Officials: Beltline piece, major mixed-use build on track to finish soon

The more that retail and residents are packed around the Atlanta Beltline’s Eastside Trail, the more it’s beginning to feel like a boardwalk or bustling city street, sans cars.

Construction projects in the pipeline promise to enhance that sense of vibrancy—or what naysayers might call overcrowding.

Where Old Fourth Ward meets Inman Park, the Edge mixed-use venture is on track to start moving in its first residents in December, officials with North American Properties, the developer, tell Curbed Atlanta.

Designed to capitalize on its trail adjacency, Edge is planned to straddle an under-construction Beltline segment, from Edgewood to DeKalb avenues, with a walkway connecting two portions of the community.

Beltline spokeswoman Jenny Odom tells Curbed that piece is on track to open for public use by early 2019. Its opening would eliminate the need for Beltline patrons to exit and take sidewalks or surface streets to the Krog Street Tunnel to reconnect with the Eastside Trail.

(NAP officials sound more optimistic that the trail link will open when the first apartment do).

Curbed Atlanta

Meanwhile, retailers at Edge are in the permitting process for build-outs with openings expected next spring, an NAP rep said this week. Construction on the overall project is scheduled to finish in July.

Expect 29,000 square feet of the mixed-use norm—restaurant, retail, and loft office space—with signings that include the area’s first Shake Shack, Hazel Jane’s Wine & Coffee, and a restaurant and bar by celebrated local chef Kevin Gillespie called Cold Beer. The latter concept will have three patios, including a rooftop option and one under the Edgewood Avenue bridge.

Another first-to-market tenant will be announced in coming months, officials said.

Elsewhere, expect 350 apartments, with 10 percent of them reserved as affordable housing.

North American Properties

Meanwhile, in Reynoldstown, the Eastside Trail is also being elongated.

Concrete pouring is scheduled to begin in early or mid-November, taking the paved path from its current end at Kirkwood Avenue down to Memorial Drive, which is experiencing transformative residential and commercial growth.

It’s on schedule to open for public use this winter, while plantings will continue through spring, according to Beltline officials.

In other words, a contiguous Beltline stretching from Memorial Drive to the doorstep of Piedmont Park—that neighborhood-traversing experience urbanists have long pined for—looks like it’ll happen within months.

• Photos: Atlanta Beltline’s Reynoldstown extension will see concrete soon [Curbed]