If you moved into Whittington any time in the last eighteen months, the Biscuit Run Park you first walked is not the park you will walk in October. The trailhead off Route 20 that opened in December 2024 was Phase 1A, a starting posture. Between February and November of 2026, the county is layering on a second entrance, three boardwalks, a set of downhill bike features designed by architecture students, and two regulation athletic fields. The map most residents are still carrying in their heads is already out of date.
That matters more for Whittington than for almost any other neighborhood inside the development area, because the second entrance is on your side of the park.
What is under construction right now
The county's own project page lists four separate builds moving in parallel this year, each with its own contractor calendar. Rather than treat them as one blur, it helps to see them side by side.
| Project | Started | Target completion | What it changes for a resident |
|---|---|---|---|
| Boardwalks and multi-use trail extension | 2025 | 2026 | Wet-season access to sections that were previously mud |
| Hickory Street entrance (northern) | February 2026 | TBD | A second vehicular and bike/ped access point |
| Biscuits + Gravity portals and kiosk | Summer 2026 install | Summer 2026 | Finished entry to the downhill bike area |
| Two irrigated athletic fields off Route 20 | February 2026 | Fall 2026 | Regulation fields, new parking, additional restrooms |
None of this is speculative. Construction of three boardwalks and an extension to the multi-use trail network began in 2025 and is expected to be complete in 2026. Construction of a second public entrance from Hickory Street in the northern portion of the park began in February 2026. Construction is underway for two irrigated natural grass athletic fields near Route 20, including an extension to the park access road, new parking lots, new restrooms, and two regulation-size fields, with substantial completion tentatively scheduled for Fall 2026.
Reading that timeline as a homeowner, the useful takeaway is that the park's amenity footprint roughly doubles between the day you read this and Thanksgiving.
The Hickory Street entrance, and why it changes the walking calculus
Today, the only public way in is the eastern trailhead at 2020 Scottsville Road. This eastern park entrance includes a trailhead with 75 parking spaces and restrooms, and provides access to 8.5 miles of signed, maintained trails. For a Whittington resident, that means driving around to Route 20 for what is, as the crow flies, a very short trip.
The Hickory Street entrance sits on the northern side of the park, closer to the neighborhoods on the 5th and Avon corridors. The county has been direct about who this entrance is for: a purpose-built bike/ped connection between established and growing neighborhoods, busy employment and retail centers, and other destinations throughout the 5th and Avon corridors in the Southern Development Area. That includes households south of I-64 who have been asking for a way in that does not require a car.
One reasonable expectation, once Hickory opens: the Route 20 lot stops being the default. Families who currently drive the long way around will start using the closer entrance, and the park's user pattern will look less like a destination trailhead and more like a neighborhood green space.
Biscuits + Gravity, and the architecture-school finish
The mountain bike area is the piece most residents have already heard about, but it has quietly moved past its rough-cut phase. The Biscuits + Gravity area is designed and managed as a single-use bikes-only zone, with a collection of downhill trails, jump lines, a mini pump track, and features designed to enable progression from beginner to intermediate to advanced. The project was funded and developed in partnership with the Charlottesville Area Mountain Bike Club, which funded the construction.
The majority of the downhill trails and features are complete and open, and additional amenities such as a kiosk and entry/exit portals are scheduled for installation in Summer 2026 as a partnership project with the University of Virginia School of Architecture's Design Build Studio. That last detail is worth pausing on. The Design Build Studio's fingerprints tend to be visible: crafted timber, restrained detailing, a piece of built work that reads as considered rather than off-the-shelf. If you ride, you already know the trails. What arrives this summer is the front door.
The two athletic fields nobody is talking about yet
The field construction has drawn less attention than the trails and the bike park, and it probably should draw more. Two irrigated regulation fields plus a road extension and a second restroom building is a meaningful shift in what the park is for. Trails serve individual users. Fields serve leagues, tournaments, and weekend calendars. If your household includes anyone who plays organized soccer or lacrosse, the practical question for spring 2027 is whether some of those Saturday drives to Darden Towe or Pen Park shorten to a fifteen-minute trip down Route 20.
The engineering already anticipates more. The engineering for this project includes designs for additional future athletic fields, which would require separate funding and construction. Read that as a signal about what the park's south end intends to become.
The greenway that will eventually reach Wegmans
The most ambitious piece is the one that will not finish this year. The Biscuit Run Greenway is the planned bike and pedestrian spine that would connect the Hickory Street trailhead to 5th Street Station and, from there, to the Rivanna Trail.
The proposed greenway would extend between 5th Street Station shopping center at the north end and the Hickory Street trailhead at the south end, generally following and reusing the existing historic roadbed along the east side of Biscuit Run, and would connect with the existing Rivanna Trail after VDOT completes the fully funded 5th Street Station Trails Hub project.
This planned trail connection will provide bicycle and pedestrian access into the park from the Rivanna Trail and from the 5th Street Trail Hub project that is scheduled for completion in 2027 by VDOT. Take that seriously as a two-year horizon. When it finishes, a Whittington resident with a bike will be able to reach a Wegmans grocery run, the Rivanna Trail system, and eventually downtown without touching Route 20 traffic. The Piedmont Environmental Council has been the persistent advocate for the connection, framing it as the piece that turns the park from a driving destination into everyday neighborhood infrastructure.
The park in context
Two numbers make Whittington's proximity concrete. Biscuit Run Park is 1,190 acres, and a minimum of 80% of the park will remain forested, with sensitive natural heritage resources protected. That is a scale of protected woodland few development-area neighborhoods anywhere in Virginia can claim as their back fence.
The land history is worth knowing, because it explains why the trails feel unusually mature for a park in its second year. The property was originally planned for a large residential housing development, and in January 2010 the Commonwealth of Virginia and the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation negotiated the purchase from developer Forest Lodge, LLC for $21.48 million in cash and tax credits. The forest you walk today is the forest that would have been the streets and cul-de-sacs of a 3,100-home subdivision. Standing on the Foothills Loop, that alternate future is easy to picture and easy to be grateful was averted.
A punch list for the rest of 2026
If you want to time your visits by what is actually opening, here is the order to watch:
- Boardwalks and trail extensions completing through the summer. These fix the muddiest sections and unlock the interior of the park in wet weather.
- Biscuits + Gravity portals and kiosk installed in Summer 2026, giving the bike area a proper entry.
- Hickory Street entrance progressing through the year. Watch the county's project page for the opening date rather than a specific month.
- Two athletic fields, access road, and new restrooms substantially complete by Fall 2026.
- The Biscuit Run Greenway remains the 2027 story, dependent on VDOT's 5th Street Trails Hub finishing on its own schedule.
None of this replaces the routine that longtime residents have already built at the Route 20 trailhead. What it does is add a second, closer front door, and enough new amenities that the park becomes the reason a friend visiting from out of town wants to spend a Saturday morning at your address rather than downtown.
If you are thinking about how the arc of the park's build-out interacts with the value of what you already own in Whittington, or you are helping family evaluate a house here for the first time, we would be glad to talk it through in the specific rather than the abstract. Reach out to Loring Woodriff Real Estate. Let's work together.
