For years, a Saturday in Brookhaven meant driving between the pieces. Blackburn Park for the festival, Town Brookhaven for the errand, somewhere off Peachtree for dinner, and the Greenway on its own island south of Buford Highway. This fall is the first one where those pieces sit close enough together that a car is optional for most of the day. The reason is Dresden Drive, which spent most of the last four years under construction fencing and now, as of late April, is fully open for business.
What actually changed this spring
Atlanta-based developer Connolly declared its $70 million Parkside on Dresden venture complete on Brookhaven's Dresden Drive after breaking ground in summer 2022, with five more tenant signings meaning all 28,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space at the project's main building is now 100 percent claimed. The final lineup skews toward all-day use rather than destination dining, which matters for how the corridor actually functions on a weekend.
The tenants residents will run into most:
- Confab Kitchen and Bar, a 3,600-square-foot restaurant with a patio adjacent to the new plaza
- El Valle, a second metro Atlanta location for the Mexican restaurant, with a wine list leaning Latin American
- Honeysuckle Gelato and Café Vendôme for the morning-and-afternoon slots
- Clean Juice Brookhaven at 1,100 square feet next to the park
- MIRAE at 4,959 square feet with a 953-square-foot patio, the largest of the tenants
- F45 Training Brookhaven for the pre-brunch crowd
Spread across 4 acres, Parkside on Dresden includes a residential component called Solis Dresden Village, which features 176 luxury apartments and seven townhomes built by Terwilliger Pappas. One perk of the 1350 Dresden Drive location is walkability to the Brookhaven-Oglethorpe MARTA station.
The park itself is worth naming. Connolly and City of Brookhaven officials planned a park dedication event April 25 for Woodley Plaza, a city-owned greenspace named in honor of Dan Woodley, considered the "pioneer of the Dresden Drive corridor." It is small, but it gives the corridor a middle. Before this spring, Dresden did not have one.
A Saturday that doesn't leave the neighborhood
Here is the practical shift. A fall Saturday in Brookhaven now has a natural spine that runs east from the MARTA station along Dresden, and the rhythm looks something like this:
- Coffee at Café Vendôme, or a class at F45 if that is the morning.
- A short drive or a longer walk over to Brookhaven Park for whatever is happening on Peachtree Road that weekend.
- Back to Dresden for lunch at El Valle or Confab, with the patio open through most of October.
- Peachtree Creek Greenway for an afternoon walk before the light drops.
- Dinner and a gelato back on Dresden, then MARTA home if you took it in.
None of these are new individually. What is new is that the middle three used to require choosing one and skipping the others. The corridor is now dense enough to hold a full day.
The October weekend to plan around
If a resident circles one date on the fall calendar, it should probably be the middle of October. The Brookhaven International Festival is a free two-day event featuring an international vendor market, a kid's zone, vendors serving international cuisine, and music and dance performances that are culturally representative of the diverse ethnicities in Brookhaven and the region, running Saturday and Sunday, 11am to 6pm. This year's festival will take place at Brookhaven Park, 4158 Peachtree Rd NE in Brookhaven. The dates are October 17 and 18.
The festival has always been the fall counterweight to the Cherry Blossom Festival in the spring, but its scale has grown enough that parking near Brookhaven Park gets thin by mid-morning. The workaround this year is Dresden. Park near the MARTA station, walk the Parkside stretch first, then take the short hop up Peachtree to the festival in the afternoon when the food tents are at their best.
Two openings worth knowing about
Two names have surfaced in the last few months that are still under most residents' radar.
The first is Unkie's Pizza and Bar. Restaurant industry veterans Richard Gazaway and Michael Colombo, who met two decades ago working together at Vintage Pizzeria, are partnering to open Unkie's Pizza and Bar at 3400 Clairmont Road, Suite A, in Brookhaven. Gazaway and Colombo found the spot, formerly home to The Greek Pizzeria & Gyros. The second phase of opening, slated for spring, will include a full bar and additional menu items including sandwiches and appetizers, with the team building out the bar space and revamping the patio during phase one. Worth going now, worth going again in spring.
The second is quieter but useful for the school-run set. Beyond Juicery + Eatery opened a new location in Brookhaven on July 25, 2026, the brand's third Georgia location. It opens Monday through Saturday from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Sundays from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., serving fresh fruit smoothies, superfood bowls, wraps, sandwiches, and salads. Not a destination. A weekday-morning workhorse.
The Greenway, and what is finally happening with Phase II
The Peachtree Creek Greenway has been Brookhaven's most-used, most-orphaned piece of infrastructure. Phase I stretches from North Druid Hills Road west to Briarwood Road, engineered and built by the PATH Foundation, and opened to regional acclaim on December 12, 2019, immediately becoming known as the "model mile." The trail features a fully paved walkway, shaded areas, and public art installations, and is well-lit and equipped with security cameras. Three trailheads have parking: 2036 North Druid Hills Rd., 1801 Corporate Blvd., and 1799 Briarwood Rd.
For six years, the answer to "when does it connect to anything" has been "eventually." That changed in May. The City of Brookhaven has scored $13.5 million in federal funding to complete Phase II of its "signature infrastructure project," the Peachtree Creek Greenway, after the Atlanta Regional Commission voted to award the funding. The scope of Phase II calls for extending the current Peachtree Creek Greenway from North Druid Hills Road down to Atlanta city limits, where the greenway would link to PATH400, the Atlanta Beltline's Northeast Trail, and South Fork Conservancy Trails.
Practically, a fall walk this year is still the 1.3-mile out-and-back. But the calculation for anyone who cares about walkability in this part of the city just changed. The trail behind Corporate Square is no longer a dead end waiting for something to happen. It is a funded connection to the Beltline.
"The [greenway] has always been about creating connections between our neighborhoods, our businesses, and our region," Mayor John Park said in the announcement.
If you are hosting out-of-towners this fall
The old answer was Buckhead or the Beltline. The updated answer, if the visit lands on a festival weekend, is to keep the day tight and local. Morning on the Greenway from the North Druid Hills trailhead, lunch on Dresden with a walk through Woodley Plaza, and the International Festival at Brookhaven Park in the afternoon. Dinner back on Dresden or over at C&S Seafood, which has held its ground on the corridor since well before Parkside broke earth.
The point is not that Brookhaven has more restaurants than it used to. The point is that the neighborhood finally has a middle. For most of the last decade, the density was concentrated at Town Brookhaven, and everything else was a detour. Dresden Drive is now the second pole. Between the two, the fall calendar has a shape it did not have a year ago.
Ready when you are
If this fall has you thinking about the next chapter in Brookhaven, whether that is a move within the neighborhood or a first look at the market from farther out, AllenCo Homes is happy to walk the corridor with you. Explore what is currently available in the Brookhaven neighborhood, or request a free home valuation if you are weighing what your current home would bring in today's market.
