In July, Rough Draft reported on the growing pains of small businesses on the west side of Atlanta. This month, we’re talking to residents about how they interact with the neighborhood through shopping, restaurants, personal services, and getting around by car, foot, and bike.
Just west of the I-75/I-85 Connector lies a string of historic neighborhoods lumped together between old warehouses: The Goat Farm Arts Center on Huff Road, the Brickworks along the Marietta Street Artery, and the Howell Interlocking Junction near Brady Avenue harken back to a time when Atlanta flourished because of the railroad.
This once industrial area, known locally as “the Westside,” has become a boomtown in recent years. But for residents and visitors, those same railroad tracks crisscrossing the land often muck up easy access to the restaurants, entertainment, and daily necessities less than a mile away, as the crow flies.
Resident Arthur Toal, the director of Continuous Improvement at Georgia Tech Administrative Services Center, commutes to work on an electric Onewheel. The Georgia Tech graduate moved to the west side of Atlanta five years ago from Midtown because the Beltline was projected to be built near the Howell Station neighborhood.
Toal currently serves as the chair of the Neighborhood Planning Unit (NPU-K) that spans Howell Station, Bankhead, Moseley Park, Hunter Hills, and Washington Park. Formerly a community of railroad workers, Toal said Howell Station is a “more gentrified, higher economic mobility neighborhood than the rest of the NPU.”
Since moving to Howell Station, Toal said, the city finished construction on the Westside Beltline Connector, giving some area residents access to Mercedes-Benz Stadium and the Westside Trail Segment III. A new spur trail also runs parallel to the Westside Beltline, one city block between Marietta Boulevard and Joseph E. Lowery Boulevard.
“I’ve been patronizing the restaurants and bars on the Westside since I got here. As connectivity has expanded, it’s given me more access to them,” Toal said.
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With a portion of the Westside Trail built, Toal wonders if nearby neighborhoods will see more commercial properties spring up. He notes that it’s a “chicken and egg” situation. Toal believes the lack of accessibility by foot, bike, or public transportation, unlike the Eastside Beltline, forces patrons living outside the Westside, with its popular restaurant and retail districts, to drive in and park or take a ride share, like Uber or Lyft.
“If I decide to eat at home rather than going out, it’s not because of the cost. It is difficult to get to the Westside Provisions District,” Toal said. “The Howell Station neighborhood doesn’t patronize the core of the Westside as much as you’d expect.”
Toal feels that residents will frequent a business they can get to in 15 minutes. “If you’re walking, you cannot get from one side of the tracks to the entertainment on the other side of the tracks in 15 minutes. You just can’t do it,” he said.
Nearly a 15-minute walk from Howell Station sits Westside Motor Lounge on Echo Street off Northside Drive, a sprawling restaurant and bar complex with lawn games, live music, and spaces to host large events tied to hometown teams like the Atlanta Falcons and Atlanta United. It’s about a 35-minute walk, or 20-minute bus ride, from Westside Motor Lounge to Mercedes-Benz Stadium, even though it’s less than two miles away.
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“The way people patronize businesses in Atlanta is [based on nodes],” Toal said. “Most people will drive [but] they’re just as likely to patronize a restaurant two blocks away as on the other side of the city because they’re going to drive.”
The Eastside Beltline is a series of what city planners call “activity nodes,” or designated regions with a high concentration of residential and commercial development (restaurants, shopping, and entertainment) located near a transportation hub. (Think of the stretch from Ponce City Market to Krog Street Market on the Beltline.)
“You can have a whole day just going down the Eastside Beltline. The Westside Trail is not like that. Almost everything on the Westside Trail is residential,” Toal said. “There are very few places to stop and spend money.”
Access to green space
Naomi Green, a board member of the Howell Station Neighborhood Association, moved from Tucker nine years ago “with a very YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard) attitude.” She wanted green space, walkability, and connectivity.
Until a few weeks ago, Green would have chosen to drive less than five minutes to access Shirley Clarke Franklin Park. Today, it can take 40 minutes to safely walk there due to noncontinuous winding paths and sidewalks through the Bankhead MARTA station, Georgia Power’s property, and Grove Park neighborhood.
Green feels the park is one of the city’s greatest assets. While not always easy, residents like herself can walk or bike to Shirley Clarke Franklin Park. People living outside the area, however, need to drive there.
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Green served on the Westside Equitable Development Task Force for two years, meeting with city officials to discuss how Shirley Clarke Franklin Park, previously called Westside Reservoir Park, would impact the surrounding neighborhoods, with historically and predominantly Black residents. In 2021, Microsoft laid out plans to build a 90-acre campus in Grove Park, employing 15,000 people.
The task force included representatives from Microsoft, the Atlanta Beltline, Atlanta Watershed, the PATH Foundation, and residents of Grove Park, Center Hill, Almond Park, and Howell Station. The task force’s conversations ran the gamut from transportation and gentrification to Microsoft’s position on weekend parking in the company’s decks.
