Best Atlanta Neighborhood 2024, Elite Eight: Summerhill vs. Old Fourth Ward

Josh Green

Mon, 12/23/2024 – 16:53

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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(3) Old Fourth Ward

Forth Atlanta’s 2,300-square-foot outdoor pool deck (shown at bottom) offers lounge seating and cabanas for club members and hotel guests.

Beltline-connected Old Fourth Ward has been a hotbed of supersonic growth for what seems like ages now. As usual, O4W happenings this year were too numerous to list here, but a few highlights: Two high-rise hospitality concepts—New City’s diamond-patterned Forth hotel and the Scout Living tower over Ponce City Market—drew back their curtains in 2024, as rare for-sale condos debuted nearby at The Leon on Ponce. Speaking of Ponce, a Complete Streets overhaul came together as an effort to improve pedestrian and bike connections between Boulevard and John Lewis Freedom Parkway. Elsewhere, the Atlanta Civic Center redo edged toward groundbreaking, and the relatively affordable evolution of Boulevard continued to rise. Nonetheless, this eastside powerhouse hasn’t claimed the (nonexistent) trophy in one of these contests for a dozen years. But could that change in ’24?

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(6) Summerhill

Wes Cummings, RealKit Photography; courtesy of Keller Williams Intown Atlanta

Another year, another slate of big changes in historic, evolving Summerhill. Most notably, MARTA’s first new transit line in more than two decades—a five-mile bus-rapid transit route actually named for the neighborhood, MARTA Rapid Summerhill—has made progress in fundamentally noticeable ways throughout 2024, with a goal of welcoming its first passengers next year. Elsewhere, Georgia State University’s planned baseball and softball complex got its ducks in a row this year, where Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium once stood, as another area landmark, the former Ramada Plaza tower, was green-lighted to become affordable senior housing. Meanwhile, the densification of Georgia Avenue continued with 10 stylish townhomes on a previously vacant corner, as other townhome product broke ground on a former church lot. Business as usual in neighborly old Summerhill.