Part of West Columbia riverwalk reopens. Where you can stroll by the Congaree
Almost a year after Hurricane Helene wrecked havoc on the Midlands and much of the southeast, the city of West Columbia has reopened almost all of its riverwalk.
The portion of the city’s riverwalk that runs between the West Columbia Riverwalk Park and Amphitheater, located at 109 Alexander Road, to the connection to Cayce’s riverwalk is now open, city officials announced in a press release Wednesday. The stretch from the Moffatt Street entrance, at 100 Riverside Drive, to the Gervais Street bridge is still closed for repairs.
“We are thrilled to have our beautiful natural resource back open for the community to enjoy,” West Columbia Mayor Tem Miles said in a statement.
While the riverwalk near the amphitheater has reopened, the parking lot is set to remain closed as construction crews work on repairs to the Moffatt Street side, according to the release. It wasn’t immediately clear when the Moffatt Street side repairs would be completed.
Large sections of the trail, which connects to Cayce’s riverwalk, had been closed since September of last year after Hurricane Helene washed out the foundation from underneath sidewalks and left massive sinkholes. Further down the Cayce stretch of the two cities’ connected trails, which stretches eight miles along the Congaree River, a portion of the riverwalk from Lyles Street to H. Kelly Jones Park is still closed after a sewer line break in Cayce damaged parts of the trail.
The Columbia area, which has a handful of popular riverwalks along the river that separates Columbia and neighboring municipalities Cayce and West Columbia, saw a number of its trails closed for construction or damage in recent months. On top of the partial closure in Cayce, the city of Columbia announced, in May, a six-month closure of a section of Riverfront Park due to construction.
West Columbia’s post-Helene repairs to its riverwalk took significantly longer than those in Cayce, which Miles previously told The State was a result of waiting on the go-ahead from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to ensure that funding would be available for the repairs.
“If you’re relying on or expecting to be reimbursed, as a matter of fiscal responsibility, then the decision we made was we had to comply with that stuff on the front end,” Miles told The State previously.
In May, the West Columbia city council approved $200,000 in funds for repairing the riverwalk.
This story was originally published July 30, 2025 at 1:13 PM.
