By all indications, Summerhill should have a more permanent, outdoor beer-swilling option come the hot days of spring and summer.

Halfway Crooks Beer is knee-deep in constructing an upgraded beer garden behind the commercial strip the local brewery has helped bring back to life in recent years, echoing other construction projects in virtually all directions in the southside neighborhood.

The brewery opened a temporary beer garden in 2021 on a former makeshift parking lot off Georgia Avenue to help keep the business afloat during COVID-19 pandemic restrictions on indoor dining. That has closed for renovations.

Recent progress on the beer garden upgrades along Reed Street. Josh Green/Urbanize Atlanta

Josh Green/Urbanize Atlanta

Halfway Crooks’ proprietors have been teasing (in multiple languages) that the permanent biergarten is under construction and coming as soon as possible, though an exact date hasn’t been nailed down. (A recent site visit indicates a variety of shipping containers are involved; teaser images suggest a stage is also in the works.)

As before, one alluring aspect of the outdoor social space should be the mature, shade-casting elms on site.

Topped with a retractable roof on the upstairs patio, the brewery opened in summer 2019 in a beautifully weathered, two-story building that’s stood for a century on what’s now Georgia Avenue's revived commercial row. The distinctive, café-like interiors were designed by Atlanta’s Square Feet Studio.

The upgraded beer garden is the latest example of investment that’s transformed parking lots, empty buildings, and vacant parcels around Georgia Avenue into what’s essentially a functional new town adjacent to downtown Atlanta. (Soon with its own bank and major grocery option).  

The elms expected to cast shade (the good kind) on beer garden patrons. Carter

Beer garden layout and functionality. @halfwaycrooksbeer/IG

On the residential front, just east of the beer garden project, underground foundational work appears to be nearing completion on a pocket of 10 townhomes where Georgia Avenue meets Martin Street.

Find a closer look at that project here.

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