The LINC Was Never One Trail. This Is the Year That Changes.

Walk into CJ Smith Park from Farmer Street on a Saturday morning and you'll pass a new sculpture near the skate park before you ever reach the trail proper. It's called Vestige, donated by CRLG, and it joined a small but growing collection of public art strung along Newnan's paved path system. Stand there long enough and you'll also notice something else: orange construction fencing a few blocks over, a detour sign near Sewell Road, a "student parking reconfigured" notice near Newnan High School. These aren't unrelated maintenance projects. They're the two missing pieces of a trail that residents have been calling "the LINC" for years without it ever actually being one connected thing.

That's the part most people who use this trail every week don't quite register. The LINC has functioned less like a single 26-mile ribbon and more like two separate systems wearing the same name: a downtown-to-east-side stretch that's been open since Phase 1 opened in January 2019, and a scattering of park loops on the west side, including the paved trail inside Carl Miller Park, that never actually connected to anything beyond their own fence line. Both of those gaps are closing this year, for different reasons, funded by different public bodies, and if you've been riding or walking the LINC without noticing, it's worth knowing what's actually changing under your feet.

The Bridge That Was Always the Hard Part

The east-west split has been the trail's biggest structural problem since the beginning. Newnan sits divided by Interstate 85, and no amount of painted crosswalk fixes a highway. The section built to solve that, referred to internally as Phase 2's Section D, runs from the current Phase 1 terminus at Newnan Crossing Boulevard and Summerlin Road to McIntosh Parkway at Ashley Park Drive, and it includes a dedicated bridge over I-85 itself. The City of Newnan awarded that construction contract to Lewallen Construction, and Friends of LINC director Kim Learnard called it the piece that would finally "connect east and west hemispheres" of the trail system.

That's not a small claim. Once that bridge is usable, someone starting at the downtown square can, in theory, walk or bike all the way to Ashley Park's restaurants and movie theater without getting in a car or crossing the interstate at grade. The trail's own project notes describe pathways leading within steps of Ashley Park's shopping and dining, with public restrooms tucked just past Dillard's. That's the kind of detail that matters if you've ever tried to walk from the Newnan Centre area to Ashley Park and given up somewhere around the highway on-ramp.

The Push Toward Carl Miller Park

The other gap is smaller in mileage but bigger in daily friction. Section 13, the addition the city calls the LINC's newest extension, is designed to run from Cougar Way near Drake Stadium, down Sewell Road, through Carl Miller Park, and tie into a preexisting sidewalk on Spence Avenue. As The Newnan Times-Herald reported, the city's Assistant City Manager Hasco Craver brought the proposal to the Board of Education in spring 2025, and his reasoning for the route was blunt.

"You all know very well, I'm sure, there are no pedestrian facilities right now."

That's the actual problem Section 13 is solving. Students, parents, and anyone else walking between the high school area and Carl Miller Park have been doing it on a road shoulder. The fix isn't free of trade-offs. The plan converts the angled student parking on Cougar Way into parallel spaces to make room for the trail, which Craver described as a real reduction in available spots, not a hypothetical one.

The city awarded the Section 13 design contract to a team led by the Path Foundation and Kaizen Collaborative in May 2025, with the project targeted for completion in summer 2026 to align with the school calendar. A construction bid for that same phase was published in February 2026 and closed that March. Given the timeline, the Sewell Road stretch to Carl Miller Park should be finished or very close to it by the time most residents read this.

Why a Public Utility Cares About a Sidewalk

Here's the detail that tells you how seriously the city is treating this project. In February 2026, the Newnan Water, Sewerage & Light Commission approved a $394,000 contribution, funded through SPLOST dollars, specifically toward construction costs for the Sewell Road portion of the LINC near Carl Miller Park. That's a public utility board voting to help pay for a pedestrian trail. The commission also has facilities along that same stretch of Sewell Road.

That kind of cross-agency funding usually signals a project the city considers durable infrastructure rather than a nice-to-have amenity. It lines up with a separate, larger ambition: the council also voted in 2025 to pursue a Georgia Outdoor Stewardship Grant, which could provide up to $3 million for further trail and arboretum development, with an application deadline of October 17. If that grant comes through, the current round of gap-closing is a down payment on more mileage, not the end of the story.

A Trail That Also Wants to Be a Park

The physical connections aren't the only thing changing. The city and Friends of LINC have treated public art as part of the trail's identity from early on. The first sculpture, Chris Rothermel's Concurrent Metamorphosis II, was gifted to the LINC in 2022. A second piece followed later that year, designed by a University of West Georgia student and built using historic patterns from the R.D. Cole Manufacturing Company along with aluminum from Bonnell Aluminum, a deliberate nod to two industries that shaped Newnan's economy. Vestige is the newest addition to that collection, installed at CJ Smith Park.

None of that is required to make a paved path functional. It's there because the people running this project have consistently described the LINC as a linear park, not a sidewalk with a name. Closing the physical gaps this year also closes a gap in how the trail feels to use. A route that finally connects downtown to Ashley Park and the high school corridor to Carl Miller Park, and does it while adding sculpture at the trailheads, is behaving like a park system that happens to be shaped like a line.

If You Want to See the Changes Yourself

• CJ Smith Park, 92 Farmer St. Look for Vestige near the skate park and splash pad, alongside the earlier Rothermel and UWG pieces.
• Sewell Road at Carl Miller Park, 74 Sewell Road. This is where Section 13 construction has been concentrated, funded in part by the Water, Sewerage & Light Commission's contribution.
• Newnan Crossing Boulevard at Summerlin Road. The starting point for the Section D bridge over I-85, connecting toward Ashley Park Drive.
• Cougar Way near Drake Stadium. Watch for the reconfigured parking as the new trail segment ties into the existing sidewalk network.

I've spent nine years walking clients through what makes a South Metro Atlanta neighborhood work day to day, not just what it looks like on a listing sheet. A trail system that's finally solving its own oldest problems is exactly the kind of local detail that doesn't show up in a portal description, but it's the kind of thing that shapes how a place actually feels to live in.

If you're curious about what's happening on your own street, or what a neighborhood like this means for a move you're considering, I'd love to talk it through. Reach out to Angela Yoder to schedule a consultation.