New Atlanta Bike Park
The ceremonial shovels catch January light at Shirley Clarke Franklin Park. Ben Chestnut, the Mailchimp billionaire who wrote the $8 million check, stands beside Brett Davidson, who has spent years trying to build mountain bike trails inside Atlanta’s perimeter. Behind them, renderings on easels show pump tracks and jump lines threading through mature oak canopy. In the small crowd, some faces show excitement. Others carry quieter questions about what happens when a world-class amenity arrives in a neighborhood already watching new construction rise across the street.
This groundbreaking on January 22, 2026, marks the arrival of something Atlanta has never had: a municipal bike park accessible by public transit. It also marks a test of whether good intentions can outrun real estate math.
The Geography of Access
Metro Atlanta has a thriving mountain bike culture. Five chapters of SORBA (Southern Off-Road Bicycle Association) operate across the region. World-class trail systems at Blankets Creek and Allatoona Creek draw riders from across the Southeast. The 1996 Olympics even hosted the first-ever Olympic mountain bike race at Georgia International Horse Park.
But every single one of these systems sits outside I-285 – the perimeter highway that loops around Atlanta proper. If you live inside that loop and want to mountain bike, you drive 45 minutes minimum. If you don’t own a car, you don’t ride.
The barrier wasn’t just geography. Atlanta’s Tree Protection Ordinance is among the strictest in the country. You cannot remove trees over 2.5 inches in diameter without extensive permitting and mitigation. Early attempts to build trails inside the city hit this wall repeatedly.
“As a trail builder, I work with many different land managers including the National Park Service,” said Davidson, executive director of MTB Atlanta. “When we do trail construction, there are some restrictions, but even they have nothing like the Tree Ordinance here.”
The breakthrough came at Southside Park in 2016. Davidson’s team built Atlanta’s first urban mountain bike trails – 3 miles of singletrack without removing a single tree over 2.5 inches in diameter. It cost $175,000 for 4.25 miles of trail. Thirty thousand of that went to tree surveying alone.
That project proved trails could be built in a “city in a forest.” What it didn’t prove was that anyone would pay to build them at scale.
The Billionaire’s Mandate
In 2023, an unnamed donor approached the Atlanta Beltline with a specific vision. He was an avid mountain biker who traveled the world chasing trails. He wanted Atlanta to have pump tracks and jump lines and a signature facility that could rival anything in the country. He had one mandate: go big.
The donor was Ben Chestnut. He co-founded Mailchimp, stepped down as CEO in 2022 after Intuit’s acquisition, and now runs the Chestnut Family Foundation with his wife Teresa. The foundation focuses on improving access and choice for children.
Chestnut’s pitch came from personal experience. He spent his childhood on bikes, exploring neighborhoods, building confidence through movement. “When kids have an opportunity to explore nature, they develop a sense of independence and self-esteem that leads to later success in life,” he said in a statement. “Our hope is that this park opens the door to the sense of adventure for more kids on the Westside and across Atlanta.”
The inspiration was Bentonville, Arkansas, where Walmart heirs turned their town into the self-proclaimed “Mountain Biking Capital of the World” through aggressive trail investment. But Atlanta isn’t Bentonville. It’s urban, diverse, and dealing with gentrification pressure that turns amenities into displacement engines.
In September 2024, Chestnut made his $8 million donation public. The Coca-Cola Foundation added its own grant. Total project cost: $15 million. Still needed: $6 million.
That works out to roughly $6,667 per foot of trail. Or about what it costs to resurface a mile of interstate.
Threading the Needle
Money alone doesn’t build trails in Atlanta. You need someone who understands how to route singletrack through root systems of 100-year-old oaks without killing them.
Davidson partnered with the Atlanta Beltline to design the Westside Park bike park across 45 wooded acres in the northeast corner of the city’s largest greenspace. The site has mature tree canopy, a creek requiring bridge crossing, and topography that makes suburban trail systems look flat.
Meghan Injaychock, the Beltline’s senior landscape architect and project manager, described the challenge: “We have a lot of really large tree canopies in this part of the park. Working with city arborists, having to deal with larger root systems, it’s a very delicate balance.”
The Beltline brought in The American Ramp Company, specialists in bike park construction. They studied Bentonville but designed for Atlanta – incorporating the park’s existing “ribcage” gateway aesthetic, working around protected trees, threading trails through old-growth forest most residents don’t know exists.
The design includes 2.25 miles of mountain bike trails across skill levels: 0.37 miles for beginners, 0.67 miles of intermediate and expert gravity trails featuring rock gardens and steep drop-offs, and 1.19 miles of intermediate bidirectional trails. A separate 0.75 miles of hiking trails keeps pedestrians and bikes safely apart.
