Marietta Breaks Ground on $17M Trail Linking Kennesaw Mountain to the Chattahoochee

The City of Marietta will hold a groundbreaking ceremony for Phase 1 of the Rottenwood Creek Trail on Friday, September 18 at 10:30 a.m. at the Aviation Sports Complex, located at 455 Aviation Road. The ceremony marks the formal start of construction on a three-mile trail segment that city officials describe as a roughly $17 million investment in Marietta's growing trail system.

The event was originally planned for June 4 near Alumni Drive on the Kennesaw State University-Marietta campus, but the city postponed it on June 2 due to unforeseen circumstances before resetting the ceremony for September at the Aviation Sports Complex, according to the City of Marietta, Ga., Government. Phase 1 will run from Alumni Drive east to Franklin Gateway at the Franklin Gateway Sports Complex, with city council members, staff, and residents expected to attend the September ceremony.

A Multi-Year Build Through Active Terrain

Construction won't wrap up quickly. Bid specifications for Phase 1 give the contractor up to 1,095 calendar days — three full years — to finish the three-mile segment, meaning the project could stretch to 2029 before it's fully built out, according to Richie Torrance. The route cuts through active parkland and near the KSU-Marietta campus, and environmental and site design plans show construction will disturb roughly 4.01 acres within Wildwood Park.

That footprint requires repaving a gravel parking lot, adding two new parking lots, building a new access road, and installing two stormwater detention ponds, per the city's own planning documents. The scope of work triggered federal review under USDOT Section 4(f) rules governing impacts to parkland, the same notice indicates.

Years of Funding and Planning Behind the Groundbreaking

Phase 1's roots trace back a decade. The Atlanta Regional Commission awarded $400,000 in Livable Centers Initiative transportation funding to support early engineering work on the project in 2016, illustrating the kind of long-range regional planning that underpins the trail. In 2021, the Marietta City Council passed a resolution seeking $1.5 million in state grant funding from the Georgia Outdoor Stewardship Program for construction, committing a 25.1 percent local match of $376,500.

The trail's eastern endpoint at Franklin Gateway Sports Complex is itself a product of an earlier city investment. Marietta voters approved a $68 million redevelopment bond in 2013, and the city dedicated $64 million of that bond to acquiring and demolishing blighted apartment complexes along Franklin Road, clearing space for the sports complex and nearby corporate facilities, including Atlanta United's training ground.

Connecting to a Much Larger Trail Network

Once complete, the Rottenwood Creek Trail is designed to link with the Mountain to River Trail and the Bob Callan Trail, according to the city's groundbreaking announcement. The Mountain to River Trail is a 13.5-mile corridor whose 3.5-mile Marietta segment was the subject of an activation study, conducted with the Georgia Conservancy, that won the Georgia Planning Association's 2025 Outstanding Planning Document award.

To the south, the Bob Callan Trail already stretches four miles along Rottenwood Creek from Terrell Mill Road to the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area at Paces Mill, the product of multi-phase investments completed through 2025 by the Cumberland Community Improvement District and Cobb County. A planned but not yet funded Phase 2 of the Rottenwood Creek Trail would extend south and east from Franklin Gateway, crossing Interstate 75 to the intersection of Delk and Bentley Roads, where it is designed to meet the Bob Callan Trailhead at Terrell Mill Road, according to the Cobb Courier. That segment has already secured design approval from the Georgia Department of Transportation but awaits construction funding.

Taken together, the network is envisioned as a continuous east-west, non-motorized connection bridging two major National Park Service sites — Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park and the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area — while also tying into the Silver Comet and Noonday Creek trail systems, per TrailLink. City officials say the expansion supports Marietta's Vision Statement 5, which calls for expanding and connecting the city's trail system to foster recreation opportunities and transportation alternatives. For now, though, the September 18 groundbreaking represents just the first shovelful of a project that, by the contractor's own construction window, could take years to finish.