If you've ever driven past the pro shop at Chastain Park Golf Course to reach the ball fields, the dog park, or Farm Chastain, you've used the only vehicle route into that half of the park, and it runs straight through the fairway. That road is going away. Not because of budget cuts or a closure notice taped to a gate, but because the Chastain Park Conservancy is finally building something on the other side of it that has sat untouched since the course was laid out nearly ninety years ago.
The project is called the Palisades, and if you've followed any local coverage of it over the past year, you've probably seen the number 40 acres. That number is no longer accurate, and understanding why tells you more about what's actually happening in your park than the acreage ever could.
What Breaks Ground First, and Why It's the Road
Construction on the Palisades is targeted to begin November 1, 2026, with a build timeline the Conservancy has put at 12 to 16 months. The contractor is SG Contracting, working from a design by the landscape architecture firm Lord Aeck Sargent. But before any trail gets cut or bridge gets poured, the existing access road through the golf course has to move. That road is currently the only way vehicles reach the lower half of the park, and it cuts across one of the busiest public golf courses in Atlanta. Once the Palisades work begins, that pavement gets rerouted and the old asphalt gets turned back into fairway.
For anyone who parks near the course to reach the ball fields or Farm Chastain, this is the part of the project you'll notice first, likely before you ever see a new trail marker. The paved 2.6-mile loop that circles the park's open lawns, tennis courts, and wooded sections stays open and unaffected throughout construction. That's your fallback route if you want your regular walk undisturbed while the lower access road gets rebuilt around it.
The Acreage Number Quietly Got More Honest
Go back to early 2025 coverage of this project and you'll see it described as a plan to activate 40 acres of forgotten park land, with a price tag around $9.8 million. By the time the Conservancy's own fundraising updates rolled out in mid-2026, the language had narrowed. The Palisades itself, the section actually breaking ground this November, is now consistently described as approximately 30 acres nestled between the golf course's 16th hole and Nancy Creek. The Conservancy's broader restoration work across the park, cumulative over years and multiple smaller projects, is what adds up to more than 40 acres.
That's not a project getting smaller. It's a project getting specific. An additional 20-acre section at the park's northern tip, referred to internally as the Northwoods, remains a future phase rather than part of what's under construction this fall. If you've been holding onto the 40-acre figure from last year's headlines, the version actually arriving in November is the 30-acre Palisades, full stop, with Northwoods still on the table for later.
What the 30 Acres Actually Becomes
Strip away the fundraising language and here's what's physically going into that stretch of overgrown kudzu and ivy along Nancy Creek:
- A one-mile trail system through what will become a native tree arboretum
- A 153-foot pedestrian bridge spanning Nancy Creek, connecting the Palisades to the rest of the park
- Three community greens totaling roughly 3 acres for open lawn gathering
- Scenic overlooks reaching about 40 feet above the golf course, designed as a spot to watch the sunset
- An outdoor classroom and nature-based play areas
- A new entrance drive and parking area serving the Conservancy offices, Farm Chastain, and the trail system once complete
Conservancy president and CEO Rosa McHugh has described the goal in blunt terms: create a park within the park, a place with no scheduled sport or reservation attached to it, just somewhere to sit. That distinction matters in a park where most of the land is already claimed by golf, tennis, swimming, baseball, softball, and basketball. The Palisades is designed to be the one section of Chastain that isn't programmed by anything.
The project also carries a role beyond Chastain's own boundaries. Conservancy materials describe the Palisades site as the planned gateway connecting the PATH400 trail to the Atlanta Beltline, meaning the mile of new soft trail is meant to link into a much larger regional trail network rather than function as an isolated loop.
The Fundraising Gap Moved the Wrong Direction Right Before the Deadline
Here's where the story gets less tidy, and more useful to know if you're planning around a November groundbreaking. Through June and July of 2026, Conservancy updates consistently described the campaign as roughly $12 million raised against a $13 million goal, with about $1 million left to close. That framing held through mid-July.
Then, in the first week of August, right before the Conservancy's signature fundraising event, reporting on the campaign shifted the number: leaders said they still needed to raise about $2 million more before construction could begin. The gap had grown, not shrunk, in the weeks leading up to the deadline.
That event, called The Gilded Trail, took place August 8 at two Buckhead venues. A Trailblazer Dinner at The Chastain restaurant ran alongside a Boots & Bubbles celebration at The St. Regis Atlanta, built specifically to close whatever remained of the funding gap before the November 1 target.
"Our goal is to start construction November 1st. So I do have a deadline that I need to hit." — Rosa McHugh, President and CEO, Chastain Park Conservancy
As of this writing, there's no public confirmation of whether that gala closed the remaining gap. If you're the kind of person who checks the Conservancy's own updates before you plan a fall walk through the park, that's the number worth watching over the next few weeks, not the acreage.
What a Fall Walk Through Chastain Actually Looks Like Right Now
If you're heading into the park this fall expecting to see the new trail or bridge, you won't yet. What you'll likely see, assuming the fundraising closes and the November 1 date holds, is construction fencing near the 16th hole and around the current entrance to Farm Chastain, along with a temporary reroute of the access road you've used for years. The Palisades itself, with its overlooks and arboretum, won't be walkable until sometime in 2027 given the 12 to 16 month build window.
The rest of Chastain, the paved loop, the golf course, the tennis courts, the playground, keeps running exactly as it has. This is a targeted addition to one corner of a 268-acre park, not a park-wide closure.
What makes this worth tracking as a resident, rather than skimming past as another capital campaign update, is that the Palisades has been sitting on the Conservancy's project list since the park's original 2008 master plan. It's the kind of change that gets talked about for years and then, when it finally starts, happens fast enough that you notice the detour before you notice the ribbon cutting. If you've wondered why that corner past the 16th hole has stayed fenced off and overgrown for as long as you've lived nearby, this is the year that answer changes.
If you're weighing what a neighborhood like Buckhead actually offers day to day, beyond the headline amenities, projects like this are the texture that's easy to miss from the outside. Allie Burks Group works this market because we live in it, and we'd welcome the chance to talk through what makes a specific pocket of Intown Atlanta the right fit for how you actually want to spend your weekends. Schedule a Private Consultation whenever you're ready to look further.
