Right now, at the edge of Branch Brook Park where it meets Belleville, crews are pouring concrete for an observation platform. It will look out over the park and the Second River once it's finished. The land under that platform used to carry freight trains. Soon it will carry benches, a railing, and a view aimed almost directly into Belleville.
None of that overlook is in Belleville yet. It's in Newark, on the Newark side of the line, and it's the closest piece of construction Belleville residents have to their own backyard. The rest of the project, including whatever eventually runs through Belleville itself, doesn't have a groundbreaking date, a design, or even a name that's been made official. If you've heard "the greenway is coming" and pictured a ribbon-cutting sometime soon, the reality is more lopsided than that. One town got the construction crews. The other seven, Belleville included, got a seat to watch from.
What's Actually Under Construction Right Now
The project everyone calls The Greenway is a former freight rail corridor, nearly nine miles long and up to 100 feet wide, that New Jersey bought from Norfolk Southern in August 2022 for $65 million. When it's finished, it will run from Montclair to Jersey City through Glen Ridge, Bloomfield, Belleville, Newark, Kearny, and Secaucus. That's the whole nine miles. Only one of those miles has a construction crew on it.
That mile is in Newark, running from Branch Brook Park Drive to Broadway. Groundbreaking happened July 15, 2025, and the price tag for this single segment is $69.2 million, which state officials have called the largest single investment in New Jersey history for building a new state park. Here's what's locked into that first mile:
- A Newark Central Activity Center between Summer Avenue and Broadway, with a performance stage, an ADA-accessible playground, exercise stations, a community garden, and multi-sport courts
- A Tiffany Manor Hub built as a gathering space with room for food trucks
- The Branch Brook Park Overlook, an observation platform facing the park and the Second River
- More than 170,000 native trees, shrubs, grasses, and perennials being planted along the route this year
The target for opening this segment to the public is 2027. That's specific and funded. Nothing else on the nine-mile map has that level of certainty yet.
The View Points Straight at Belleville
Geographically, the towns line up west to east: Montclair, Glen Ridge, Bloomfield, Belleville, then Newark. That means Belleville sits directly between Bloomfield and the Newark segment that's currently under construction. The Branch Brook Park Overlook, the last piece of that Newark mile, is being built at the exact spot where the park itself straddles the Belleville line.
So when this segment opens in 2027, Belleville residents will be able to walk to Branch Brook Park, climb a new platform, and look out over land that includes their own town, without the trail itself ever having crossed into Belleville. It's proximity without access. The finished product will be visible before it's walkable from Belleville's side.
The Other Eight Miles Don't Have a Plan Yet
It's tempting to read the Newark construction as proof the whole thing is moving. It isn't, not evenly. A March 2026 project update described the work still ahead as developing "a comprehensive master plan for the remaining eight miles," a process that will require environmental assessment and coordination among all eight municipalities before anyone can talk about a groundbreaking date for Belleville's stretch. Eight of the nine miles, including whatever crosses Belleville, are still at that planning stage. One mile has a construction crew and a 2027 opening. The other eight have a to-do list.
Your Neighbors Already Got Their Walk Day
The towns on either side of Belleville have already had their moment with this project, and Belleville hasn't yet, at least not in the recent round of public events tied to construction. In March 2025, more than 50 volunteers joined the state for a cleanup and visioning session along the future Glen Ridge segment, clearing litter and invasive plants and walking the corridor with state parks staff. In June 2026, the state marked National Trails Day with a guided walk on the future Bloomfield segment, where more than 80 people showed up to hike just over a mile of the future trail and learn some of its rail history along the way.
Belleville's public involvement with the project goes back further, to township council presentations and information sessions in the early 2020s, when local officials spoke about how the corridor would connect to Branch Brook Park and to streets across town. But the newer wave of hands-on public engagement, the cleanup days and guided walks tied to actual construction, has so far landed in the towns next door rather than in Belleville itself.
New Jersey Still Hasn't Named the Thing
On June 15, 2026, the same day the state held its tree-planting ceremony in Newark, the Department of Environmental Protection opened a public vote on what to actually call the park. Four names were on the ballot: Prosperity State Park, Ridge & River State Park, Ironline State Park, and Steel Trail State Park.
"Community connection and engagement have been a cornerstone of the Greenway's vision," state Senator M. Teresa Ruiz said at the June ceremony.
Voting closed June 29 at 4 p.m. As of the Department of Environmental Protection's own project page, the park is still referred to only as The Greenway, with no winning name announced. Governor Mikie Sherrill's administration framed the vote as a chance for residents to choose "a name that reflects its history and the future it represents." Seven weeks later, the state has managed to grade a rail bed, pour foundations for an overlook, and plant tens of thousands of trees, but it hasn't finished counting an online poll.
That gap says something about how this project actually moves. The parts with funding and a construction contractor go fast. The parts that depend on more rounds of coordination, whether that's naming a park or planning the eight miles nobody has broken ground on, take longer, and nobody has published a date for when Belleville's own name goes on a map.
What This Means If You Live Here
For now, the honest version of this story is that Belleville is adjacent to something real and unfinished. The trail won't reach town for years. The overlook that will look toward Belleville opens in 2027 on the Newark side of the line. The naming vote that was supposed to wrap up in June is still unresolved as of this writing. None of that makes the project less worth watching, but it does mean the timeline is longer and less certain than the tree-planting photos suggest.
If you're the kind of Belleville resident who already walks Branch Brook Park and wants to know when the rest of this corridor actually reaches your side of town, that's exactly the kind of local development Donna Keena tracks closely, alongside everything else shaping day-to-day life here. If you'd like updates as Belleville's segment moves from planning to an actual date, or if you're curious what a project like this tends to do to nearby streets and property values over time, reach out any time.
