Downtown Atlanta is getting its own neighborhood festival

Come next month, downtown Atlanta is planning to do its best impression of Inman Park in the springtime. Sort of.

Riding a wave of post-lockdown development momentum and pre-World Cup hype, Atlanta’s original urban neighborhood is bringing back its own version of a localized festival and tour of homes for the first time in more than a decade, organizers tell Urbanize Atlanta.

The Atlanta Downtown Neighborhood Association plans to host the return of the Downtown Festival and Tour of Lofts at locations throughout the district on November 12 and 13.

The main event will take place at Underground Atlanta, beginning at 11 a.m. that Saturday and noon on Sunday. It’s free and open to all ages, though tickets to the loft tour cost $25 per person each day. Expect live music, food and drink, and a kids zone.

DeJon Tebought, an ADNA board member and festival promoter, said the celebration hasn’t been active since 2010, when it was held on Broad Street next to downtown’s Flatiron Building. The loft tour has been paused since 2019, when featured homes included adaptive-reuse apartments at Centennial Yards South as construction was underway.

“Underground will be fully open as usual [for the festival], and hopefully we’ll have all normal tenants active that day as well as shows happening at the Masquerade later that evening, separate from us,” Tebought wrote in an email.  

The festival’s roots trace back to May 2002, when it was held in downtown’s Fairlie-Poplar Historic District. It later moved to locations such as Woodruff Park and parking lots on West Peachtree Street.  

The festival expects to directly benefit from the presence of major development firms now rooted downtown, as sponsors include movers-and-shakers such as CIM Group, Newport RE, Centennial Yards Company, and Underground Atlanta’s Lalani Ventures.

The event’s official beer sponsor, Atlanta Beer Company, doesn’t have a firm opening date yet for its 8,600-square-foot, indoor-outdoor brewery on Underground’s Upper Alabama Street, but “we would hope that [they] can do some kind of soft launch,” noted Tebought.

As an added, festive bonus, Tebought said the Indie Craft Experience will be hosting its “Holiday Shopping Spectacular” across the street from Underground at the Georgia Freight Depot on the same days.

Stops on the Downtown Tour of Lofts will include condos, historic lofts, apartments, under-construction projects, and penthouses, with décor ranging from traditional to exotic, per organizers.

Find more info on tour tickets, volunteer opportunities, and other details here.

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