Georgia’s first indoor track, field facility pitched for Summerhill

Transformative growth and investment along Summerhill’s Georgia Avenue could be heading east in the near future. 

Atlanta Track Club and Atlanta Public Schools have teamed up to compile a pitch for a project called the Cheney Olympic Legacy Complex, which would be the first indoor facility in Georgia dedicated to track and field. 

Situated next to Phoenix II Park, the site is just east of shops, restaurants, and well over 1,000 new homes that have transformed Georgia Avenue’s formerly ghostly commercial blocks over the past decade. 

Today the 16.5 acres in question, all owned by APS, are the surviving 1996 Centennial Olympic Games warmup site for track and field. A renovated outdoor track that Atlanta Track Club has programmed since 2017 will remain in place. 

Atlanta Track Club is scheduled to present its plans to the Grant Park Neighborhood Association during a monthly meeting Tuesday evening. [UPDATE: 12:55 a.m., July 21: GPNA officials send word the Atlanta Track Club is no longer scheduled to present at this week's meeting, as a monthly meeting agenda had indicated.] 

Atlanta Track Club officials say the project will include offices for their new headquarters while also offering amenities to the community and APS. 

Specifically, plans call for a new 200-meter indoor track, a STEM Center, “healthcare offerings,” a shared 8,757-square-foot community space along Georgia Avenue, a 3,400-square-foot space for “run specialty retail,” and an overlook of the current, 400-meter outdoor track to the south.

Site plans also call for transforming current streets cutting around the park (Bass and Ami streets) into pedestrian ways. 

Just west of the current track, plans show a surface parking lot for staff and the general public with an unspecified number of vehicle spaces, which a source says isn’t sitting well with neighborhood leadership nearby. 

The project’s FAQ section does note the parking lot will “sit behind building frontage and tree buffers [and be] held away from the street and residents.” For special events with larger parking needs, plans call for using Georgia State University’s Purple Lot. 

Atlanta Track Club officials say the facility will be modeled after a well-known urban indoor facility, The Armory Track in New York City’s Washington Heights, with a goal of bringing its year-round model to the South, in “the heart of a dense neighborhood.”

Another goal is to attract NCAA Championships and collegiate conference events, high school invitationals, and youth competitions and practices to the facility’s “state-of-the-art, hydraulic 200-meter oval” while maintaining an “access commitment to the neighborhood,” per the athletic organization. 

Time appears to be of the essence for the Summerhill project. 

A community engagement process that started last month is scheduled to run through July. The APS Board of Education is expected to consider the project sometime in August. If approved at that stage, Atlanta Track Club officials say they’ll aim to have a Definitive Agreement in place by the end of September. 

For now, Atlanta Track Club officials are seeking input from anyone who cares to chime in over here. 

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