iCloud Drive download icon won't go away

As I experienced, you might see this ISSUE after reinstalling a clean OS and downloading documents from iCloud or transferring the docs from an external drive back to your documents folder. In either case, the syncing occurs but the icon does not clear.

Solution: you must methodically drill down into all your subfolders where you will likely spot at least one of those icons next to a random folder. Just click on it to initiate the download sync or right click and select "download"; I think the latter option will be available. When it clears, move on to the next until the icon in the root folder goes away. If you do nothing, it eventually might clear on its own but manually checking each sub folder will help you regain your sanity after having read another specialist's input saying it is something normal and permanent when it is anything but.