Auburn Avenue was once the richest Black street in America. Then the Downtown Connector cut through it. Reconnecting Sweet Auburn, a planning effort led by the Atlanta Downtown Improvement District with the neighborhood, is the first formal attempt in a generation to put a number on what that did - and to design something that gives a little of it back.
The project held its first public meeting on Thursday, November 7, 2024, at the Municipal Market on Edgewood Avenue, a few blocks from where the interstate's elevated lanes split the historic district from downtown. Organizers described the purpose plainly: a project 'focused on measuring and mitigating the harm caused by the construction of I-75/85 through the neighborhood.' The highway, built in the 1960s, is now described by the project team as the second-busiest in the nation.
The format was deliberately loose. A 20-minute presentation ran twice, at 6:10 and 7:10 p.m., with open-house input stations around the room. Residents were asked to share their experiences in Sweet Auburn, to learn the project's purpose, and to weigh in on values and priorities. An online survey stayed open through November 25, 2024. Afterward the team posted a thank-you graphic featuring the neighborhood's 'Hero' mural: 'We had our first public meeting on November 7. Thanks to all who joined us; we can't wait for the next one.'
The next one came March 18, 2025, as a drop-in open house at BE on Edgewood, 395 Edgewood Avenue SE, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. This time the team brought preliminary designs and asked residents to react to them - the 'community-led design interventions' the project had promised from the start - along with an update on project status.
The work sits inside a larger regional conversation about highway harm. The Stitch, the planned park cap over the Connector a few blocks north between Peachtree and Courtland streets, is the headline project; Reconnecting Sweet Auburn is its quieter, more targeted cousin, focused on the specific blocks between Auburn Avenue and the interstate rather than on decking the highway itself. Both grew out of a moment when federal Reconnecting Communities money made such studies fundable.
For the neighborhood, the project's value is as much in the measuring as in the mitigating. Sweet Auburn has always known what it lost. A study that says so in the city's own planning language is a different kind of leverage.
Source: Downtown Navigator, March 5, 2025 (Central Atlanta Progress / ADID), published March 5, 2025.