Beyond the trails: an asphalt pump track open to anything human-powered that rolls, a bicycle playground with balance beams and gentle turns, jump lines from beginner to advanced, and a skills course with narrow bridges and technical features.
Infrastructure includes an 80-car parking lot (necessary for regional draw, unfortunate for an urban park), shade structures, and security cameras everywhere except in the woods.
The construction contract went to Reeves Young. Permitting wrapped up in November 2025. Groundbreaking set for January 22, 2026. Estimated completion: early 2027, roughly one year out.
The Question Nobody Answers at Groundbreaking Ceremonies
Westside neighborhoods have been historically underserved. The park itself sits on the former Bellwood Quarry, once featured in The Walking Dead, now transformed into Atlanta’s largest greenspace. The first phase opened in 2021. New development followed.
At a community meeting, a local resident named Riley pointed across the street at new construction. “Will this additional bike trail and projects that they’re doing here – will that increase the housing costs is what I’m concerned about,” he said. “I just want people who live here in the neighborhood and the people who have been here for a long time to be able to stay here and enjoy it too.”
Rob Brawner, executive director of the Atlanta Beltline Partnership, pointed to the Legacy Resident Retention Program, which subsidizes property taxes to 2019 rates for qualifying homeowners. Currently, 250 homeowners around the western and southern Beltline corridor participate. The Beltline is fundraising to expand it.
The program is reactive, not preventative. It helps people stay after property values rise. It doesn’t stop property values from rising.
The equity pitch is genuine. The park will include adaptive mountain bikes. Access is free. It connects directly to MARTA’s Bankhead station – anyone with a train pass can ride from anywhere in the system. The skills playground targets beginners, especially children. Chris Alasa, a local resident and SORBA advocate, calls bikes “a tool of equity” that can help people get to work, travel the city, and learn independence.
Clyde Higgs, the Beltline’s CEO, frames it beyond recreation: “It’s not just about physical activity, but about creating a community hub that will create a passion for a sport that many people will enjoy for decades.”
The paradox sits in the middle of every speech. World-class amenities make neighborhoods desirable. Desirable neighborhoods attract capital. Capital displaces existing residents. Good intentions meet real estate math. Real estate math usually wins.
The Price of Legitimacy
Online commenters questioned the $15 million price tag. One wrote: “I could buy $1,500 worth of McLeods, give them to local kids, and there would be 2.25 miles of trails built before next weekend.”
The comparison isn’t entirely unfair. Rogue builders construct trails for free all the time. Some are excellent. They’re also often bulldozed, create liability issues, and lack accessibility features.
The $15 million buys professional builders specializing in bike parks, tree surveying and impact mitigation under Atlanta’s strict ordinance, engineered features like bridges and pump tracks, ADA-compliant access, stormwater management, permitting and environmental studies, and most importantly – permanence and legal protection.
Urban construction costs run higher than rural or Forest Service projects. The tree ordinance alone adds expense that doesn’t exist elsewhere. The Southside Park precedent showed that $30,000 for tree surveying on a simpler project was unavoidable.
The premium buys legitimacy. Whether it buys $15 million worth is a fair question.
What It Tests
This project matters beyond Atlanta. Most urban trail systems require cars to access. The MARTA connection at Bankhead station changes that equation. You can board a train in Brookhaven or East Point with a bike, ride to the Westside, and never touch a car. That’s what equitable access could actually look like, not in theory but in transit maps.
The tree code breakthrough matters too. If Atlanta can build quality trails under its ordinance, Portland and Austin can study the playbook. Davidson believes this sets precedent: “If we can prove that we can build singletrack in Atlanta with this tree code, we can share that plan with cities across the country.”
The private-public funding model raises its own questions. A billionaire’s passion project becomes a community resource, but it depends on individual generosity rather than systemic funding. What happens when donors lose interest? Not every city has a Mailchimp founder.
But the project shows what’s possible when vision, funding, expertise, and political will align. As one Pinkbike commenter wrote: “If every city built an urban bike park, I’d be ok with it!”
Dirt and Questions
The shovels will break ground on January 22 in red Georgia clay. Ben Chestnut will probably arrive on a bike. Brett Davidson will be thinking about tree roots. Community members will carry questions nobody wants to answer at ceremonial events.
Somewhere, a kid on the Westside will learn that mountain biking doesn’t require a 45-minute drive. Just a train ticket.
Whether that kid will still live there when the trails open in 2027 is the question nobody asks at groundbreaking ceremonies. But it’s the one that matters most – not for the first riders, but for the ones who come after, and whether they’ll recognize their own neighborhood when they arrive.
The mountain is coming to the city. The city just needs to figure out who gets to stay for it.
