Joe Louis Greenway adds two miles and an 'Outside the Ring' statue

Detroit opened a new two-mile stretch of the Joe Louis Greenway on October 7, 2025, extending the west-side trail north from Joy Road to Intervale Street. The opening came with the unveiling of a bronze statue of Joe Louis at a new trailhead on Grand River Avenue near Cloverdale Street.

The statue, titled "Outside the Ring," honors Louis not for boxing but for golf. He was the first African American to play in a PGA-sanctioned tournament, and from 1941 to 1951 he ran a series of Joe Louis Open tournaments in Detroit that gave Black golfers a stage and helped open the door to the professional game. It was sculpted by Austen Brantley, a self-taught figurative artist from Detroit who was chosen through an open call run by the city's General Services Department and the Office of Arts, Culture and Entrepreneurship. Brantley had earlier created the Lt. Col. Alexander Jefferson statue in Rouge Park.

The new segment carries the same build-out as the rest of the trail: sidewalks, bike paths, fresh landscaping and trees, steel panel fencing, lighting, and emergency call boxes. The Grand River trailhead adds an open-air shelter that can be reserved for gatherings, a public plaza that now holds the statue, and a resurfaced alley meant to host food trucks and events.

Mayor Mike Duggan, who joined Louis's family for the unveiling, framed the project as both cleanup and connection. "The Joe Louis Greenway is transforming miles of blight and creating beauty and recreational opportunities, while connecting neighborhoods in a new way," he said in the city's announcement. "We named the greenway after Joe Louis because of his incredible contributions in and outside of the ring."

Louis's daughter, Joyce Barrow-Henderson, was there for the unveiling, along with his son Joe Louis Barrow II and great-nephew John Barrow. "The spirit that never quits, that's what this statue means to me," Barrow-Henderson said, "not only for golfers but for families, for children, for dreamers, for every person who knows that greatness does not come from winning every fight. It comes from getting back up again."

When it is finished, the Joe Louis Greenway is planned as a roughly 27.5-mile loop linking 23 Detroit neighborhoods along with Highland Park, Hamtramck, and Dearborn. Much of the route follows an abandoned rail corridor the city acquired, stitched together with connectors and protected bike lanes. The southern end ties into the Dequindre Cut and the Detroit RiverWalk, and the western end connects toward Michigan Central Station.

Construction has come in pieces. The first major stretch, between Warren Avenue and Joy Road, opened in 2023 and was later named one of the best new U.S. bikeways of 2024 by PeopleForBikes. With the October 2025 addition, close to six miles of the loop are now open, and the city expects another six miles by the end of 2026, per its General Services Department.

The cleanup behind those miles has been substantial. Since work began in 2021, crews have pulled roughly 31,000 tires and more than 600,000 tons of mixed debris out of the corridor, according to the city. The full project is estimated at around $240 million, per the Detroit Greenways Coalition.

The Grand River trailhead sits at Grand River Avenue and Cloverdale Street on Detroit's west side.