Local Affairs
The team behind The Stitch, the proposed park over Atlanta’s Downtown Connector, unveiled new Phase One designs on Oct. 8, 2026, and set out a construction order that puts ordinary street work ahead of the highway cap itself. Construction is set to start in 2027 with street improvements on Ralph McGill Boulevard and on Peachtree and Courtland streets, while building the deck over the interstate will begin only once funding allows, Urbanize Atlanta reported.
The new renderings were shown at a summit at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights led by Jack Cebe, president and CEO of Atlanta Downtown Stitch Inc. They show the Gateway Pavilion and other Phase One structures in more detail, along with a revised site plan for the streets around the future cap. After the first report described the plan as scaled back, Stitch representatives said the project “has not been scaled back,” and that plans for all three phases remain consistent. Urbanize reported the first phase now covers about 5 acres.
Where the money stands
Funding is the main limit on the schedule. The project’s own FAQ puts the cost of all sections at $713 million and the full park at about 14 acres, and says that total will be updated as design and engineering move forward. Phases Two and Three are unfunded, and the FAQ lists construction windows of 2030 to 2033 and 2033 to 2036 for them, both depending on funding.
Phase One lost most of its federal support in 2025. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed in July 2025, rescinded $151.4 million in federal grant money awarded to the project in early 2024. Urbanize reported at the time that this covered roughly three-quarters of the estimated cost to design and build the first phase. The project’s FAQ still says Phase One is “completely funded” by about $170 million in federal grants plus a $30 million local match, so readers should treat that page as out of date on this point.
As of the Oct. 8 report, $50 million had been secured to advance design and help set up The Stitch Special Assessment District. The Atlanta City Council approved that district in April 2025, mainly to pay for operations, maintenance and programming through assessments on property owners within it. The district is not a construction budget.
The schedule has moved before
The timeline has slipped repeatedly. In April 2025, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Phase One construction was scheduled to start in late 2026. In March 2026, Cebe told WSB-TV that engineering plans were expected by the middle of the year, with construction targeted for 2027. The October update keeps 2027 for the start of construction but ties the cap to money that has not yet been secured.
Why it matters for job seekers
A project like this would eventually call for civil and structural engineering, bridge and road construction, landscaping, project management and, later, park operations. But no contracts, hiring requests or worker counts for the 2027 street work have been published. In 2025, Cebe projected that the full project could bring 4,500 jobs and $9 billion in economic investment. That is a long-range forecast for the whole build-out and the development around it, not a count of construction openings.
The project’s implementation page divides the delivery work: the Georgia Department of Transportation manages the bridge or cap, the Atlanta Downtown Improvement District handles the street work, and Atlanta Downtown Stitch Inc. handles the park features. For construction workers and contractors, the near-term signals to watch are procurement notices for the 2027 street improvements from those agencies, not the project’s long-range totals.
The catch
The dates in this story are the project’s targets, not guarantees. Phase One’s park deck has no construction date, Phases Two and Three are unfunded, and the cost total is expected to change as engineering is refined.
Sources
- Urbanize Atlanta, “For highway-capping ‘Stitch,’ new visuals, construction outlook emerge,” October 8, 2026. https://atlanta.urbanize.city/post/renderings-stitch-highway-capping-park-new-visuals-construction-set
- The Stitch, “FAQs,” accessed October 15, 2026. https://thestitchatl.com/faqs
- The Stitch, “Implementation,” accessed October 15, 2026. https://thestitchatl.com/project/implementation
- Urbanize Atlanta, “Feds yank $151M from Stitch project; leaders vow it’s still happening,” August 6, 2025. https://atlanta.urbanize.city/post/stitch-downtown-project-feds-pull-151-million-construction-2026
- WSB-TV via Yahoo News, “Where the Stitch project to reconnect downtown Atlanta stands,” March 1, 2026. https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/where-stitch-project-reconnect-downtown-145927984.html
- The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Atlanta advances the Stitch project for park capping Downtown Connector,” April 24, 2025. https://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta-news/atlanta-advances-the-stitch-project-for-park-capping-downtown-connector/CWEENQISYBGZBA3OM7XNI4Z5EE/
Featured photo: Southbound Downtown Connector (I-75/I-85) near Exit 249D in Atlanta, Fulton County, Georgia, June 7, 2020. Representative image of the freeway corridor; not a view of the planned Stitch Phase One site. Photo: Michael Rivera, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). Cropped from the original.