But Microsoft went dark in 2023, and then-mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms didn’t run for reelection. The conversations with the task force didn’t continue with the new mayoral administration. Green also added that Shirley Clarke Franklin Park was named without involving the community.
Access to Howell Mill Road commercial district
Pedestrian access to the bustling Howell Mill Road commercial district, with its trendy taco bars and upscale date night spots, has improved since the introduction of the Upper Westside Community Improvement District (Upper Westside CID) in 2016.
District 9 Atlanta City Council Member Dustin Hillis called the Howell Mill corridor “one of the city’s most striking transformations.”
“The reason the Howell Mill corridor has been such a hot spot of development over the past two decades is due to the fact that it was a large, mostly derelict, industrial corridor with relatively cheap land during that time,” said Hillis of his district. “Despite the Department of City Planning’s long-standing policy of preserving industrial-zoned land, which District 9 has more of than any other district, residents generally deeply desire and support these destination, multi-use projects over the metal scrapyards, textile mills, or long-vacant parcels they replace.”
The corridor has been modernized with bright green bike lanes, bus shelters, and new crosswalks, which make it more ideal for pedestrians and cyclists, but a nightmare for drivers who can pay up to $30 to park. That’s why Green walks from her home in Howell Station to Westside Provisions District at Howell Mill and 14th Street to meet her parents for dinner or have drinks with neighbors.
“I would bike if there wasn’t a big hill,” said Green. “Otherwise, I would feel confident biking [now].”
Today, there are sidewalks between Green’s house and Howell Mill Road, but reliable, continuous sidewalk access has been a struggle since she moved to the area. Green estimates that for the last three to five years, the sidewalk in front of the King Plow Arts Center on West Marietta Street has been difficult to navigate due to ongoing water damage.
“A new development will come in, and they will ramp up a piece of a sidewalk, and it will take them a year to replace a five-by-seven piece. One tiny, little, five-by-seven piece,” Green said. “If you have a stroller, if you’re on a bicycle, or have any type of mobility issue, that one five-by-seven piece is an obstacle.”
New developments also cause disruption in walkability and ADA compliance, like the sidewalk at the corner of the QTS data center on Jefferson Street that has remained unfinished for years.
Then there’s the shaky Marietta Boulevard bridge near Huff Road, Green said. One lane has been closed due to a hole in the rebar, and another hole is forming. It’s a major thoroughfare for 18-wheelers because of the railroad piggyback, a loading and unloading point for tractor trailers and container trucks.
“I don’t walk slowly across that bridge,” Green said.
A recent freight study recommended limiting trucks near the Beltline’s Westside trail. Green said she has to trust city officials when they promise issues like the Marietta Boulevard bridge are on their radar.
More connected trails
Hillis said he clearly sees the big picture issues on the Westside, namely the “lax” public transit system, which the city does not control, and the involvement of the Georgia Department of Transportation, which oversees state roads like Howell Mill.
“MARTA itself also isn’t blameless, as they have not expanded heavy rail in a quarter-century and so far have not delivered, or even started construction on a single light rail project proposed in the ‘More MARTA’ tax that voters approved almost nine years ago now,” Hillis said.
A proposed Bus Rapid Transit line running along Northside Drive, parallel to Howell Mill Road on Atlanta’s west side, never materialized. The closest MARTA rail stations to many Westside neighborhoods north of Downtown are Bankhead on Donald Lee Hollowell, Vine City on Northside Drive, and Midtown and Art Center stations in Midtown.
The Howell Mill Complete Streets plan, however, did improve some of the bike and pedestrian safety issues by filling in sidewalks, building out bike lanes, increasing lighting, reconfiguring intersections, and adding more ADA-compliant pedestrian ramps.
“Our city’s taxpayers continue to bear the burden of maintaining and improving our city’s infrastructure on their dime, while metro Atlanta residents who live outside the City of Atlanta utilize it but contribute far less,” Hillis said.
Hillis, who is up for reelection for the District 9 city council seat, said he plans to continue focusing on the TSPLOST renewal and bond issuance to increase safety, expand the trail network just recently laid out by TrailsATL, and fill the need for better sidewalks in many neighborhoods.
The City of Atlanta released a document in June 2025 mapping a 420-mile trail expansion, of which 44 miles will be in District 9 (see pages 87-91).
Phase I alone will cost $253 million and take 10 years to build out. The District 9 Phase 1 projects include connections to Whetstone Creek Trail in Riverside and Proctor Creek Greenway in Grove Park. A nearby Phase 1 project in District 11 includes a connection to the Lionel Hampton Trail, starting south of Georgia Tech heading into Downtown.
This proposed trail expansion is meant “to transform Atlanta and provide safe and inviting all-ages, all-abilities access to 95 percent of Atlantans.” For District 9, specifically, the proposed trails would eventually make commercial districts like Brookview Heights, The Works, Upper Westside, and Atlantic Station within a 10-minute walk from homes in nearby neighborhoods.