The bicycle and pedestrian path connecting Nike Park to the town of Smithfield is set to reopen next week, according to the developer of the Mallory Pointe subdivision.

The date comes more than three months after the originally expected reopening date.

An Isle of Wight County notice at the park states C.A. Barr Construction Co. was to begin demolishing segments of the trail on Nov. 21 to allow the construction of a water line to serve the 812-home Mallory Pointe development off Battery Park Road.

The notice, which remains on display, listed an expected completion date of Dec. 20. But some areas where the 10-foot-wide asphalt path was torn up still have gravel in place of pavement.

“The contractor has just recently finished making all their required connections,” Town Manager Michael Stallings said. “It is our understanding that the bike trail should be repaved and opened back up soon.”

Stallings was unresponsive when asked by the Times whether the developer would face any town-imposed penalty for the delay.

“The bike path is scheduled to be repaired early next week,” John Napolitano, senior vice president of Mallory Pointe’s Virginia Beach-based developer, Napolitano Homes, told The Smithfield Times. “The reason for the delay is some of the work took longer than anticipated. Some of the old infrastructure that has been in the ground for years was not necessarily where it was anticipated to be. Due to that we have been working with the town to make the adjustments needed to ensure the proper installation.”

Assistant County Administrator Don Robertson said the town is in charge of the closure operations and procedures. The county, Robertson said, is only providing public outreach assistance and technical inspection assistance to ensure it’s restored correctly per the original specifications.

Isle of Wight’s $8.6 million, 3-mile portion of the Carrollton to Smithfield park-to-park trail, intended to eventually connect Nike Park with Windsor Castle Park in downtown Smithfield, was completed in 2021. 

Smithfield’s Planning Commission approved plans in 2023 showing the pipeline beginning where the 135-home first phase of Mallory Pointe connects to Battery Park Road, and crossing the street to Stratford Lane, which serves as the access road for the adjacent, existing Wellington Estates development.

Timmons Group engineer Ken Turner, who’s been working with Napolitano Homes, said in 2023 that the use of right-of-way alongside Wellington Estates beneath the bike path came at the town’s request. His original plans had called for the pipe to run down the middle of Battery Park Road, but the town – which will eventually own and maintain the infrastructure – wanted it in the right-of-way for easier access.

Napolitano Homes is funding 100% of the cost of the pipeline.

The pipe will cross back over to Mallory Pointe’s side of Battery Park Road just past Greenbrier Lane and connect to an existing water tower.

The new 16-inch pipe will eventually replace an 8-inch main serving the area. Once the 16-inch pipe comes online, the 8-inch main will be cut off and abandoned in place.

Mallory Pointe broke ground in 2023, two years after a contentious 5-2 Town Council vote on Napolitano’s rezoning request. Houses are already for sale. Napolitano said model home construction is on track to start later this month or in early May.

The town’s 1-mile share of the park-to-park trail that would extend it down South Church Street and across the Cypress Creek Bridge to Windsor Castle Park remains stalled due to escalating costs. The town submitted a $23 million proposal to the Virginia Department of Transportation in 2023 that bundled the trail with widening and repaving South Church Street, but the project didn’t score highly enough under VDOT’s Smart Scale cost-to-benefit formula to be allocated state funding. An engineer told town officials in 2022 that the two-lane stretch of South Church Street, as currently configured, is too flat to accommodate curb-and-gutter drainage infrastructure for the proposed path.