Edgewood-Candler Park MARTA Station plows ahead with next transit development

Starting July 22, folks who typically park outside the Edgewood-Candler Park MARTA Station will need to find new places to leave vehicles for the day.

MARTA plans to spend 22 months wrapping up constructing on the last piece of a transit-oriented development project that includes the Spoke apartment complex and a new performing arts center.

The final mixed-use development phase is also expected to get its own new parking deck, and that can’t come soon enough for people who rely on access to the Edgewood-Candler Park stop’s parking spaces.

Until sometime in 2021, MARTA officials are encouraging drivers to park at the East Lake train station, which might come as an inconvenience for those who don’t want to, or can’t, make it a couple miles east along DeKalb Avenue.

Alternately, MARTA suggests parking at King Memorial station.

MARTA spokeswoman Pia Forbes tells Curbed Atlanta that “the parking lot was at approximately 30 percent usage when the TOD planning got underway.”

Curbed Atlanta

But one concerned reader had a different take.

“I have been commuting through this station for the last two years, and the lot is full every weekday by 8 a.m. and every time there’s an Atlanta United game,” said the emailer. “Removing [the parking] makes MARTA useless to me because I can’t MARTA my kid to school.”

Forbes noted there was abundant time for community input during the TOD’s planning process.

The Perkins + Will-designed performing arts center, which broke ground in October, will grow the footprint of the Old Fourth Ward-based creative youth development program Moving in the Spirit, which now uses a 7,000-square-foot space on Angier Avenue.

The new facility, which is to be called “A Space to Soar,” is being funded by an $8.4 million capital campaign.