Ask a Brookhaven resident where the neighborhood's center is and the answer used to come with a shrug and a gesture toward Town Brookhaven. That answer is quietly becoming wrong. Over the last four months, a $70 million project wrapped on Dresden Drive, a new city park opened between its buildings, a federal check cleared for the trail that will eventually connect the neighborhood to the BeltLine, and three restaurants opened within a fifteen-minute walk of one another. If you have been out of town since Memorial Day, the walkable core of Brookhaven has meaningfully rearranged itself in your absence.
The point of this post is not to list what is new. The point is to say what the sum of it means for a Saturday.
The Dresden Drive You Knew, And The One You Have Now
The stretch of Dresden between Peachtree Road and Camille Drive has been the city's designated entertainment district since 2024, when Brookhaven approved an open-container area allowing patrons to legally carry alcoholic beverages on the street from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. On paper, that made Dresden a walkable corridor. In practice, it was still a street with gaps in it. The retail mix was thin between anchors, and the block where Parkside on Dresden was rising sat behind construction fence for most of three years.
That fence is down. Developer Connolly declared the $70 million Parkside on Dresden venture complete in April 2026, with all 28,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space at the project's main building 100 percent claimed. The address is 1350 Dresden Drive, roughly a five-minute walk from the Brookhaven-Oglethorpe MARTA station. What used to be a hole in the streetwall is now the densest concentration of new-to-Brookhaven concepts the neighborhood has seen in a decade.
A Walking Map Of What Actually Opened
Rather than a marketing list, here is what a resident is likely to encounter walking Parkside on Dresden from Woodley Plaza outward, with the operator context that tells you whether it is worth a stop:
- Confab Kitchen and Bar occupies 3,600 square feet with a patio facing the new park. Inspired by the dining culture of Europe, Confab is a gathering place designed for people to eat, drink, and converse around food, beer, wine, and spirits, and is a new concept in metro Atlanta from local restaurant operator Doug Gross.
- MIRAE is the largest of the restaurants at Parkside, a modern Asian concept blending Korean and Japanese flavors with a 5,000-square-foot patio at the corner of Dresden and Parkside Drives.
- Café Vendôme handles the morning trade with French pastries, breads, coffee, sandwiches, and quiches.
- Honeysuckle Gelato anchors the after-dinner walk to Woodley Plaza.
- Green's Fine Foods stocks Georgia pecans, gourmet chocolate, and handmade confections, aimed at the hostess-gift shopper.
- El Valle is a second Brookhaven location for the Mexican concept, adding Latin wines to the mix.
- Balanced Aesthetics + Wellness, F45 Training, Stretch Lab, Brookhaven Dance, and Sugar Coat round out the daytime services layer that gives a mixed-use building its foot traffic between meals.
A block east on Clairmont, at 3400 Clairmont Road, Suite A, Richard Gazaway and Michael Colombo, who met two decades ago working together at Vintage Pizzeria, opened Unkie's Pizza and Bar in the former Greek Pizzeria and Gyros space. The second phase, slated for spring, added a full bar and appetizers, with the team building out the bar space and revamping the patio during phase one. The name is a family nickname, which is either charming or beside the point depending on your feelings about the pizza. The pizza is worth the trip.
Further into the neighborhood, Beyond Juicery + Eatery opened a new Brookhaven location on July 25, 2026, its third Georgia location, with weekday hours from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. That is the smoothie-and-bowl option to keep in your mental file for Sunday morning after a long Saturday.
Woodley Plaza, And Why The Park Matters More Than The Storefronts
The retail is the visible half of Parkside. The half that will matter more in six months is the greenspace inside it. Connolly and the City of Brookhaven dedicated Woodley Plaza on April 25, naming the city-owned greenspace for Dan Woodley, whom development officials describe as a pioneer of the Dresden Drive corridor.
