The Model Mile Every Brookhaven Local Walks Doesn't Connect to Anything Yet

Ask anyone who runs the Peachtree Creek Greenway before work what they like about it and you'll hear the same answer: it's close, it's paved, it's lit at night, and it gets you away from Dresden Drive traffic for twenty minutes. What you won't hear is where it takes you, because right now it doesn't take you anywhere. The stretch locals call the Model Mile runs from the North Druid Hills Road trailhead to Briarwood Road and back. That's the whole trip. You end where you started.

That's not a design flaw. It's a timing problem, and 2026 is the year it's supposed to start getting fixed.

Three Projects Sharing One Name

The greenway that shows up on Brookhaven's map as a single green ribbon is actually three separate projects, each with its own funding source, its own engineer, and its own timeline. Only one of them has money in hand right now.

Phase I is the only piece anyone has actually walked on. Phase II is the one with a check attached to it. Phase III is still an argument between the city, its engineers, and the residents of two apartment complexes about which side of the creek the trail should be on. Treating "the greenway" as a finished amenity confuses a completed demonstration project with a system that is, at best, a third built.

The Money Finally Showed Up, for One Segment

In May 2026, the Atlanta Regional Commission voted to award the city of Brookhaven $13,593,489 in federal funding to complete Phase II. Mayor John Park called it a transformative moment for the city, and in fairness, this is the segment that actually matters for anyone who has wondered whether they could bike from Brookhaven to the Beltline without touching a car lane. Phase II is designed to extend the existing trail southwest from North Druid Hills Road to the Atlanta city line, where it links up with PATH400, the South Fork Conservancy Trails, and the Atlanta Beltline's Northeast Trail.

The engineering behind that 1.1-mile stretch is more involved than the Model Mile ever required. The corridor is undeveloped woods and steep creek banks, crossed by existing overhead roadway bridges, so the final design calls for seven pedestrian bridges and boardwalk sections built adjacent to and over the creek to protect its flood elevation. A planned spur connects to Buford Highway at a MARTA bus stop near the Latin American Association, with a controlled crossing to a future vehicular bridge over I-85 into the Emory at Brookhaven campus. That's the piece that turns a recreational loop into last-mile transit access for the Buford Highway corridor, including job centers like Children's Healthcare and Emory Executive Park. It's also the piece that runs directly past the site of Northbend, the roughly $600 million redevelopment planned to replace the old Corporate Square office park along the greenway's first phase, which tells you something about what property owners expect foot traffic here to look like once this segment opens.

The Clock That Keeps Sliding

Here's where a resident's patience should come in. The city's own project tracker for Phase II has moved its certification date at least three times this year. Right-of-way certification was first projected for February 2026, then pushed to April, then to June. Construction letting, the point where the city actually puts the job out to contractors, was most recently pegged to August 2026, a date that has now come and gone without a public update confirming whether bids actually went out. That kind of slippage isn't unusual for a federally funded infrastructure project clearing environmental and archaeological review on top of right-of-way acquisition, but it does mean the "shovels in the ground this year" framing from the May funding announcement was optimistic, and as of this writing there's no confirmation that the letting happened on schedule.

Once construction does let, whenever that turns out to be, the city's general timeline calls for the work to take about 24 months. If bids went out in August as last scheduled, the Model Mile's western extension would be usable sometime in 2028, not this year or next. Anyone using the North Druid Hills Road trailhead should watch that spot in particular for staging activity, since that's the access point where new construction meets the existing paved section.

Phase III Hasn't Even Settled on a Route

If Phase II is a funded project waiting on a construction schedule, Phase III is still arguing about geography. The eastern extension is supposed to run from Briarwood Road along the creek to Clairmont Road at the Chamblee line, and the city brought on Heath & Lineback Engineers in December 2024 to design it. But at a community meeting in September 2025, residents of apartment complexes near the proposed path, including the Hendrix and Avana Uptown, raised concerns about the alignment running through their property. At the city council's January 2026 meeting, District 4 council member John Funny summed up the objection bluntly: the apartment complex has made clear it doesn't want any access to the greenway from its own grounds. That forced the council to fund a third alternative alignment, this one crossing near Barone Avenue, so planners can compare all three routes on equal footing before picking one.

That means the east end of the greenway, the side that would eventually reach Chamblee, doesn't have a settled path yet, let alone a construction date. If you've been waiting for the whole thing to connect end to end, the honest answer is that the west end has a funded plan and a shaky date, and the east end doesn't have a plan at all.

What This Actually Changes for Your Routine This Year

For anyone who already treats this trail as part of their week, here's what the current information means in practical terms:

• The Model Mile itself isn't closing. New construction happens on the adjacent Phase II corridor, not the existing paved section between North Druid Hills Road and Briarwood Road.
• Watch the North Druid Hills Road trailhead for staging activity. If the August 2026 letting held, this is the access point where a contractor would first show up.
• The payoff, a continuous route to PATH400, the South Fork trails, and the Beltline's Northeast Trail, is roughly a 2028 event based on the city's own 24-month construction estimate measured from an August 2026 start, not something to plan around this year.
• The Chamblee-facing end of the trail is still in design limbo. There's no groundbreaking to watch for on that side yet.

None of this makes the Model Mile less worth using today. It just means the map most people picture, a single trail running from the Beltline to Chamblee, is still mostly a plan on paper with one segment finally moving toward construction.

If you're the kind of person who tracks what's happening to the infrastructure around your own front door, whether that's a trail, a road project, or the next wave of development along a corridor you walk every day, that habit tends to pay off later too. The Christine Bradley Team works and lives in these same Brookhaven blocks, and we're always glad to talk through what a project like this means for a specific street or a specific home, whether you're settled here for good or just keeping an eye on the neighborhood's next chapter.