When Central Atlanta Progress first proposed The Stitch in 2019, it was a $300–400 million concept. By October 2025, the project had grown to $700 million, survived a pandemic, secured partnerships with GDOT and the City of Atlanta, and projected $9 billion in long-term economic impact. Then it lost $157 million in federal funding overnight.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law in the summer of 2025, eliminated the federal appropriation that had been The Stitch's single largest outside funding source. For a project that had already spent years assembling a patchwork of public and private commitments, the cut was significant — not fatal, but significant.
Pressing Forward
Mayor Andre Dickens responded by reaffirming the city's commitment. "North Downtown would no longer be the place that people just pass through," he said. "Instead, it'll be a place where they live, work, and gather."
Jack Cebe, the project manager at Central Atlanta Progress, outlined the path forward: break Phase 1 into smaller components that can move independently. "We're looking at ways to break that Phase 1 project into smaller components so we can move forward very, very soon," Cebe said.
Phase 1 currently has approximately $50 million of its needed funding in place — roughly one quarter of what that initial phase requires. The strategy is to begin construction on the portions that are fully funded while continuing to pursue state, federal, and private sources for the remainder.
What The Stitch Will Build
The project's scope remains unchanged: a three-quarter-mile cap over Interstate 75/85 between Ted Turner Drive and Piedmont Avenue, creating 17 acres of new urban green space in a part of downtown that has been defined by highway noise and pedestrian hostility for more than sixty years.
The cap would carry parks, walkways, trees, and mixed-use development — reconnecting the west side of downtown to the hospital district, the Georgia Power campus, and the neighborhoods east of the Connector that have been functionally cut off since the interstate system was built through Atlanta in the 1950s and 1960s.
Groundbreaking Timeline
Groundbreaking is targeted for mid-2026 — a timeline that would place early construction activity in downtown Atlanta during or shortly after the FIFA World Cup. Whether the federal funding gap delays that target remains to be seen, but the project's leadership has been clear that waiting is not the plan.
The Stitch has evolved from a concept sketch into the most ambitious infrastructure project in downtown Atlanta's modern history. The money is not all there yet. The city is building anyway.
Original reporting by GPB News, Georgia Public Broadcasting, October 23, 2025.