Walk the paved path along Onondaga Lake's east shore on any clear morning this fall and you'll cross a bridge over Nine Mile Creek, pass a bench pavilion, and climb a low rise built from old Solvay Process waste beds before the Lakeview Amphitheater comes into view on your right. Keep going and you'll reach Lakeview Point, a spit of land jutting into the lake with a pier at the end of it. None of this is a rendering. It's already there, and most of it sits inside the Town of Geddes.
That matters because the story most people repeat about the Loop the Lake Trail treats it as a future amenity, something Onondaga County keeps promising and never quite finishes. The more accurate version, and the one that actually changes how you'd plan a Saturday in Solvay, Lakeland, or Westvale, is that Geddes isn't waiting on this project. Geddes is the part of the loop that's already built.
What's Already Underfoot
A mile-by-mile guide to the route puts the built network at 9.1 miles complete today, and the named sections of it sit almost entirely on the Geddes side of the lake. The East Shore Recreation Trail runs 3.7 miles, threading past the Lakeview Amphitheater and the Fairgrounds parking lot on its way toward Onondaga Lake Park. The West Shore Trail covers 6.3 miles on the opposite bank, passing a pair of boathouses near Long Branch Road. A short 0.3-mile spur reaches out toward Murphy's Island, though that stretch closes every winter to protect the bald eagles that roost there.
County officials said in 2025 that two more phases remained before the loop reached its planned length of roughly 12 miles. That means the 9.1 miles already open account for the large majority of the entire project, and a Geddes resident today has direct, everyday access to a route that regional coverage still frames as a work in progress.
| Segment | Approximate length | Status |
|---|---|---|
| East Shore Recreation Trail | 3.7 miles | Open now, runs past the Lakeview Amphitheater |
| West Shore Trail | 6.3 miles | Open now, passes the Long Branch Road boathouses |
| Murphy's Island Trail | 0.3 miles | Open seasonally, closed in winter for eagle habitat |
| Final connector (Onondaga Lake Park to Inner Harbor) | 2.3 miles | Still in environmental and engineering review |
The Missing Two and a Half Miles, and Why It Isn't Simple
The piece that isn't finished is the final connector, a 2.3-mile stretch that would link Onondaga Lake Park to Syracuse's Inner Harbor. Onondaga County lawmakers were still working through state and federal environmental approvals for that segment as of this past July, according to reporting from public radio station WAER. The holdup isn't a funding fight or a stalled vote. It's the ground itself.
The route has to pass over CSX railroad tracks, thread around gas lines and sewer infrastructure, and cross the old salt ponds left behind by more than a century of industrial use on the lake's shore. Those ponds are considered a historic feature, which means the county can't just fill them in or reroute around them. Martin Voss, the county's transportation commissioner, told legislators the plan is to build a plank boardwalk over the ponds directly.
"We're going to build a plank boardwalk over the salt ponds because those are historic feature that you can't disturb."
Further out, the plan eventually extends the loop to Murphy's Island itself, the small landmass near the lake's south end that stays ice-free through winter because of warm water discharge from a nearby treatment plant, which is exactly why bald eagles use it as a cold-weather roost. County officials said in a 2025 update that work there requires soil sampling before any construction can begin, with a start no sooner than 2027, and this summer's report on the Inner Harbor connector suggests that timeline still holds.
Why the Holdup Is Worth Understanding
If you live in Geddes, the practical takeaway isn't that the county is dragging its feet. It's that the remaining piece of this trail is genuinely harder to build than everything that came before it, because it runs through protected wildlife habitat and buried industrial history rather than open shoreline. That's a different kind of delay than a budget cycle, and it means the timeline isn't likely to move up just because a new fiscal year starts. If you've been holding off on using the trail until the whole loop connects, there's no real reason to wait. The finished 9.1 miles already gets you from the Fairgrounds lot to Long Branch Road and back, past two boathouses, a creek crossing, and a lake point with a pier.
The Playground Isn't Waiting on Any of This
While the trail's final stretch works through federal review, the Town of Geddes has already finished a separate piece of county-funded infrastructure. A new inclusive playground opened this year at the John Carno Recreation Center on State Fair Boulevard, paid for through an Onondaga County Community Development Grant. It's a small project next to a 2.3-mile boardwalk fight, but it's the same story in miniature: county money is landing in Geddes right now, not on some future ballot.
The rest of the town's recreation footprint fills in around it. Geddes is really three distinct places stitched into one town: the Village of Solvay, home to roughly 6,600 residents as of the last census; the more rural Lakeland area, where John Carno sits; and Westvale, a family-oriented section that Niche.com ranked second among places to raise a family in the Syracuse area back in 2020. Pickleball has a foothold too, with a dedicated court at John Carno and three more at the Solvay Geddes Community Youth Center on Woods Road. Gertrude Street Park runs the Solvay Pool and a splash pad through the summer. Woods Road Park adds tennis courts and ball fields, and the Geddes Athletic Fields over in Westvale handle Little League, Pop Warner, and youth soccer.
A Saturday That Doesn't Wait for 2027
None of this requires a master plan to use well. Park at the Lakeview Amphitheater lot, walk the East Shore Recreation Trail out past the creek bridge to Lakeview Point, and turn back the way you came for a round trip under three miles. Bring the kids to John Carno first for the new playground, then head to Gertrude Street Park for the splash pad if the afternoon gets warm. Grab a pickleball court at the Youth Center on a weekday evening when the courts are less likely to be booked. Every one of these is finished, open, and sitting inside a town that's easy to undersell if you only know it as the place next to the Fairgrounds.
The last two and a half miles of the Loop the Lake Trail will get built. Eagles and salt ponds set the pace on that piece, not politics, and that's actually useful to know if you're the kind of person who checks in on county projects every year expecting movement. In the meantime, the part of the loop that already runs through Geddes gives residents more finished trail, more new recreation infrastructure, and more reasons to spend a Saturday close to home than the surrounding coverage tends to let on.
If you're watching how Geddes continues to change and wondering what that means for your own plans, whether that's buying, selling, or just understanding what a home near this stretch of the lake is worth right now, Lori Harrington knows this corner of Onondaga County from the inside. Let's Connect.
