The idea of covering the Downtown Connector — the stretch of Interstate 75/85 that cuts a loud, exhaust-filled canyon through the center of Atlanta — had circulated in planning conversations for years. In August 2016, Central Atlanta Progress gave the idea a name, a price tag, and a public push.
A.J. Robinson, president of the nonprofit community development organization, outlined a project called The Stitch: a platform cap spanning roughly three-quarters of a mile from a revamped Civic Center MARTA station to Piedmont Avenue. The cap would convert the airspace above the interstate into green space and development-ready land, physically reconnecting the east and west sides of a city center that the highway had severed decades earlier.
The Cost and the Bet
The construction estimate was $300 million. The projected economic impact exceeded $1 billion. Robinson pointed to several large potential investments expected in the area over the following five years as evidence that the timing was right — that the cap would not be building into a void but accelerating momentum that was already forming.
The concept drew on two well-known precedents. Dallas's Klyde Warren Park, a 5.2-acre deck park completed in 2012 over the Woodall Rodgers Freeway, had demonstrated that highway caps could function as genuine public space — not just engineering novelties but places people used daily. Boston's Big Dig, though vastly larger and more expensive, offered the proof of concept at a city-transforming scale.
An Idea Whose Time Was Approaching
Central Atlanta Progress was not the first to raise the possibility. The Midtown Alliance had incorporated a version of the concept into its planning blueprint the previous year, recognizing that the Connector's trench created a barrier that affected property values, foot traffic, and livability on both sides of the highway.
But the 2016 announcement was the first time the idea had an institutional champion with the political relationships and development credibility to move it from aspiration to feasibility study. Robinson announced that detailed engineering studies and planning work would follow.
Nearly a decade later, The Stitch would grow into a $700 million commitment backed by city, state, and federal funding — far larger and more complex than the 2016 proposal, but built directly on the foundation that Robinson and Central Atlanta Progress laid in this announcement.
Original reporting by GPB News, Georgia Public Broadcasting, August 17, 2016.