Not every pre-World Cup change to downtown Atlanta will make the biggest splash — but the Garnett MARTA station's redesigned plaza is trying to punch above its weight.
MARTA has unveiled a remade elevated concrete plaza at Garnett station, one stop south of the Five Points transit hub. The plaza links Garnett directly into Broad Street, which has itself just undergone a three-block overhaul as a landscaped, pedestrian-oriented Complete Street running north through the reviving blocks of South Downtown. The overhaul extends between MLK Jr. Drive and Trinity Avenue, where former street right-of-way now forms the plaza entrance.
The project is a coalition build. MARTA partnered with the Atlanta Downtown Improvement District (ADID) and the Project for Public Spaces to design and execute the plaza redesign. The private developers behind South Downtown funded the design work through Kimley-Horn & Associates, per ADID. Construction funding came from Invest Atlanta Eastside Tax Allocation District bond funds, MARTA's Station Rehabilitation Program funds, and City of Atlanta AURA Bond funds, with Trees Atlanta contributing new plantings.
Last summer, MARTA temporarily closed Garnett for platform and lighting upgrades, staircase repair, pressure-washing, heavy cleaning, and graffiti-resistant coating on concrete surfaces. That work landed as part of "MARTA's roughly $1 billion Station Rehabilitation Program that's aiming to improve safety and aesthetics across all 38 stations over the course of multiple years."
Together, the Garnett plaza and the Broad Street conversion make one of the more consequential permanent downtown changes on the World Cup timeline: a legible pedestrian route between two MARTA stations that used to feel much further apart than the seven-minute walk their platform-to-platform distance actually adds up to. If it holds, that's the kind of infrastructure legacy the tournament is meant to leave.
Original reporting: Urbanize Atlanta (June 16, 2026)