Sometime this fall, construction fencing will go up around the 7.4 acres of grass, pavement, and open lawn at 4400 Sharon Road that most people just call Symphony Park. It sits beside SouthPark Mall, hosts the free SouthPark After 5 concert series each spring, gives the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra a home for its Summer Pops series, and carries a piece of the Loop, the roughly three mile walking and running trail that threads through the district. SouthPark After 5 alone drew more than 50,000 people across its first two seasons, according to figures SouthPark Community Partners shared with Charlotte City Council. Once the fencing goes up, the park stays closed for about a year while it's rebuilt into something considerably bigger than what's there now.
That part of the story has already been reported. What hasn't been connected is this: two years before anyone needed a way around a closed park, SouthPark built one. The free shuttle that will get you from your building to lunch during the closure didn't come from a construction contingency plan. It came from the same 2019 vision document that eventually produced the park redesign, and it's been quietly running since November 2024.
What Closes, and For How Long
The renovation, still commonly called Symphony Park for now, will eventually carry the name TowneBank Symphony Park after the bank committed $1.5 million for naming rights in June 2025. The project is funded through a mix of public and private money: the City of Charlotte is putting in $8 million, Simon Property Group (which owns both SouthPark Mall and the park itself) is contributing another $8 million earmarked specifically for two new anchor restaurants, and SouthPark Community Partners is running a separate capital campaign that had raised $3.1 million toward a $5 million private fundraising goal as of July 2026.
For the year the park is closed, SouthPark After 5 and the Symphony's Summer Pops series lose their usual venue. Neither series has an announced alternate location as of this writing. The closure also removes public access to the stretch of Loop trail that currently runs through the park property, cutting one more connected segment out of a trail system that's still being pieced together block by block across the district.
This Isn't the Park's First Attempt
The timeline has a bit of history behind it. A previous renovation plan for the same park was floated back in 2019 and stalled before it went anywhere. The current version was reintroduced to Charlotte City Council in April 2025 with a $21 million budget and a construction start planned for summer 2026. By July 2026, that start date had already slipped to fall, following what SouthPark Community Partners described as additional soil testing and permitting delays. Permits for the project weren't filed until June 2026. The total cost, once fixed at $21 million, is now expected to run higher, with a final number still undetermined as construction gets underway.
The project has real momentum, with the city, Simon Property Group, and private donors all committed. Since the start date has already moved once, the one year closure is best treated as a planning target, and it makes sense to check for updates from SouthPark Community Partners as the fall unfolds.
The Loop Gets Longer By Getting Shorter First
The renovation adds roughly 500 feet of new boardwalk to the Loop, connecting the park to the Carnegie Boulevard and Barclay Downs Drive areas once it reopens. But that addition doesn't happen until the work is finished, which means the trail actually gets shorter and more fragmented for the next year before it gets longer.
This is happening at the same time the City of Charlotte is separately building an unrelated 0.2 mile section of the Loop near Cameron Valley Parkway and Carnegie Boulevard, a $3.625 million project aimed at connecting existing fragments into longer continuous stretches rather than leaving them as disconnected pieces scattered across the district. If you use the Loop regularly, both projects are worth tracking, because the trail you're used to walking or running won't look the same for a while even as the long term map improves.
The Detour Has a Two Year Head Start
SouthPark doesn't have light rail, a streetcar line, or a direct interstate connection running through its commercial core, which is part of why SouthPark Community Partners launched the SouthPark Skipper in November 2024. It's a free, on demand electric shuttle service, run by a company called Freebee that operates similar programs in more than 40 East Coast markets, and it was described at launch as the state's first privately sponsored microtransit service. The fleet runs Tesla Model X vehicles with the distinctive butterfly doors, operating from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily anywhere inside the roughly one square mile SouthPark municipal service district.
The pilot cost about $465,000 for its first year, paid entirely by SouthPark Community Partners rather than the city's general fund. Riders download the Freebee app, request a pickup, and the shuttle comes to them. According to reporting on the service's first year of operation, monthly ridership averaged between 4,000 and 5,000 rides, a number high enough that organizers were already discussing whether the model could work in other congested parts of Charlotte.
The shuttle wasn't designed with Symphony Park's closure in mind. It came out of the same SouthPark Forward 2035 Vision Plan that eventually produced the park redesign, built around a goal SouthPark Community Partners calls a "park once" environment, where people leave their car in one spot and use other options to move around for the rest of the day. The park closure is simply the first moment most residents will have an actual reason to use it.
What Changes on Your Actual Walk
For anyone whose daily or weekly routine runs through this stretch of SouthPark, here's what shifts once the fencing goes up:
- The Loop segment through Symphony Park closes for the duration of construction, so a route that used to be continuous will require a detour around the site.
- SouthPark After 5 and Summer Pops lose their usual home for at least one full concert season, with no publicly announced substitute venue yet.
- The Skipper remains available to bridge the gap for anything inside the municipal service district, whether that's getting from a parking garage at The Apex to lunch at Phillips Place or connecting to whatever section of the Loop is still open.
- Expect the completion date to be treated as a moving target rather than a fixed one, given the project's history of delay.
What's Supposed to Be There When It Reopens
The plans call for a considerably different park than the one closing this fall. Design firms LandDesign and Neighboring Concepts have been shaping a layout that includes two new pedestrian bridges, a rebuilt bandshell capable of supporting light and projection art, permanent restrooms, micro-retail stalls, terraced and flat lawn space for events of different sizes, and an interactive area for children. Rodgers Builders was selected last fall as construction manager for the project.
The scale of the ambition is in the programming math. SouthPark Community Partners president and CEO Adam Rhew has said the redesigned park is expected to move from roughly 80 events a year to around 250, ranging from small sunrise yoga sessions to gatherings of several thousand people. Whether that timeline holds exactly as planned is the part worth watching, given how this same project has already moved once.
If you're trying to figure out what a year of construction on Sharon Road actually means for how you get around, or you're weighing a move into a part of SouthPark close enough to feel it, Liz Koelling lives and works in this neighborhood and is glad to talk through what she's seeing on the ground. Let's Connect.
