Best Atlanta Neighborhood 2024, Elite Eight: Downtown vs. East ATL

Josh Green

Mon, 12/23/2024 – 12:45

As part of ongoing Best of Atlanta 2024 coverage, Urbanize’s fourth-annual Best Atlanta Neighborhood tournament kicked off last week with 16 places vying for the prestige of being called the city’s greatest.

Now, for this Elite Eight contest, voting will be open for just 24 hours. Please, let’s keep the tourney fun and positive, as one neighborhood rises above the rest in very public fashion. The quest to crown a champion resumes now!

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(5) Downtown

The 1.25-million-square-foot tower’s facade of wall-to-wall glass. Courtesy of Signia by Hilton Atlanta

In 2024, downtown finally started doing its best Midtown impression, beginning with the official opening of a nearly 1,000-room glassy hotel tower in January and not really slowing down from there. The Gulch started clearly becoming something more vibrant and useful, as Centennial Yards morphed into a massive construction zone with two towers now standing and more World Cup-focused development not far behind. Meanwhile, Atlanta Ventures’ team of entrepreneurs kept putting more money where their mouths are, adding properties and launching renovations across a portfolio of more than 50 buildings and 6 acres of parking lots. Elsewhere, MARTA’s Five Points overhaul is back on track, the storied Atlanta Constitution building and Stitch project are showing promise, Underground is set to grow way up, a groundbreaking for the 2 Peachtree tower’s affordable housing conversion appears imminent—and that’s just scratching the surface.

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(4) East Atlanta

Peaceful Sea Photography; courtesy of Atlanta Fine Homes Sotheby’s International Realty

Usually a tough out in year-end neighborhood tournaments (see: the match with College Park in Round 1 last week), East Atlanta garnered enough reader nominations this year to land a big-boy No. 4 seed. Which makes sense, given the buzz around several EAV projects this year (and what could have been the most rollicking East Atlanta Strut festival to date in September). Celebrated artist Greg Mike transformed a 1980s church in the village to a modern-gothic temple to creativity, while commendably old-school designs for mixed-use development on a small scale came to light on a vacant East Atlanta corner. Elsewhere, frequent village investors Pellerin Real Estate are bringing an infill project with dozens of new homes to a site where little more than a void in EAV’s vibrancy existed before. Not too shabby.