Saturday mornings in Historic Brookhaven and the surrounding city still follow the same rough shape they have for years. Tote bags come out around nine. Somebody parks at the University Baptist Church lot off Dresden Drive, buys peaches and a loaf of something from a vendor, and either drives home or wanders down toward dinner reservations they'll make later that night. The Peachtree Creek Greenway sits a short distance away, mostly used by the same few hundred households who know exactly where the pavement starts and, more to the point, exactly where it stops.
That last part is the piece most residents have stopped thinking about, because for six years it has simply been true. The trail ends. This spring it stopped being a permanent condition and started being a construction timeline, and the difference matters more than another restaurant opening ever could.
A Trail That Stopped at a Parking Lot
The Peachtree Creek Greenway is planned as a 12.3-mile path linking Atlanta, Brookhaven, Chamblee, Doraville, and unincorporated DeKalb County along the North Fork of Peachtree Creek. Only a fraction of that vision has ever been built. The completed section, engineered by the PATH Foundation and opened in December 2019, runs just over a mile from North Druid Hills Road to Briarwood Road behind REI. Everyone who follows the project calls it the Model Mile, and it earned the nickname because it worked. It also went nowhere. A resident could walk or bike that stretch and then had to turn around, because the trail simply ended at a road with no connection to anything larger.
That gap is what changed in May 2026, when the Atlanta Regional Commission voted to award $13,593,489 in federal funding to complete Phase II of the project, in partnership with the Georgia Department of Transportation. Brookhaven had been chasing this money for years. Getting it turns a dead-end amenity into a corridor.
"The [greenway] has always been about creating connections between our neighborhoods, our businesses, and our region. With this funding secured, we are turning that vision into reality and taking the next major step toward a more connected and accessible city."
That's Mayor John Park, and the word doing the actual work in his statement is connections, plural. Phase II extends the trail from North Druid Hills Road down to the Atlanta city limits, which sounds modest until you look at what sits on the other side of that line.
What $13.59 Million Actually Buys
Once Phase II is built, the Brookhaven trail stops being an isolated mile and starts linking directly into the region's larger bicycle and pedestrian network. According to the city's own funding announcement, the extension will connect to:
- PATH400, the paved trail system running through Buckhead
- The Atlanta Beltline's Northeast Trail
- The South Fork Conservancy Trails
- MARTA's Buford Highway bus line and the Lindbergh City Center station
Practically, that means a resident who currently drives to reach Buckhead's shops or the Beltline's east side could eventually make that trip on foot or by bike, without ever getting in a car. It also puts Children's Healthcare of Atlanta and Emory Executive Park within walking or biking distance of the trailhead for the first time.
Here's the comparison that actually shows the shift:
| Model Mile (Phase I) | Phase II | |
|---|---|---|
| Status | Completed, open since December 2019 | Funding secured May 2026, construction to follow |
| Length | Just over a mile | North Druid Hills Road to the Atlanta city line |
| What it connects to | Briarwood Road trailhead, a stretch behind REI | PATH400, Beltline Northeast Trail, South Fork Conservancy Trails, MARTA Lindbergh station |
| Who paid for it | PATH Foundation | Atlanta Regional Commission, with GDOT as a partner |
Phase I proved the concept. Phase II is the piece that makes the concept useful for daily life instead of a scenic loop.
The Private Money Riding Along
The public funding didn't arrive in isolation. Brookhaven's announcement noted that Phase II coincides with a recently approved $150 million private redevelopment along North Druid Hills Road, one that includes direct connections into the greenway and an $8 million private investment in the trail's own infrastructure. That project sits alongside the proposed $600 million Northbend development, which is set to replace the aging Corporate Square office park along the greenway's first completed section.
None of this is speculative land banking. It's private capital being required, as a condition of approval, to physically tie its projects into a public trail that six months ago had no funded path forward. That's a different kind of signal than a new restaurant announcement, because restaurants can close. Infrastructure obligations written into a development agreement don't get walked back as easily.
Saturday Already Has the Other Half Built
While the trail catches up, the rest of the Saturday routine has been fully operational for years, and it's worth being specific about what that actually looks like in 2026.
The Brookhaven Farmers Market runs every Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon, March 28 through October 31 this year, in the parking lot of University Baptist Church off Dresden Drive. It's the kind of market where the honey vendor and the produce stand are the same faces from one season to the next, which is part of the appeal for people who've lived here long enough to have a usual order.
A short distance away on the same Dresden Drive corridor sit Haven and Valenza, sister restaurants that have quietly anchored the neighborhood's dining scene for more than two decades. Haven describes itself as the first restaurant to establish what is now a busy stretch of Dresden Drive, and after 22 years it's still turning out the Haven Burger and BBQ shrimp under executive chef Giancarlo Ruiz. Valenza, its Northern Italian sibling under executive chef Matt Swickerath, handles the handmade pasta half of the neighborhood's rotation. Both operate under the same restaurant group, which means a couple splitting a Saturday between market errands and a dinner reservation is really just moving between two properties owned by people who've been serving this specific stretch of road since before most current residents moved in.
Murphey Candler Joins a State List
One more piece of 2026 is worth knowing if your weekend leans toward the outdoors rather than the market. The Georgia House of Representatives designated 2026 as the Year of the Georgia Birding Trail, a statewide initiative from Birds Georgia marking the organization's centennial. Murphey Candler Park, Brookhaven's 135-acre lake park with its two-mile loop trail, is one of the sites now included on that trail. It's the kind of designation that doesn't change what the park physically is, but it does put a familiar Saturday walk on a list that birders across the state are now using to plan trips.
The Corridor Comes Together
None of these pieces are new on their own. The market has run for years. Haven and Valenza have been fixtures since before most of Brookhaven's newer residents arrived. The trail has existed, in its truncated form, since 2019. What changed this year is the money that stitches them into something closer to a single loop instead of three separate errands that happen to sit near each other. A federal award that specifically targets the gap segment, a private developer required to build its own connection, and a park that just landed on a statewide list all arrived within the same stretch of 2026. That's not a coincidence of press releases. It's what it looks like when a neighborhood's infrastructure catches up to how people actually already use it.
If you're weighing what any of this means for a specific address in Brookhaven, whether that's a home you already own or one you're watching from a distance, The Stowe Group tracks these shifts closely because they shape more than a weekend. Request a Confidential Valuation when you're ready to talk specifics.
