The route for a planned new trail is less than a mile, but it is expected to create a critical link between Downtown Atlanta to historic neighborhoods in the rapidly developing area now called the Upper Westside.
Construction is expected to begin early next year on the .75-miles long Westside Paper Spur Trail, a $2.9 million project of the Upper Westside Community Improvement District and PATH Foundation. Funding for the trail comes from the city’s $750 million Moving Atlanta Forward infrastructure package approved by voters last year.
“The Spur,” as it’s called by Upper Westside CID officials, will meander behind buildings on Joseph E. Lowery Boulevard. To the north, it will tie into West Marietta Street and run between the 15.2-acre Westside Paper adaptive reuse project and the 95-acre QTS Data Centers campus.
To the south, it will tie into the Westside BeltLine Connector at Jefferson Street where users can then make their way to places like Centennial Park in the heart of Downtown.
The Spur is a small but key part of the Upper Westside CID’s overall vision to create multimodal connectivity for those living and working in the former industrial hub west of I-75 and I-85, just south of Buckhead.
“Since so many areas in this part of town just have really crummy sidewalks or non-existent sidewalks, and certainly very limited bike options on the road, it’s just been important for us that we not just rely on just one connection from A to B with what the Atlanta BeltLine is providing,” said Adeline Collot, program director for the Upper Westside CID.
“We want to feed all of the infrastructure that we’re building into BeltLine connections,” she said. “The connectivity to the Westside BeltLine Connector — that’s getting people to Downtown and getting people to their jobs.
“So it really becomes important to have this really safe, off-road network that gives people options to get out of their cars.”
Land for The Spur was donated by QTS, which also owns the Westside Paper property. The donation allows the city’s $2.9 million to go completely toward construction, said Upper Westside CID Executive Director Elizabeth Hollister.
The Upper Westside CID is the land partner and maintenance partner for the trail. The PATH Foundation, which built the Westside BeltLine Connector, is the design and construction administration partner. The Spur is expected to open in late 2025, said Hollister.
The Upper Westside CID is bounded by Northside Drive to the East, Collier Road to the North, Marietta Boulevard to the West, and Jefferson Street to the South. Six neighborhoods are within the district, including Blandtown, Knight Park/Howell Station, and the Marietta Street Artery.
Developers who can’t find property in Midtown in part because the neighborhood is nearly completely built out are extending their reach into the Upper Westside where large industrial tracts are still available. Hundreds of apartments are going vertical and developers are converting industrial buildings into creative office and retail spaces, like Westside Paper.
“The Upper Westside is rapidly growing because of its proximity to Midtown, to Downtown, to Buckhead and to I-75 and I-85,” Collot said. “It’s a really exciting part of town to be in.”
But when you look at building infrastructure, Midtown and Downtown have been fortunate in that their grid has been built around wide roads, Collot said.
“We don’t have a grid and our roads are not wide at all,” she said. “When you contemplate fully protected infrastructure, if it’s on the road, it’s just really tight and very constrained conditions.”
The Upper Westside CID is in the design phase on a protected cycle-track along West Marietta Street that will link the BeltLine’s Westside Trail at Marietta Boulevard to the CID’s Brady Avenue cycle-track, another part of its multi-modal vision for the district.
The Upper Westside CID also recently issued a request for proposals for a Huff Road multimodal study. The two-lane road is one of the few east-west corridors in the Upper Westside but lacks pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure.
The scope of the study includes identifying street-level improvements for walkers, cyclists and transit. It also asks planners to determine how to increase access between Huff Road and the Atlanta BeltLine.
“We’re not going to make our roads any wider, but we have this great opportunity through this trail system to be able to get people out of their cars and on bikes, and just enjoy a higher quality of life,” Collot said.
This story comes to GPB through a reporting partnership with Rough Draft Atlanta.
