For most of the last four years, the six-level parking deck at 1350 Dresden Drive sat half full and the plaza next to it was a construction laydown yard behind orange fencing. If you drove past on your way to the Brookhaven-Oglethorpe MARTA station, you got used to seeing cranes and tarps rather than tables and umbrellas. This spring that changed. The fencing came down, the plaza got a name, and this week, two blocks away on Apple Valley Road, a second and entirely unrelated opening lands on the same stretch of pavement.
Neither of these things happened because a plan finally worked out on schedule. They happened on two completely different timelines that only now, in August 2026, are running in the same block at the same time.
Parkside on Dresden, the $70 million mixed-use project from Atlanta developer Connolly, broke ground in summer 2022 on a four-acre site between Caldwell Road and Parkside Drive. When the project's first tenant lineup was announced in November 2023, the target completion date was fall 2024. That date came and went. The project wasn't declared finished until this spring, when Connolly held a dedication ceremony for Woodley Plaza, the new public greenspace at the center of the development, named for Dan Woodley, described by project officials as the pioneer of the Dresden Drive corridor.
That's close to a year and a half past the original promise, which matters if you've been half-ignoring the "coming soon" signs for so long you stopped believing them. The apartments above the retail, a 176-unit community called Solis Dresden Village with seven attached townhomes built by Terwilliger Pappas, are occupied now too, and the six-level parking deck that once looked oversized for a half-built block is doing the job it was built for.
Connolly's director of development, Meghan Schmidt, described the intent behind the project back when it was still steel and rendering: "our vision for Parkside on Dresden has always been to build upon the existing energy along Brookhaven's Dresden Drive." The interesting part isn't whether that vision panned out. It's that it took roughly eighteen months longer to arrive than anyone said it would, which is worth knowing if you're the kind of resident who plans a Friday night around whether a place is actually open or just leased.
Here's the current, real lineup at Parkside on Dresden, not the 2023 announcement version:
| Name | What it is | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Confab Kitchen and Bar | European-style kitchen and bar | From longtime local operator Doug Gross, with a patio facing the new plaza |
| Honeysuckle Gelato | Gelato, milkshakes, gelato sandwiches | This is the brand's fourth metro Atlanta location |
| Café Vendôme | French pastry bakery and café | Croissants, quiches, sandwiches, a Parisian-style café menu |
| Clean Juice Brookhaven | Organic juice and smoothie bar | USDA-certified organic, part of a national franchise |
| El Valle | Contemporary Mexican, seated dining with a patio | Second metro Atlanta location for the concept, from Mi Casa Tu Casa Hospitality Group, which also runs Oaxaca in Chamblee, Hábitat Kitchen & Bar in Buckhead, and Casa Balam in Decatur |
| MIRAE | Modern Asian, Korean and Japanese influences | A new-to-market concept with an extensive craft bar |
The thing that separates this list from a typical "coming soon" roundup is that every one of these operators already runs a kitchen somewhere else. El Valle's first location earned a "Best Mexican Restaurant" nod from Atlanta Magazine before it ever set foot in Brookhaven. Honeysuckle Gelato had three other scoops shops before this one. None of this is a bet on an unproven concept. It's an entire block of operators who'd already figured out their menu somewhere else first, then decided Dresden Drive was worth a second address.
While Parkside on Dresden was working through years of construction, a completely separate part of Brookhaven's dining scene grew without a groundbreaking ceremony or a six-level parking deck. Restaurateur Michel Arnette has run Arnette's Chop Shop on Apple Valley Road for a while now, alongside three other concepts under his Word of Mouth Restaurants group: Haven, Valenza, and Vero Pizzeria. Haven's weekend brunch, known locally as Saxy Saturdays, runs with a live saxophone player through the late morning.
This week, on August 18, Arnette opens SIREN right next door to Chop Shop, at 2700 Apple Valley Road NE. It's a coastal seafood concept from chefs Stephen Herman and Matt Swickerath, built around oysters, crudo, raw bar selections, and wood-fired cooking, with a dining room styled around Tom Dixon lighting and a bubble wall. It's open Tuesday through Saturday, 5 to 10 p.m.
There was no four-acre site plan for this one. No developer press release two years in advance. An operator with an existing, working restaurant simply built the next concept in the space beside it. That's a fundamentally different growth pattern than what happened at Parkside on Dresden, and it landed in the same week the bigger project finally finished catching up to its own announcement.
If you're picturing one walkable strip where you can hit six restaurants without moving your car, that's not quite Dresden Drive right now. Parkside on Dresden sits at 1350 Dresden Drive, a short walk from the Brookhaven-Oglethorpe MARTA platform, with its own dedicated six-level deck. The Arnette cluster on Apple Valley Road is its own separate pocket, a few blocks removed, with street parking rather than a structured deck.
Both are real, both are open, and both finished growing on their own clock without any coordination with each other. If you're planning a night out around either one, know you're picking a destination, not wandering between two.
One more piece of the corridor worth knowing about if you walk or run regularly: the Peachtree Creek Greenway's original 1.3-mile stretch, known locally as the Model Mile, has been open since December 2019, running from North Druid Hills Road to Briarwood Road with three trailhead parking lots, benches, lighting, and dog waste stations along the way.
Phase II, which will extend the trail southwest from North Druid Hills Road down to the Atlanta city line, cleared federal environmental review in 2024 and is scheduled to begin construction sometime in 2026, with an expected build time of about two years. The city recently secured $13.5 million in federal funding to help complete it. Mayor John Park framed the project as being about creating connections between our neighborhoods, our businesses, and our region.
Practically, that means residents who use the Model Mile for a daily walk should expect construction activity somewhere along that southwestern stretch this year, well before the eventual payoff of a connection through to PATH400 and the Atlanta Beltline.
Dresden Drive isn't becoming a main street. As of this month, it already has two of them, running on two different clocks that happen to overlap right now. One took four years longer than promised and finally has its ribbon cut. The other opened next door to itself without ever needing a promise in the first place.
Margaret Sallee works this stretch of Brookhaven closely enough to track which projects are actually finished and which are still just fencing and renderings. If you have questions about how any of this touches your own street or your own plans in the neighborhood, reach out to Margaret Sallee to start the conversation.
Whether buying or selling, Margaret represents each of her clients with a high degree of professionalism and personalized care that delivers optimal results.