
This is the third investment in Cleveland Park in about a year
Here's the part that's easy to miss if you only clocked the fencing this summer: this playground project isn't an isolated event. It's the third distinct capital investment in Cleveland Park within roughly twelve months.
Brooks' Playground opened in September 2025. The $1.66 million court renovation, covering tennis, pickleball, and basketball, wrapped sometime after that. And now the playground and trail project is set to finish by October 1, 2026. Three separate contracts, three separate ribbon-cuttings, all landing in the same park inside a single year.
That pattern matters more than any single project does. A city investing once in a park is responding to a complaint or chasing a grant. A city investing three times in the same park inside a year is treating that park as a priority, not a project. For a neighborhood like Parkins Mill, a few minutes from Cleveland Park's gates, that's a more useful thing to know than the specs on any one playground tower.
What to expect walking in over the next few weeks
The city's own timeline puts completion at October 1, 2026. As of this writing, that date hasn't passed, so the fencing is still up around the zoo-adjacent playground and the affected trail segment. Construction timelines shift, and a hard finish date in a public works project is a target more than a guarantee, so it's worth checking the trail before you plan a route through that specific stretch.
What you don't need to wait on: the courts, Brooks' Playground, the Rock Quarry Garden, and the Fernwood Nature Trail are all open right now and have been throughout the project. If you've been steering clear of the whole park because of one fenced-off corner, you've been missing out on the three-quarters of it that never closed.
A fall Saturday that doesn't depend on the playground reopening
If you want a version of the Cleveland Park loop that works exactly as well in September as it will in November, here's one that doesn't touch the construction zone at all:
- Start with coffee at Sole Espresso Bar before the park gets crowded.
- Walk or bike the Fernwood Nature Trail loop while the morning is still cool.
- Cut through the Rock Quarry Garden on your way toward the courts, since the quarry's rock ledges and small waterfall make a good excuse to slow down.
- Grab lunch at The Cheese Wheel or Viva Tacos & Birria, both a short drive from the park entrance.
- If you've got kids in tow, finish at Brooks' Playground rather than fighting the fencing near the zoo.
None of this requires the new tower or the ninja course to be finished. It's just a route through the parts of the park that have been fully operational the entire time, built around a couple of the everyday spots Parkins Mill already treats as regulars.
The park is getting bigger, not just newer
The easy story about Cleveland Park this year is "closed for renovations, reopening in the fall." The more useful one is that the city has spent three separate budgets on this park in about twelve months, most of the park never stopped operating during any of it, and by October it will have a playground tower unlike anything else in the state alongside courts and an inclusive playground that already opened. That's not a park pausing. That's a park getting steadily better while staying open the whole time.
Worth a walk through this fall, fencing or not.
If you're curious about more of what makes Parkins Mill work day to day, from its tree-lined streets to its short drive into Cleveland Park, take a look at our Parkins Mill neighborhood guide. And if you ever want to talk through what's happening in the local market alongside what's happening in the neighborhood itself, Alison Pitts is always glad to connect.
