What links the fenced-off stretch of the Chamblee Rail Trail across from Walmart with the 18-story glass tower that was scheduled to come down at Century Center on Saturday morning, Oct. 24? Both projects are about where Chamblee's rainwater goes.
Downtown, the city is turning an old detention pond into a park. Out by I-85, demolition permit filings say the land under a 1970s office tower will become a detention pond. You can walk past the first of these on your way to Broad Street, and the second is visible from Clairmont Road and Buford Highway. Knowing they're the same kind of project explains what each site is turning into.
The Pond Downtown Is Becoming Fish Bolt Park
The site at 1900 Chamblee Tucker Road sits between Peachtree Boulevard and the Chamblee MARTA station. According to Urbanize Atlanta, it is a former MARTA stormwater detention pond that the City of Chamblee acquired through its 2016 trails and parks expansion program. The Rail Trail runs along its southern edge, so if you walk the trail you've probably passed the old pond many times.
The city has broken ground, What Now Atlanta reported, and the city set Monday, September 14, as the day crews would start clearing the land. The city's project announcement calls Fish Bolt Park a constructed wetland, built to hold or treat runoff from storms all year. Kimley-Horn designed it, and Reeves Young is building it. The $4.6 million plan includes:
- ADA-accessible paths
- A nature play area
- Several public decks, including an elevated observation deck
- A mural wall
- A water feature that also treats stormwater
- New landscaping around the pond and along the Rail Trail
That list is a park, but the drainage job comes first and shapes everything else. Kimley-Horn, the project engineers, describe the wetland to Urbanize as a shallow marsh in which the plants pull pollutants out of urban stormwater. The decks and paths are built around a working marsh.
The schedule has already slipped once. Bidding opened in July 2025, and the first plan was to begin construction before the end of that year, according to the same Urbanize report. Clearing was set to begin in September 2026, and the city now expects to finish in summer 2027.
For trail users, the important line in the city's construction notice is that the Rail Trail is closed "from the construction site to Chamblee Tucker Road" until the work is done. The notice gives no detour, so follow the signs posted at the site.
At Century Center, the Tower Was Set to Give Way to a Pond
About four miles southwest, the same change is happening in reverse. Atlas Demolition was scheduled to implode the 18-story glass tower at 1800 Century Center Boulevard on Saturday, October 24, at 7:45 a.m., with road closures starting at 6:45 a.m. and lasting until the site was cleared as safe.
The building dates to the mid-1970s and covers about 290,000 square feet, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The Georgia Department of Revenue was the tenant until it left in 2024, and the tower has been empty since. Before the implosion, Atlas told the AJC that the windows had been removed and the interior gutted. Lindsay Minton, Atlas's marketing lead, told the paper, "They'll hear a loud sound. There will also be a big dust cloud that the team has been preparing for."
Until this year, the tower had a different future planned. In December 2024, Highwoods Properties and Brand Properties had a $91 million plan to convert it into 289 apartments, and the Decide DeKalb Development Authority approved a $6 million property tax break for the project, as Hoodline reported, citing The Real Deal. That plan has been dropped. Hoodline also reported Highwoods COO Brian Leary's explanation, via the Atlanta Business Chronicle, that high interest rates made converting offices to apartments very difficult.
According to the business journal's reading of Chamblee's demolition permit filings, the near-term plan for the site is a stormwater detention pond. No longer-term use or developer has been announced for that parcel.
