Sometime this fall, a life-size fiberglass cow will show up somewhere in Brookhaven, painted by a local artist and anchored with a small plaque explaining what it means. Around the same time, orange construction fencing will start appearing along a stretch of the Peachtree Creek Greenway between the Atlanta city line and North Druid Hills Road. One of these things took the city about three weeks to organize. The other took seven years.
That gap is the story. Brookhaven residents are about to watch two very different kinds of city government output land in the same season, and if you only notice the cow, you're missing what actually changed here.
The Boring Years That Made the Big Year Possible
Planning for Phase II of the Peachtree Creek Greenway started back in 2019, the same year Phase I, the 1.27-mile "Model Mile" running from Briarwood Road behind REI to North Druid Hills Road near Corporate Boulevard, opened to regional acclaim. The Georgia Department of Transportation approved the concept plan and preliminary alignment for Phase II in 2021. The project cleared federal environmental review under the National Environmental Protection Act in 2024. Right-of-way acquisition, the unglamorous process of actually securing the land the trail needs to cross, ran through 2024 and into 2025.
None of that made headlines. It's the part of municipal work nobody photographs.
Then in May 2026, the Atlanta Regional Commission voted to award Brookhaven $13,593,489 in federal funding to complete the phase, and suddenly the project had a groundbreaking date instead of a planning document. Construction is scheduled to begin this year, with an anticipated 24-month build window, according to the city's own public works page.
| Phase | Length | Status | Key milestone |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phase I ("Model Mile") | 1.27 miles | Open since Dec. 12, 2019 | Built by the PATH Foundation |
| Phase II | 1.1 miles | Funded, construction starting 2026 | $13.6M ARC award, May 2026 |
| Phase III | Briarwood Rd. to the Chamblee city line | Preliminary design | Concept validation ongoing |
Seven years between first sketch and funded construction is not slow for infrastructure of this scale. It's actually the point. Grant committees and federal partners do not hand a city seven figures for a trail extension unless that city has already shown up, year after year, with completed environmental reviews and secured right-of-way. Brookhaven earned this funding the boring way, and that's worth knowing before you assume the greenway just appeared out of nowhere.
What $13.6 Million Actually Buys
Phase II is only 1.1 miles, which sounds modest next to the eventual 12.3-mile vision for the full North Fork Peachtree Creek trail system. But mileage is the wrong way to measure this segment. It closes the gap between Brookhaven's existing Model Mile and:
- PATH400 in Buckhead
- The Atlanta Beltline's Northeast Trail
- The South Fork Conservancy Trail system
- MARTA's Buford Highway bus line and Lindbergh Station
Mayor John Park called the funding secure enough to say publicly:
"This is a transformative moment for Brookhaven."
That's not just civic boosterism. The same announcement ties the greenway directly to two private redevelopments already in motion along its route: the $600 million Northbend project, which is replacing Corporate Square along Phase I, and a separate $150 million redevelopment on North Druid Hills Road that includes an $8 million private contribution to greenway infrastructure. Three different funding streams, one federal and two private, are converging on the same 1.1 miles of trail because the trail is what makes the adjacent land worth redeveloping in the first place.
If you live near the Model Mile now, this is the year that isolated stretch stops being a nice amenity and starts becoming a connector. A car-free route from your neighborhood into Buckhead or onto the Beltline is a different kind of asset than a dead-end path behind a shopping center.
The Cow Is a Symptom, Not a Distraction
DeKalb County's public art initiative, officially called The Cows Are Coming, is placing one life-size fiberglass cow in each of its 12 cities, a nod to the county's history as what locals once called the Dairy Capital of Georgia, with roughly 240 independent dairies operating here before postwar development carved up the farmland. Brookhaven's call for artists opened in late August and closes September 11, 2026, just days from now. Whoever wins the commission will design and paint Brookhaven's cow to reflect, in the city's words, the community's own character and energy.
It's easy to file this under quirky local color and move on. But a city only volunteers for a whimsical countywide art project when its serious infrastructure story is already in good shape. Brookhaven isn't scrambling to fund basic services or catch up on deferred maintenance right now. It's funding a public art commission for a fiberglass cow in the same summer it locked down eight figures in federal trail money. That sequencing tells you something about where the city's attention and budget currently sit.
The Corridor Underneath It All
The same City Council that has been steering the greenway funding also approved a separate capital project in June 2026: undergrounding the utility wires along Dresden Drive. It's a smaller line item than the trail money, framed by the city as an appearance and safety upgrade for one of Brookhaven's key commercial corridors, but it fits the same pattern. Money is moving toward the corridors the city expects to carry more foot and bike traffic in the next few years, not just the ones that already do.
None of these three threads, the trail funding, the cow commission, the utility project, made a single splashy headline on their own. Put together, they describe a city in the specific, less visible phase of a long infrastructure push: the part where the planning years finally start paying out, and where a wave of smaller quality-of-life decisions rides the momentum. If you've lived in Brookhaven through the quieter years of right-of-way negotiations and environmental surveys, this is the season where you actually see it.
What to Watch For This Fall
If you want to track this without digging through council minutes, here's what will actually be visible on the ground:
- Construction staging near the North Druid Hills Road trailhead as Phase II work mobilizes
- A finished, painted cow appearing at a public location sometime after the September 11 artist deadline closes
- Utility poles along Dresden Drive gradually disappearing as the undergrounding project proceeds
Three small, unrelated-looking changes. One underlying cause: a city that spent years doing the unglamorous groundwork now has the funding, the confidence, and the calendar space to let the fun stuff show up too.
Brookhaven residents watching this unfold are getting a rare, close-up look at what a well-run municipal pipeline actually looks like when it finally clears. Whether you're walking the Model Mile every weekend or just noticing the fencing go up on your commute, it's worth knowing you're watching the payoff of a process that started back in 2019, not a sudden burst of city hall enthusiasm.
If you're curious how any of this, the greenway extension, the Northbend redevelopment, the shifting value of streets near the trail, might affect your own property or your next move in Brookhaven, Kenna Daws has been tracking this market long enough to read the sequence, not just the headline. Reach out anytime you want a local read on what's actually changing here.
