If you've walked or driven the stretch of Lake Forrest Drive that hugs the eastern edge of Chastain Park, you've seen it: a chain-link fence tracing a hillside of hardwoods, undergrowth, and not much else. Most regulars stopped wondering about it years ago. It's just been there, off-limits, the kind of unused ground you drive past on the way to the tennis courts or the dog trail without a second look.
That assumption is now out of date. The woods have a name, the Palisades, a design firm, a contractor working through final paperwork, and something the rest of the park has been asking about for a while: a month on the calendar.
What's Actually Behind the Fence
The Palisades is a partially wooded, undulating stretch of land along Lake Forrest Drive, and the Chastain Park Conservancy has spent the past several years quietly turning it from unused acreage into a real destination. The plan calls for a one-mile trail system, scenic overlooks reaching elevations of nearly 40 feet, nature-based play and gathering areas, an outdoor classroom, and a new bridge crossing Nancy Creek to link the site to the rest of the park.
None of that is a rendering on a wish list. The Chastain Park Conservancy describes the project as opening nearly 30 acres of new greenspace, and the design itself came out of a community-informed planning process led by the Lord Aeck Sargent design team, the same firm behind the park's broader 20-year master plan. The Conservancy is now finalizing a construction-manager-at-risk agreement with SG Contracting, the outfit that will actually move dirt once the fence comes down.
Why the Woods Sat Idle This Long
The obvious question is why 30 acres in the middle of one of Atlanta's most-used parks stayed roped off for so long. The answer isn't neglect. It's sequencing.
Rosa McHugh, the Conservancy's President and CEO, put it plainly in a recent interview with Buckhead.com: "Because of the history of the park, we've been thoughtful about doing the due diligence as we go." The Conservancy built the plan around community input first, then engineering for a creek crossing, then a phased funding campaign, rather than breaking ground on a schedule set by a city budget cycle.
That distinction matters because the Palisades isn't a municipal capital project. The land belongs to the City of Atlanta, which is acting as landowner and partner, but the money behind the build is coming from family foundations, private foundations, individual donors, corporate partners, and civic organizations. That's why the timeline has moved at the pace of a fundraising campaign rather than a public works schedule, and it's why the project's most recent update, as of this spring, put the Conservancy about $1 million short of its roughly $13 million goal.
The Conservancy is closing that gap this week. The Gilded Trail, a dinner and gala benefiting the Palisades Project, is scheduled for August 8.
The Number That Puts This in Perspective
Here's the detail that changes how you should think about this project. Chastain Park itself covers 268 acres, making it the second-largest city park in Atlanta. The Conservancy, founded in 2003, has spent more than two decades restoring and improving the park's grounds, and across all of that work it has opened or improved more than 40 acres.
The Palisades alone will add 30 of those acres in roughly a single year of construction.
Put another way, one project, built on one philanthropic timeline, is set to add nearly as much newly usable park land as the Conservancy has produced across its entire 20-plus-year history combined. The last time a single project reshaped daily use of the park at this scale was 2010, when the rebuilt Chastain Park Tennis Center went up in partnership with the city, the first major undertaking completed under the Conservancy's master plan. The Palisades is the sequel nobody was expecting this soon.
Here's where the project actually stands, based on the most recent figures available:
- Design and engineering: led by Lord Aeck Sargent, shaped through community input sessions
- Construction manager: SG Contracting, under a construction-manager-at-risk agreement now being finalized
- Funding status: nearing a $13 million goal, roughly $1 million short as of this spring
- Active fundraiser: The Gilded Trail dinner and gala, August 8
- Groundbreaking target: November 2026, contingent on closing the funding gap
- Construction window: about one year, with completion targeted for late 2027
If that timeline holds, the fence along Lake Forrest Drive that's been part of the scenery for years will start coming down before the end of next year.
The Rest of the Park Isn't Waiting Either
The Palisades is the biggest change in motion, but it's not the only sign that this has been an active year for Chastain Park. Even the amphitheater has a new name. Longtime concertgoers who grew up calling it Cadence Bank Amphitheatre are now buying tickets to shows at the Synovus Bank Amphitheater, a rebrand that's shown up across ticketing sites this year even as the 6,900-seat venue keeps running its usual April-through-October season.
This week alone makes the case for how packed that calendar is. Tonight brings The Fray's Summer of Light tour with Dashboard Confessional, tomorrow is The Guess Who's Takin' It Back tour, and Friday pairs Wynonna Judd with Melissa Etheridge. Later this month, the lineup shifts to Ella Mai on the 14th and the Isley Brothers with the O'Jays on the 22nd.
Chastain Market, the retail center at 4600 Roswell Road that most residents still remember as Gateway Chastain before a 2022 ownership change renamed it, has gone through its own churn. Trader Joe's opened there in November 2024, Books A Million followed roughly a year later in the remaining Sprouts space, and Three Dollar Cafe was on track to relocate this spring into a larger standalone building with more room for its kitchen and its sports-watching sections. A toy store, Learning Express, and a mattress retailer have also moved in, filling out a center that two years ago looked very different.
The dining anchor of the neighborhood, The Chastain, has kept building on its reputation under chef Christopher Grossman, whose farm-to-table menu earned the restaurant a Michelin Green Star for sustainability. Grossman's team is now expanding beyond the park: a new concept called Alere, drawing on Southern European cooking, is set to open in 2027 in Morningside Village, a project first reported by What Now Atlanta in July. It's a sign of how much traction the original Chastain concept has built since opening in 2020, and a reminder that the neighborhood's culinary reputation now extends past its own borders. A few doors down in the same shopping center, Pendolino has spent the past two years serving Italian food with a Southern lean from chef Kevin Maxey, a detail worth knowing if you haven't wandered over yet, as reported by Atlanta Magazine when the restaurant first opened.
How to See It Before the Fence Comes Down
If you want to understand what the Palisades will actually feel like before construction starts, the Conservancy is offering site walks and golf cart tours of the property right now, a chance to stand on the ground that will look completely different by this time next year.
The Conservancy also just opened registration for the 2026 Chastain Challenge, its six-week walking and running fundraiser that builds community and encourages movement through the fall. It's one of several annual traditions, alongside the tennis center's league schedule and the golf course's daily play, that make the park feel less like a single amenity and more like a running list of reasons to be outside.
Between the amphitheater's rebrand, the retail turnover at Chastain Market, a Michelin-recognized kitchen expanding its footprint, and 30 acres of previously locked-up woods finally getting a construction date, this has been one of the more active years in the park's recent history. Most of it has happened quietly enough that even people who walk past the Lake Forrest Drive fence every week haven't clocked the scale of it.
That's usually how the biggest changes to a place like this happen. Not all at once, and not with much fanfare, until the fence actually comes down.
Want to know what a home near a park this active is actually worth, or just have questions about the neighborhood? Engel & Völkers Atlanta knows Chastain Park block by block. Connect with an EV Advisor anytime.
