Buckhead’s highway-capping park project moves forward as ‘Hub 404’

This time last year, investors’ reluctance to drop big bucks on a colossal plan to cover part of Ga. Highway 400 with green space and pedestrian plazas had many wondering if the potentially $250 million project would ever happen.

But in late June 2018, the development—tentatively called “Park Over GA400” then—was awarded a $600,000 grant from the Georgia Transportation Infrastructure Bank program, making the Buckhead project seem all the more feasible.

The nearly 10-acre project, which would cap part of 400 between Peachtree and Lenox roads, renovate the Buckhead MARTA Station, and introduce needed green space, is now moving forward under a different moniker: “Hub 404.”

That’s according to Jim Durrett, executive director of the Buckhead Community Improvement District, which is funding the design stage of the project.

Last year, the CID formed a nonprofit board to help raise $75 million in private funds for the highway-capping venture.

“We’re trying to raise approximately $5 million right now to fund preliminary engineering and design,” Durrett told Curbed Atlanta. “That would get us to 30 percent engineering, allowing us to refine the cost to construct.”

Nonprofit board members have been in talks with officials from the City of Atlanta and MARTA, as well as private property owners from whom they might need to secure air rights, according to a recent report by Reporter Newspapers.

The nonprofit board, currently known as POG 400—it may also soon go by Hub 404, though—is scheduled to meet on Friday, after which new details should emerge about the project, Durrett said.

Earlier estimates had pegged the project’s “ground-making”—as opposed to “groundbreaking,” being that no ground exists to break—to start in 2020. Leaders expected to begin opening the park in 2022 or 2023, per the 2017 outlook.