The plaza is a city-owned greenspace with a stage and gathering areas adjacent to the new buildings. Which is to say: it is programmable. A city that already produces the 2025 Cherry Blossom Festival, which drew 61,000 attendees at Blackburn Park, now has a second, smaller, walkable venue two blocks off Peachtree Road. Expect the small-format concerts, film nights, and holiday markets to migrate. The economic logic of Parkside is built on that assumption. Connolly's CEO framed the project as designed to support an all-day consumer, from morning fitness and coffee to evening dining and entertainment, with the public park as a built-in driver for foot traffic.
The Rule Nobody Reads Until They Get Stopped
If you are new to the Dresden District open-container rule, the specifics matter more than the concept. Drinks have to be purchased from a participating restaurant or bar. Alcoholic beverages must be in a clear Dresden Alcohol Cup with the business logo and sticker; distilled spirits are capped at 12 fluid ounces, and malt beverages or wine at 16 fluid ounces. The window runs 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., and the geography is Peachtree Road to Camille Drive. Carry your cocktail past Camille or past 10 p.m., and it is no longer a cocktail, it is an open container.
That is the kind of detail that separates a resident from a visitor. Now you know.
The Trail That Turned Real In May
Phase I of the Peachtree Creek Greenway, the "Model Mile," has been open since December 2019. The only finished section extends 1.1 miles from North Druid Hills Road to Briarwood Road, with no shortage of nature and creek views, and one large sweeping bridge in between. Locals have used it. Most have also wondered, out loud, when it would actually go anywhere.
May gave an answer. The Atlanta Regional Commission voted to award $13,593,489 in federal funding to complete Phase II of the Peachtree Creek Greenway, advancing the long-standing regional vision for connectivity along the Buford Highway corridor in partnership with the Georgia Department of Transportation. Phase II extends the current trail from North Druid Hills Road down to the Atlanta city limits, where it links to PATH400, the Atlanta BeltLine's Northeast Trail, and South Fork Conservancy Trails. Per Senator Jon Ossoff's office, the funding was secured through the bipartisan infrastructure law.
Phase III, which will run the trail eastward from Briarwood to the Chamblee city line, is in design. The Brookhaven City Council committed about $28,000 in January 2026 to evaluate a third alternative alignment for Phase III, in response to concerns from apartment residents raised at a September 2025 community meeting. That is a longer conversation. But the near-term reality is that the trail Brookhaven has been building in pieces since 2019 now has a fully funded next chapter, with cross-jurisdictional design partners in place.
What A Weekend Actually Looks Like Now
Put the pieces together and the summer weekend has a shape it did not have last year. Coffee at Café Vendôme, an hour on the Model Mile from the North Druid Hills trailhead, a late lunch at MIRAE on the Parkside patio, gelato at Honeysuckle on the walk back to the car, dinner at Confab if you never left. Or Unkie's on Clairmont if the mood is pizza. Or a Beyond Juicery bowl on Sunday to make peace with all of it.
For the calendar-minded, the anchor is still Blackburn Park. The Cherry Blossom 5K is a certified Peachtree Road Race qualifier and a fundraiser for Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, which is a spring event, not a summer one, but worth registering for now if the fall training plan is starting to take shape.
The Through-Line
The story of Brookhaven in 2026 is not one restaurant, one park, or one trail. It is that the pieces are starting to talk to each other. A pedestrian district with legal open containers is only useful if there is somewhere to walk between; Parkside gave it that. A trail is only useful if it connects to other trails; the May ARC vote gave it that. A neighborhood becomes a place when the individual improvements stop feeling like separate press releases and start feeling like the same afternoon.
For residents, that afternoon is now available. The version of Brookhaven you moved into is no longer the version you live in.
If you own a home here and are curious what all of this compounding street-level change means for your property, or if you know someone considering an in-town move and want a candid read on the corridor, Erin Yabroudy & Associates is glad to talk. Request a private market consultation at your convenience.