Granby Park canal project helps preserve history – but doesn’t address unsafe bridge

Granby Park’s canal improvements project is near completion, but one of its bridges is still unsafe. 

The park closed in late 2024 as Columbia’s Water Department began construction on the project. The reopened park will feature the earthen canal, with a viewing platform for visitors, near the Congaree River. 

The canal improvements do not address a closed bridge that provides access to much of the linear park’s trail. 

It will be a while before the bridge is usable.

The Granby portion of the canal was built in 1824, in the early days of Columbia, to bring riverboats closer to the city – and away from the rapids of the Congaree. After river travel became less important, the stretch became unused, although the upstream portion that carries drinking water to downtown remained.

Prior to the project, drainage was damaging the park, said Frances Bryan, an assistant city engineer with Columbia Water. 

“The existing storm drainage infrastructure was causing a significant amount of erosion that was impacting a remaining portion of historic canal wall,” she said. 

Columbia Water workers have rerouted stormwater drainage behind the wall to reduce erosion. They also cleared the bed of the canal of vegetation so stormwater can flow down its course.

“It does allow visitors to the park to sort of imagine what the canal used to look like, because there is now a path for water to flow,” she said.

Visitors now can view the length of the canal. The project installed a viewing platform at the canal’s end accessible to visitors from a new portion of trail, Bryan said.  

An archeological monitor supervised the project in the event artifacts were found, but nothing significant was discovered, she said. 

“They found a lot of, sort of, minor debris and interesting old bottles and things like that,” Bryan said. “But nothing that registered to the level of archeological significance.” 

The $1.7 million project is considered a drainage project and is being paid for by the city’s Stormwater Bond Program, according to the project’s summary document. That includes adding trails and a viewing platform. 

The damaged bridge, meanwhile, has been closed for nearly five years.  

The bridge provided access to the southern portion of the park and its trail. A sign alerts visitors to use a detour instead of the bridge.

But a nearby pipe shows signs of people crossing it, despite the additional signs warning visitors not to walk on it.

A Congaree River flood in 2020 rendered the bridge unsafe, according to Columbia Parks and Recreation Department Assistant Superintendent Karen Kustafik.  

She said repairs are “complicated” because a void has appeared under concrete designed to stabilize the bridge. 

“The folks that have looked at it thus far have recommended (vertical) sheet pile in order to be able to fill concrete in that void,” she said. “And that will involve taking the bridge apart. It’s going to be a budget issue for us.” 

Residents of the Olympia and Granby neighborhoods attempted to raise money for the bridge’s repair. But they were thwarted when river flooding from Hurricane Helene worsened the bridge’s condition, Kustafik said.  

The new path connects the main trail to the viewing platform just before the bridge. There were plans to create a spur trail that avoids the bridge, but they weren’t implemented, Kustafik said.

For now, park visitors are told to detour. But there’s no paved route. 

For now, “Mother Nature is on the winning side of this battle,” Kustafik said.