The plan to build a park on top of the Interstate 75/85 interchange that cuts  through Downtown Atlanta is moving forward with a major infusion of federal funding.

The U.S. Department of Transportation awarded a $157.6M grant to The Stitch, a project that would develop a 4-acre park over the Downtown Connector between Courtland and Peachtree Streets, according to a press release from Georgia Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.

The new park, which would be built south of the historic St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and north of SunTrust Plaza, will also include enhanced pedestrian connections to the MARTA Civic Center station.

The funding was derived from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act's Neighborhood Access and Equity Grant Program, which provides more than $3B to community projects for underserved and economically disadvantaged areas.

“This tremendous federal award for The Stitch is a direct result of the people of Georgia sending Jon Ossoff and me to the Senate, and it’s exactly the kind of investment I had in mind when I championed legislation last Congress to invest in reconnecting communities severed by highway construction,” Warnock said in a statement.

The effort is part of an envisioned larger cap that would create a 14-acre urban greenspace spanning three-quarters of a mile between Ted Turner Drive and Piedmont Avenue.

“This is monumental for the city,” said Jack Cebe, The Stitch development manager for the Atlanta Downtown Improvement District, whose stakeholders own properties along the proposed route of the Stitch.

Cebe told Bisnow the federal funding is covering a majority of the cost of the first phase, which will total $199M. The grant will be paired with $10M from the Eastside Tax Allocation District and $9M from the Moving Atlanta Forward infrastructure bond program.

“The Stitch will reclaim a massive part of our city from infrastructure that divided the Black neighborhoods of Buttermilk Bottoms, Bedford Pines, and Sweet Auburn. And with a new connection to the BeltLine, we are increasing pathways to opportunity for communities that have historically been overlooked for federal investments,” Rep. Nikema Williams, who represents Downtown Atlanta in Congress, said in a statement.

DeJon Tebought, vice president of the Atlanta Downtown Neighborhood Association, said many Downtown Atlanta residents view the project as a way to inject life into a portion of the city that he says is essentially vacant.

“The area that The Stitch is in is an area that is kind of a no man’s land. I go on walks frequently and I go to that area. It’s a lot of concrete and no one’s out there,” Tebought said in an interview. “That's what the neighborhood wants to see.”

Cebe said The Stitch, once fully realized, will have an impact similar to Klyde Warren Park in Dallas, Texas, where a more-than-5-acre park capped a portion of the Woodall Rodgers Freeway and connected Uptown and the Dallas Arts District and downtown. The $110M project is estimated to have an economic impact of more than $300M with adjacent commercial rents rising 32%, according to a U.S. DOT case study.

“That park has gotten like a 10-fold return on its initial investment in terms of economic development,” Cebe said. “The money the federal government is granting us for this project is really an investment. We do expect a pretty substantial return on investment.”

The Stitch Atlanta organization is putting together a master plan for phase one of the project and plans to host a series of local meetings with residents, businesses and stakeholders about what they want to see in the park, Cebe said, including what requirements developers may be held to for affordable housing.

The project will likely be put out to bid in 2026, after the World Cup, with construction beginning a year later, he said.