Most people who hike or ride at Biscuit Run Park still get there the same way: they drive to 2020 Scottsville Road, pull into one of the 75 spaces at the Route 20 lot, and walk in from there. That's the only public entrance the county has built so far, and it's been busy. County figures released in March 2025, just a few months after the park opened, already counted more than 30,000 visits.
Southwood residents have a different relationship to that same 1,190 acres. Biscuit Run Park borders the neighborhood on its south and west edges. The tribute park Habitat for Humanity built to honor the Monacan Indian Nation sits right at that property line. And yet, until recently, there's been no trail stitching the two together. If you lived in Southwood and wanted to ride the Biscuits + Gravity bike area or walk the Foothills Loop, you still had to get in a car and drive around to Route 20 like everyone else.
That gap is finally getting funded.
The Park Southwood Already Built
Before any of this Biscuit Run news, Southwood had already put its own green space on the ground. Five Pillars Park, the neighborhood's first shared park, opened with a mini soccer field built in partnership with the U.S. Soccer Foundation. Residents named it after University of Virginia men's basketball coach Tony Bennett's program values: humility, passion, unity, servanthood, and thankfulness. Bennett found out about it during a call with the people who'd chosen the name, and told reporters he was humbled that his program's principles matched what residents wanted their own neighborhood to stand for.
More recently, Southwood dedicated the Monacan Indian Nation Tribute Park, with an informal ribbon cutting in June 2025 and a full dedication ceremony that September. County planning documents describe it as a gateway project meant to acknowledge the Monacan people who once cared for this land, while easing the transition for anyone moving between the neighborhood and Biscuit Run Park next door. By the end of Southwood's first construction phase in 2024, the community already had more than a mile of its own nature trails built inside the neighborhood.
None of those internal trails connected to the county park, though. That's the mile that mattered.
The One Mile Nobody Could Fund
Albemarle County has been trying to pay for this specific connection for at least two budget cycles. In Virginia's 2025 legislative session, the state budget included $1.3 million for an accessible walking trail linking Biscuit Run to the Monacan Indian Nation Tribute Park. Governor Glenn Youngkin's amendments cut that down to $300,000, and the reduced version got rejected during the General Assembly's reconvened session that April, according to Senator Creigh Deeds' own recap of the session.
The county went back this year with the same ask, reframed as the Southwood Connector Trail: a roughly one-mile, ADA-minded route running from the tribute park into Biscuit Run's future Hickory Bridge entrance. On August 25, 2026, the state approved $1.48 million for it, the first state dollars ever committed to a project inside the park, according to Albemarle's chief of parks planning, Tim Padalino.
"It's also just really exciting when people can recreate from home," Padalino told WVIR. "When their neighborhood can be the trail head. You just have to walk out the door, hop on a bike or grab the dog leash, and just go and experience nature and a beautiful open space and natural scenery in a convenient and quick way."
The trail still needs two small pedestrian bridges to cross streams along the route, and Padalino has been clear that the county is still finalizing the design. The current target for substantial completion is spring 2027, though that depends on how the engineering and remaining funding shake out.
Here's what changes once it's built, laid against what exists today:
| Way In | How You Get There | What's Waiting on the Other Side |
|---|---|---|
| Route 20 entrance (2020 Scottsville Road) | Drive and park in one of 75 spaces | Restrooms, an information kiosk, and the bulk of the park's signed trail network |
| Hickory Street entrance | Drive; construction began February 2026 | Second vehicle access point on the park's northern side |
| Southwood / Monacan Tribute Park | Walk or bike, once the connector is finished | Direct pedestrian entry into the park's northern trails, no car required |
For a neighborhood that already borders the park, that third row is the one worth watching.
What's Actually Growing Next Door
Biscuit Run has changed shape fast since it opened. The park's initial phase was substantially complete by December 14, 2024, giving the public its first legal access from Route 20. At that point, the county described 8.5 miles of signed, maintained trails. By the time the connector funding was announced in August 2026, county officials were describing more than 10 miles of multi-use trail already open, a sign that Albemarle Parks and Recreation has kept building even while the connector was stuck in budget limbo.
The most distinctive addition has been the Biscuits + Gravity Downhill and Skills Bike Area, built in partnership with the Charlottesville Area Mountain Bike Club. CAMBC funded the construction, which includes jump lines, a mini pump track, a slalom track, and flow and drop trails, along with dedicated climbing trails so riders can get back to the top for another run. It's designed to let a rider progress from beginner to advanced without ever leaving the park.
There's also work underway that most visitors won't notice on a map: a stream restoration project along roughly a mile of Biscuit Run itself, using log jam structures modeled on beaver dams to reduce erosion and rebuild wetland habitat that the valley would have had a few hundred years ago. It's the kind of unglamorous infrastructure that keeps the trails from washing out every time it rains hard, which matters if you're planning to use this place regularly rather than as a once-a-year destination.
More than $20 million in county capital funds has gone into the park since 2024. The $1.48 million connector is a small piece of that total, but it's the piece that determines whether Southwood residents get to walk in or keep driving around.
Beyond the Fence Line
The Southwood Connector isn't meant to be the end of the story. County planners have described a larger vision that would eventually link Southwood, through Biscuit Run, to 5th Street Station, and from there to the Rivanna Trail, the path that loops around Charlottesville. A separate VDOT project, the 5th Street Trail Hub, is fully funded and scheduled for completion in 2027, which would give that northern connection its own missing piece around the same time the Southwood segment is targeted to finish.
None of that is built yet. The Piedmont Environmental Council, which has pushed for Biscuit Run's public access for more than 15 years, has also floated extending a greenway downstream toward Mill Creek and Foxcroft, though that piece remains a proposal rather than a funded project. For now, the honest picture is this: Southwood has its own trails, its own tribute park, and a funded plan to close the mile between them and the county's biggest park. The trail itself is still on the drawing board.
For Now, the Front Door Is Still a Mile Away
If you live in Southwood today and want to ride Biscuits + Gravity or hike the Foothills Loop, Route 20 is still your fastest way in. What's changed is that the state has now put real money behind closing that mile, and the county has a name for the project, a target season, and an entrance point that starts at your own neighborhood's tribute park rather than a parking lot three miles around.
That's worth knowing whether you're walking the dog past Five Pillars Park this week or just keeping half an eye on when Albemarle breaks ground on the bridges. Southwood didn't need to wait for someone else to build its park. It's just waiting, a little longer, for the last mile to catch up.
If you're curious about how developments like this shape property values and long-term livability in Southwood or elsewhere in Central Virginia, the team at Nest Realty Charlottesville tracks this kind of local change closely and can talk through what it means for your own plans, whenever you're ready to have that conversation.
