Best Atlanta Neighborhood 2024, 1st round: (5) Downtown vs. (12) Lake Claire

Josh Green

Wed, 12/18/2024 – 13:44

As part of ongoing Best of Atlanta 2024 coverage, Urbanize’s fourth-annual Best Atlanta Neighborhood tournament is kicking off with 16 places vying for the prestige of being called the city’s greatest. (Note: Seeding from 1 to 16 was determined by reader nominations this month—so no pitchforks, please.)

For each Round 1 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 eliminations begin now!

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(5) Downtown

Construction progress in May on Centennial Yards’ first ground-up new tower to top out, The Mitchell apartments. Urbanize 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 (Atlanta’s largest in four decades) and not really slowing down from there. After a generation of talk and almost no action, The Gulch at long last 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. Thanks, FIFA.

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(12) Lake Claire

A typically tony Lake Claire street that blends traditional and contemporary housing styles. Google Maps

Folks, let’s have a round of applause for Lake Claire, which earned enough nominations in 2024 to make its Best Atlanta Neighborhood tourney debut. Known for being hilly, pretty, and well-kept (but never pretentiously so) with a rollicking neighborhood pool and hip communal hangout in the Lake Claire Community Land Trust (RIP, Big Lou), this close-knit neighborhood of roughly 1,200 homes is tucked between Candler Park and Decatur.

Unlike with downtown, not a whole lot changed in Lake Claire this year, apart from several large single-family homes coming on the scene, including a four-unit infill build called The Square on Gordon with starting prices around $1.2 million. But that’s okay. Large-scale changes are no prerequisite, of course, for neighborhoods that were solid in the first place.