At a Thursday happy hour at Whitehall Tavern, the kind the Peachtree Hills Civic Association has been hosting for its neighbors for years, someone will eventually bring up the BeltLine. Half the table assumes it still hasn't arrived. The other half has been walking to it from Peachtree Hills Avenue for a while now. Both halves are missing part of the picture.
The BeltLine's Northside Trail already runs past Peachtree Hills, and residents already use the access points on Peachtree Hills Avenue to get to it on foot or by bike. What is not finished is the piece that would connect that existing trail to the rest of the loop on the other side of Peachtree Road, which is a different project, on a different timeline, and worth understanding if you've been wondering why the trail feels like it stops short.
What You Can Already Walk To
The Northside Trail is not a future promise in Peachtree Hills. It is an existing, open stretch of the BeltLine, and residents reach it directly from nearby points on Peachtree Hills Avenue for jogging, biking, or simply cutting over to other intown neighborhoods. If your mental model of the BeltLine in this part of Buckhead is still someday, it's worth updating. Someday already happened for this piece.
What has not happened yet is the connection that would tie this existing trail into the Northwest Trail, the segment still under construction on the far side of Peachtree Road near Collier Hills and Bobby Jones Golf Course.
The Missing Link, and Why It's Taking a While
The Northwest Trail is planned to run 4.3 miles once finished, linking neighborhoods that include Ardmore Park, Brookwood, Brookwood Hills, Collier Hills, Lindbergh, Lindridge Martin Manor, Underwood Hills, and Peachtree Hills into one continuous route. The piece of that route already complete, Section 3A, runs between Trabert Avenue near Monday Night Brewing's parking lot and Northside Drive, closer to Collier Hills than to Peachtree Hills. It is a real, finished, ridable stretch of trail. It just is not connected yet to the Northside Trail that Peachtree Hills already uses.
The connector is Segment 2, a 0.7-mile stretch that starts at the southeast corner of Bobby Jones Golf Course and runs east along Colonial Hills Circle before crossing Peachtree Road and tying into the existing Northside Trail. That Peachtree Road crossing is the detail worth watching. Rather than a signaled street crossing, the BeltLine and the Georgia Department of Transportation have agreed to build a new tunnel under Peachtree Street as part of a planned bridge replacement there, so the trail will eventually pass underneath instead of stopping at a light.
Here is where the pieces actually stand, based on the BeltLine's own project updates as of June 2026:
| Piece | Length | Status as of June 2026 | Relationship to Peachtree Hills |
|---|---|---|---|
| Northside Trail | Existing | Already open | Directly accessible from Peachtree Hills Avenue today |
| Northwest Trail, Section 3A (Trabert to Northside Drive) | 1.2 miles total | Complete and open | Near Collier Hills, not yet linked to Peachtree Hills' access points |
| Northwest Trail, Segment 2, Section 2A (from Bobby Jones) | Part of 0.7 miles | Bid process starting in June, anticipated construction mobilization in September 2026 | Will begin closing the gap toward Peachtree Road |
| Northwest Trail, Segment 2, Section 2C | Part of 0.7 miles | Bid expected early fall 2026, construction start no later than early 2027 | The stretch that reaches the Peachtree Road tunnel and ties into the Northside Trail |
The distance between already open and bid expected this fall is the real story here. Peachtree Hills isn't waiting for the BeltLine to show up. It's waiting for a specific gap, a few tenths of a mile on the other side of Peachtree Road, to close so the existing trail turns into a longer loop instead of a dead end.
This has been on the neighborhood's radar longer than the current bid schedule suggests. When Atlanta BeltLine Inc. broke ground on the adjacent Segment 3 and 5 work back in 2024, John Matthews, president of the Peachtree Hills Civic Association, stood alongside Mayor Andre Dickens and city council members at the ceremony. The neighborhood's civic leadership has been tracking this project for years, which is part of why the distinction between open and still bidding matters enough to spell out here.
What Fills the Gap in the Meantime
None of this has put the neighborhood on pause. The daily rhythm of Peachtree Hills runs through a much older network of small businesses and civic traditions that don't depend on a tunnel getting built.
The Peachtree Hills Civic Association keeps a running calendar of the kind of small, recurring gatherings that make a neighborhood feel lived-in. Happy hours at Whitehall Tavern. Pickleball meetups. An Easter egg hunt every spring. None of it waits on construction schedules.
The walkable core of the neighborhood sits at the intersection of Peachtree Hills Avenue, Peachtree Road, and Kings Circle, where a small strip of locally owned spots does most of the dining work. The Treehouse handles casual nights out. J. Christopher's covers the weekend brunch crowd. Paul's Restaurant rounds out the rotation for a sit-down dinner without leaving the neighborhood. None of these are new, and that's the point. They were the answer to where should we eat long before the trail conversation started, and they still are.
The Actual Takeaway
If someone at happy hour insists the BeltLine still hasn't reached Peachtree Hills, they're only half right. It reached the neighborhood's access points on Peachtree Hills Avenue a while ago. What hasn't happened yet is the tunnel under Peachtree Road that will eventually turn that existing trail into a longer connected loop toward Collier Hills and beyond, and based on the BeltLine's own June 2026 update, that piece is still moving through a construction bid with mobilization targeted for September and a second section not starting until early 2027.
That's not a knock on the neighborhood. It's a correction to a rumor that has drifted in both directions at once, with some residents assuming nothing has opened and others assuming the whole loop is done. Neither is quite right. In the meantime, the Tavern is still open on Thursdays and the Treehouse still has a table for whoever wants one.
If you're weighing what a home in this stretch of Buckhead is actually worth to you, details like which piece of trail is open and which is still in bidding are exactly the kind of thing that separates a neighborhood you've heard of from one you understand. Engel & Völkers Atlanta works this part of Buckhead closely enough to know the difference. Connect with an EV Advisor when you're ready to talk specifics.