The rest of Century Center is changing too, more slowly. Highwoods sold the building next door at 2595 Century Parkway, where the Department of Revenue moved, in July 2026 for $16.2 million to an entity linked to Boyd Watterson Asset Management. In March 2026, Alliance Residential filed plans for Broadstone Century Center, which would tear down single-story office buildings elsewhere in the park and build hundreds of apartments, Hoodline reported.
| Fish Bolt Park | 1800 Century Center Blvd. | |
|---|---|---|
| What was there | Former MARTA stormwater detention pond | 18-story office tower from the mid-1970s, empty since 2024 |
| What's going in | $4.6 million constructed wetland park | Stormwater detention pond, per demolition permit filings |
| Plans that changed | Construction was first planned for late 2025 | 289-unit apartment conversion, dropped |
| Timeline | Clearing set to start Sept. 14, 2026; expected done summer 2027 | Implosion scheduled for Oct. 24, 2026 |
| Who's behind it | City of Chamblee, Kimley-Horn, Reeves Young | Highwoods Properties; Atlas Demolition doing the demolition |
Downtown, drainage work is being turned into a public park. At Century Center, a building is giving way to drainage work. Both projects start with the same need to manage runoff, and the downtown site is the one with a park on the way.
Where the Trail Still Runs
The closure covers only the short piece between the Fish Bolt site and Chamblee Tucker Road, not the whole trail. On the city's Rail Trail page, the trail is 1.96 miles long and runs north–south from the softball field at Keswick Park to Peachtree Road. Two branches run east–west: one along Peachtree Road from Whole Foods to Chamblee Dunwoody Road, and one from Walmart to Pierce Drive. The Fish Bolt closure sits on the Walmart–Pierce Drive branch, which is the one that links the trail to the MARTA side of downtown.
Some named stops on or near the parts that remain open:
- Under the Clairmont Bridge: cornhole, bocce, foosball and ping pong, plus outdoor musical instruments, including tuned drums and a piano
- Keswick Park: the trail's official address is 3496 Keswick Drive
- Hopstix, the Asian brewpub at 3404 Pierce Drive #2444, at the Pierce Drive end
- Chamblee Antique Row District at 3550 Broad Street, a block from City Hall at 3518 Broad Street
- The Harvey at 5480 Peachtree Road and Gus's World Famous Fried Chicken next door at 5486
- Frosty Caboose, the ice cream shop in a historic caboose at 5435 Peachtree Road
When Fish Bolt opens, the closed piece reopens as the trail's southern edge alongside a new wetland. Until then, the Peachtree Road side of the trail and the Keswick Park end are the parts you can walk straight through.
Friday and Saturday Downtown
This weekend also brings two downtown events, one a goodbye and the other a scheduled gathering.
- Friday, Oct. 30: Moondog Pub & Grub's last night. The locally owned pub at 5077 Peachtree Road closes at the end of the night on October 30, according to What Now Atlanta. For the final night, the owners have invited musicians Gus Garay and Erica Stelten of Spaghetti Junction, friends who played there when the pub first opened.
- Saturday, Oct. 31: Georgia vs. Florida at 3rd Spot. Chamblee is an official UGA Alumni Association watch party site. The game will be on the big screen in downtown Chamblee at 3518 Broad Street, with a 3:30 p.m. kickoff and the Chamblee High School Bulldog Band at halftime. Weather canceled the October 10 Alabama watch party, so this is only the second of the series that gets played. Tents, canopies, golf carts, glass containers and coolers larger than 30 quarts are not allowed. Wheelchairs are welcome.
- Saturday, Nov. 7: Georgia vs. Ole Miss. This is the last 3rd Spot game of the season, at the same Broad Street location. The city still lists the kickoff time as TBA.
If you're walking from the Keswick Park end, the open north–south trail runs to Peachtree Road, a few blocks from both Moondog and the City Hall lawn, without crossing the closed section.
The next trail project is still on paper. The city lists Rail Trail Segments 7 through 12 as an active project. It's a planned 1.8-mile extension that crosses Chamblee Dunwoody Road, connects to Peachtree Road and ends at the Chamblee–Doraville city line. The project's StoryMap shows it in engineering and design as of its most recent status update, dated March 13, 2025, and gives no construction date.
Projects like Fish Bolt Park and the Century Center site change how individual blocks feel, sometimes long before any announcement tells you what's coming. If you'd like to talk about how changes like these affect the streets around your home, David Lawhon and our team follow Chamblee one project at a time and are glad to share what we're seeing. Schedule a Consultation.