Walk the paved loop at Ida Lee Park far enough west and the path runs out at the tennis center parking lot. Cross Old Waterford Road from there and you're looking at the entrance to Morven Park, the 1,200-acre estate with the mansion, the carriage collection, and the cross-country course. There's no sidewalk connecting the two. If you want to get from one to the other on foot, you're walking the shoulder of a road that wasn't built with pedestrians in mind, which is exactly why Morven Park's own trail guidance tells visitors to skip the closed Route 15 entrance and come in this way instead, past Ida Lee.
The town has a design for fixing that gap. Whether a design turns into a trail on any predictable timeline is a different question, and the project directly next door on the same road just answered it.
A Project the Size of Three Football Fields
The fix itself is modest on paper. The Town of Leesburg's capital projects listing describes it as a new 1,000-linear-foot trail along the east side of Old Waterford Road, running between Ida Lee Park and the Morven Park pedestrian entrance, built to give walkers and cyclists a safe way to cover that stretch. As of July 14, 2026, the town had received 100 percent design plans and had them under staff review, with a public meeting still to be scheduled. That's real movement, and the public meeting is the next step the town has listed for the project.
The Sidewalk Next Door Took Fifteen Years
The clearest evidence for that is the project one block over. Morven Park Road, which feeds into Old Waterford Road, spent decades missing sidewalk on its west side between West Market Street and Old Waterford Road. The town's own project page states that the effort was initiated approximately 15 years ago in response to resident concerns about pedestrian safety, with neighborhood meetings held in 2008, 2014, and 2021 along the way.
Even after design work wrapped, the last easements took extra time. Of the 28 property owners affected, all but one household had signed by the November 2023 council meeting, and that household raised a concern about how the curbing would sit near a 100-year-old stone wall at its entrance. The Town Council's vote on condemnation was pulled back and then revived, and the $6.3 million project went to bid only after those final easements were settled.
It finished this spring. On May 29, 2026, Mayor Kelly Burk and Council Members Neil Steinberg and Zach Cummings cut the ribbon on the completed sidewalk, which now runs continuously enough to connect the existing sidewalks along West Market Street and Old Waterford Road. Burk called the result access to two of the town's biggest assets, describing it as reaching "our historic downtown and Ida Lee Park."
Same road, same office handling the paperwork, same general stretch of Leesburg. If a full sidewalk rebuild on Morven Park Road took a decade and a half and still needed a council vote to get past one property line dispute, a 1,000-foot trail spur one project over is not obviously going to move faster just because its design plans are further along right now. A public meeting hasn't been scheduled yet. Whatever comes after that meeting is where the Morven Park Road timeline suggests the real waiting starts.
What's Already Open This Fall, Trail or No Trail
None of that changes what's actually happening at these two properties this season, and there's enough on the calendar that the missing trail isn't stopping anyone from using either park this fall.
| Event | Date | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Morven Park International & US Equestrian Open | October 8–11, 2026 | Morven Park |
| Freeze Your Gizzard Cross Country 5K & 1-Mile Fun Run | November 21, 2026 | Ida Lee Park |
| 35th Annual Holiday Fine Arts & Crafts Show | December 5–6, 2026 | Ida Lee Park Recreation Center |
The equestrian open brings cross-country jumping, dressage, and show jumping to the estate's grounds, with tailgate viewing available for a fee even though regular admission is free. The Freeze Your Gizzard race at Ida Lee Park runs in partnership with Loudoun Hunger Relief, and the Holiday Fine Arts & Crafts Show, now in its 35th year, fills the recreation center's main hallway, basketball courts, and lower level with more than 95 local and regional artisans.
Elsewhere in the county that same stretch of fall, the annual Loudoun Fall Farm Tour runs October 17–18 with more than 30 participating farms, and the third annual LoCo WineFest lands the same weekend as the Freeze Your Gizzard race, November 21–22, at Old Farm Winery at Hartland.
Ida Lee Park has had a strong run in local recognition lately. Loudoun Now's Loudoun Favorites poll named it the area's Favorite Park in both 2025 and 2026, and named the recreation center Favorite Community Center, Favorite Recreation Center, and Favorite Fitness Center in 2026 as well. The Loudoun Times Mirror's readers' poll separately placed the recreation center first for Best Recreational Facility in 2026. The park also got a new playground this fiscal year, on top of the 138 acres, two playgrounds, community garden plots, and Master Gardeners' demonstration garden it's had since William F. Rust and his wife Margaret Dole Rust donated the land in 1986.
What to Watch For Next
The next concrete marker on the trail project isn't a construction date. It's the public meeting the town has said it will schedule once staff finishes reviewing the 100 percent design plans. That meeting is the point where residents get to weigh in, the way Morven Park Road residents did across three separate sessions over more than a decade, and it's usually where a project either picks up momentum or picks up the kind of holdout that adds another year or two.
Leesburg's capital projects page updates these statuses as they change, and it's a reasonably reliable place to check before assuming a trail is any closer than a design review.
For now, the walk from Ida Lee Park to Morven Park's front gate still means using the shoulder of Old Waterford Road, same as it did before July's design update. The gap is smaller on paper than it's ever been. It's still there on the ground.
If you're weighing what a home near this stretch of Leesburg is actually worth, once you factor in park access, drive times, and everything else that a listing sheet leaves out, Sell Buy NOVA Homes can walk you through it. Let's Connect.
