Walk the loop at Chastain Park on any weekday morning and you will pass runners, dog walkers, a stroller brigade, maybe a foursome heading to the first tee. What you will not do, no matter how many laps you put in, is set foot on nearly 30 acres that have technically been part of the park the entire time. They sit behind the golf course, above Nancy Creek, thick with kudzu and ivy, and almost nobody who lives near Chastain has ever walked into them.
That is about to change, and the reason it took this long is more interesting than a simple story about neglect.
Land the park never actually finished
Chastain Memorial Park was set aside in 1940 under Fulton County Commissioner Troy Green Chastain, built out with Works Progress Administration labor into the golf course, bathhouse, gymnasium, horse stables, and amphitheater that opened in 1944. Commissioner Chastain died on August 25, 1945, and a year later the county renamed the grounds in his honor. Later this month marks 81 years since his death, which makes it a fitting moment for the next chapter to finally break ground.
But the land at the south end, the section now called the Palisades, was never really part of that plan. Design records from the late 1930s show that H. Chandler Egan, the same course architect whose work drew on ideas from Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen when he laid out the 18-hole course in 1937, deliberately excluded roughly 30 to 40 acres south of the creek. The likely reason was mundane: it was probably set aside to hold excess fill dirt during construction. Once the golf course opened, that leftover ground simply stayed sealed off, growing wilder for nine decades while the rest of the park filled in around it.
A pandemic experiment that explains why this took a capital campaign
The Chastain Park Conservancy did try a shortcut once. During COVID, when the whole city rediscovered the value of outdoor space, the Conservancy worked with the city to let people use sections of the golf course itself as informal greenspace for walking, yoga, and letting kids ride bikes. It did not last. The arrangement fell apart once golf activity ramped back up and the two uses could not coexist on the same fairways.
That failure is the practical argument for the Palisades Project. You cannot borrow greenspace from an active golf course. You need land the golfers were never using in the first place, which is exactly what sat fenced off behind hole 16 the whole time.
The plan, designed by landscape architecture firm Lord Aeck Sargent and built by SG Contracting, will clear the invasive growth and open roughly 30 acres with a one-mile trail system, scenic overlooks reaching about 40 feet above the golf course, a pedestrian bridge over Nancy Creek, natural play areas, and an outdoor classroom. It comes out of the 2025 Chastain Park Comprehensive Plan Update, a process built on public input and formally approved by the Atlanta City Council.
"What we're trying to do is create a park within the park," Conservancy President and CEO Rosa McHugh has said of the project.
Why this is bigger than a new trail
Here is the part that changes how residents should think about the park's footprint. The Palisades site has been identified as the connection point linking PATH400 to the Atlanta BeltLine, meaning Chastain's trail system stops being a closed loop and starts functioning as an on-ramp to the regional trail network. Right now, walking the park means circling it. Once the Palisades opens, it means being able to walk out of Chastain and toward the rest of the city's trail system without touching a car.
That is a different kind of park than the one most residents grew up circling on weekend mornings.
The money is close, and the gap keeps moving
As of late May 2026, the Conservancy had raised roughly $12 million toward a $13 million goal, with about $1 million still needed. By the first week of August 2026, the target had grown to $13.5 million, with organizers saying they still need to raise about $2 million to break ground. The scope of the project appears to have expanded over the summer even as the fundraising kept moving, which is worth knowing if you are wondering why a project that looked nearly funded in May still needs a final push in August.
That push has a date. The Conservancy's Gilded Trail gala runs on August 8, a Western-glam fundraiser starting with dinner at The Chastain and moving to a live music and line dancing celebration at The St. Regis Atlanta. If the remaining gap closes, McHugh has said the Conservancy hopes to break ground on November 1, with construction expected to run about a year and the greenspace opening by late 2027.
What August still looks like at the amphitheater
None of this touches the park's other identity this month: the tail end of concert season at the Synovus Bank Amphitheater. If you live within earshot of Stella Drive, your calendar already knows the difference between a quiet Tuesday and a sold-out Saturday. What is less obvious is which shows let you bring a cooler and a blanket and which ones do not.
| Date | Show | Bringing a cooler? |
|---|---|---|
| Aug 5 | The Fray with Dashboard Confessional | No |
| Aug 6 | The Guess Who with Don Felder | No |
| Aug 7 | Wynonna Judd & Melissa Etheridge | No |
| Aug 14 | Ella Mai | No |
| Aug 22 | The Isley Brothers & The O'Jays | Yes |
| Aug 23 | Jon Batiste with the Atlanta Pops Orchestra | No |
| Aug 29 | Yacht Rock Revue | Yes |
Only two of the remaining August dates are table shows, meaning coolers and carry-ins are allowed on the lawn. The rest require leaving the picnic supplies at home. If you are planning to walk over from a nearby street rather than deal with parking on Powers Ferry or Roswell Road, it is worth checking which category your evening falls into before you load up a bag.
The park's other rhythms haven't paused for any of this
Everything above is layered on top of a park that keeps running its normal August schedule regardless of concerts or construction timelines. The paved multi-use path still circles the grounds, with the Chastain routes managed by the PATH Foundation laid out as two 5K loops and a separate 3K course. The tennis center's nine courts stay busy with league play. The golf course, rated among Atlanta's best public courses, keeps its own tee sheet. The horse park still runs lessons. And if a concert night leaves you wanting dinner without the amphitheater crowd, The Chastain, the Michelin-recommended restaurant sitting just across the street, is still the easiest answer in the neighborhood.
A few practical notes if you are timing an evening around any of this:
- Table shows this month are limited to August 22 and August 29. Everything else is carry-in only.
- Parking around the amphitheater tightens fastest on sold-out nights. Walking or rideshare avoids the worst of it on Roswell and Powers Ferry.
- The Palisades construction zone, once it opens, will sit near hole 16 and the golf course's southern edge, an area most residents have never had a reason to approach on foot.
Why any of this is worth tracking if you live here
None of this is about property value, and none of it needs to be. It is about understanding that the park you think you know still has a blind spot, and that blind spot is finally being addressed on a real timeline with real design plans behind it. Whether the November 1 groundbreaking holds depends on whether the last few million dollars come in before then. Either way, the shape of Chastain Park a year from now will not match the shape it has held for the last eighty.
If you already call Buckhead home and want a second set of eyes on how projects like the Palisades tend to shape the neighborhoods around them over time, Stacy Shailendra has spent two decades tracking exactly this kind of change from inside the community. Reach out anytime to talk about what's next for your corner of Buckhead.
