The Stitch nets $1 million in federal funding

The Stitch, a plan to cap part of the Downtown Connector in Atlanta, has secured $1.16 million in federal funding, thanks to a Community Project Funding request made by U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams.

What's The Stitch? The ambitious project would install 14 acres of greenspace-topped platform above the connector between the Civic Center MARTA Center at West Peachtree Street and Piedmont Avenue.

• Central Atlanta Project estimates completing The Stitch will cost around $300 million.

Why it matters: The Stitch, according to Central Atlanta Progress, would bridge the "long-standing physical separation characterized by large-scale infrastructure, noise, pollution, and flooding in the community created by the construction of a 16-lane interstate highway."

• When transportation officials in Georgia and elsewhere in the country built the interstate highway system, they directed part of the route through predominantly Black neighborhoods.
• The construction of the highway system disrupted businesses and created barriers that permanently changed the look and feel of those neighborhoods.
• Williams said in a statement that the project would undo "60 years of injustice."

Yes, and: Jack Cebe, The Stitch’s development manager, also said in a statement the project would also include more than 3,000 affordable housing units, enhance the Civic Center MARTA Station and revamp existing streets to make them more pedestrian and bicycle friendly.

Zoom out: The Stitch isn’t the only interstate-topping idea floating around Atlanta. One plan, the Midtown Connector Project, would cap the interstate with more than 17 acres of greenspace between 10th Street and North Avenue.

• To the north, the Buckhead Community Improvement District is also exploring its HUB404 proposal. The proposal would top Ga. 400 with a nine-acre park between Peachtree and Lenox roads.