If you've ever tried to ride from Avalon to the Big Creek Greenway without touching a car, you already know exactly where the pavement runs out. You cross Old Milton Parkway, maybe cut through a parking lot near Northwinds, and eventually give up and ride on the shoulder of North Point Parkway until the Greenway's tree line finally shows up on your right. It's not dangerous, just annoying, and it's been that way since the Alpha Loop's first stretch opened between Avalon and Downtown Alpharetta back in April 2020.
That gap just got a price tag. The Alpharetta City Council approved close to $16 million for a connector called the Alpha Link, which will finally tie the Alpha Loop into the Big Creek Greenway on a continuous off-road path, according to CBS Atlanta. If you already live here and use either trail on a regular basis, that's real news. What's less obvious, and worth understanding before you start planning your commute around it, is that this connector is really two separate projects moving on two separate schedules, funded by two different parties, and only one of them has a date you can actually circle on a calendar.
The Gap Every Regular Already Knows
The Alpha Loop today runs about 6 miles, linking Downtown Alpharetta, Avalon, and Northwinds. The most recent piece of it, a segment connecting Old Milton Parkway to Northwinds Parkway, opened June 1, 2024. Meanwhile the Big Creek Greenway carries more than 12 miles through Alpharetta on its own, part of a wooded, creek-side network that continues into Roswell and Forsyth County.
Both trails get heavy daily use. The Loop functions as a social corridor through the city's densest mixed-use blocks, the kind of place where a morning run turns into a hallway conversation because you keep passing the same neighbors. The Greenway does something different. It's the quieter, tree-canopied option for people who want thirty minutes away from traffic noise rather than thirty minutes next to a Kona Grill patio.
The problem is that these two trail cultures have never actually touched. To get from one to the other on foot or by bike, you leave the trail network entirely and share a road with cars for a stretch. That's the specific gap the Alpha Link is meant to close.
What the City Actually Approved
According to the city's announcement, the Alpha Link will extend from the Alpha Loop near Morrison Lake, behind the Lakeview development, to the Big Creek Greenway at a new access point called Encore Gateway, near Encore Parkway and North Point Parkway. The project is being funded through a mix of TSPLOST II transportation sales tax revenue, the city's parks bond, and impact fees collected from new development.
Construction is expected to take about 18 and a half months once it starts. The city's announcement did not include a start date. That last detail matters more than it sounds like it should, because the destination end of this connector is already under construction on a completely different timeline.
Two Projects, One Trail, Two Clocks
Here's the part that gets flattened into a single "opening soon" headline everywhere else this story runs. The Alpha Link and the Encore Gateway are not the same project, and they are not tracking together.
| Alpha Link Connector | Encore Greenway Park and Gateway | |
|---|---|---|
| What it does | Physically links the Alpha Loop to the Big Creek Greenway | Builds the plaza and Greenway entrance point at Fanfare Way and Encore Parkway |
| Who's paying | TSPLOST II funds, city parks bond, impact fees | True North 400 contributing $977,411, in partnership with the city |
| Construction status | Approved, no start date announced | Underway since February 2025 |
| Target completion | About 18.5 months after construction begins | December 2026, per True North 400 |
The Encore Gateway, the plaza you'll actually walk into once you cross from the Loop side, has been under construction since February 2025 and is on track for a December 2026 finish. The Alpha Link itself, the piece that gets you there, was just approved and hasn't broken ground. With 18.5 months of construction still ahead of it once it starts, and no start date on the books yet, the connector has a real chance of trailing the plaza's opening by a year or more.
If you're the kind of resident who's been eyeing this project as a reason to finally sell your bike rack for a real garage setup, don't circle December on the calendar just yet. The finished-looking end of the trail and the actual connection between the two trail systems are not the same milestone.
Why a Private Developer Is Paying for Part of This
The $977,411 from True North 400 isn't charity. True North 400 is already partnering with the city on the Encore Greenway Park and Gateway itself, the plaza and trail entrance sitting at Fanfare Way and Encore Parkway, which means the amenity it's funding opens directly onto ground it has a stake in. Paying to finish a Greenway gateway that borders your own project is a way of making sure that amenity gets built on your timeline, not the city's.
That's also why the money for the harder, longer piece, the actual stretch of new trail connecting Morrison Lake to Encore Gateway, is coming from public sources instead. TSPLOST II and the parks bond are general infrastructure dollars, spread across projects with no single developer standing to gain directly. Impact fees, collected specifically from new construction to fund the public infrastructure that construction requires, round out the mix. The split tells you something simple: the destination got fast-tracked by a private stakeholder with a direct interest, while the connector itself is competing for attention and funding against every other capital project on the city's list.
What Actually Changes for Your Loop
Assume for a moment the connector does get built on a reasonable timeline. What changes day to day?
Right now, the Alpha Loop crowd and the Big Creek Greenway crowd are functionally two different groups of people who happen to live in the same city. Once the Alpha Link opens, someone starting a run at Avalon could, for the first time, stay on dedicated trail the entire way to the Greenway's wooded stretch near North Point, without crossing a single traffic lane to do it. That's a genuinely different kind of morning than what's available today.
It also sets up the next phase the city has already flagged. Beyond the Alpha Link, Alpharetta's longer-term plan includes extending the Loop to the North Point Mall area and eventually to a proposed MARTA Bus Rapid Transit station on GA 400 near the mall. None of that has funding attached yet. But it means the Alpha Link isn't the finish line for this network, it's the piece that makes the rest of the extension worth building, because it's the first link that actually stitches the city's two biggest trail systems into one continuous loop instead of two separate ones that happen to share a zip code.
For residents who already treat these trails as part of their daily routine, the honest takeaway is patience paired with attention. The money is real. The route is specific: Morrison Lake to Encore Gateway, behind Lakeview, near Encore Parkway and North Point Parkway. The completion date most people will read in a headline this year belongs to the plaza, not the connector. Watch for a construction start date on the Alpha Link itself before you assume the gap between your two favorite trails is actually gone.
If you're weighing how a project like this affects long-term value in the neighborhoods it touches, whether you're already living the trail life in Alpharetta or thinking ahead to your next move, the team at David Huang Group tracks this kind of local infrastructure closely because it shapes how these streets actually live day to day. Schedule a Free Market Consultation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
