Accompanying the bombshell news this week that downtown Atlanta’s Stitch project had landed enough federal cash to fund construction of its first phase was another surprise: An elongated, multi-use Atlanta BeltLine branch called the “Flint River Trail” project not only exists, but it, too, has been awarded a substantial bag of federal grant funding.
Which begs the question: What’s this Flint River Trail the feds speak of, and how exactly will it relate to the BeltLine?
The Flint River Trail, it turns out, is a broad term referring to the Atlanta Regional Commission’s 2023 application for federal infrastructure funding, which mentioned a “BeltLine to Flint River Trail” as a means of connecting intown to the southside natural water resource.
For more than a decade, community groups such as Finding the Flint and Aerotropolis Atlanta Alliance have been putting plans together to unearth and showcase the river’s headwaters through a visioning process. As Georgia’s second longest river, the Flint begins near the Atlanta airport, where it’s either obscured by culverts, hidden beneath runways, or fenced-off on airport property, before flowing more than 340 miles and joining the Chattahoochee River at the Florida line.
Plans compiled in 2021 for a trail section near a 23-acre industrial property called the Tift site. Willingham Corridor Improvement Study, via ARC
Eventually, the ARC’s vision calls for creating a new, contiguous multi-use trail that would branch off the BeltLine near today’s Lee + White district in West End and trickle down to Lovejoy, a distance of 31.5 miles.
But there’s a long way, so to speak, between here and there.
According to ARC spokesperson Paul Donsky, the $50-million federal grant announced this week—part of a bipartisan infrastructure bill approved by Congress in 2021—will pay for the construction of the purple and green segments outlined in this graphic:
Courtesy of Atlanta…
Read the full article here
