Behind Broad Street Fast Lube, an old railroad trestle crosses over St. Elmo Avenue. The new Alton Park Connector starts on that rail grade and slopes down to street level, where it meets the Tennessee Riverwalk. Since a ribbon-cutting on October 9, it has been a paved path with new trees and lights along West 33rd Street.
The name points toward Alton Park, but the trail doesn't reach it yet. The open path ends at DeLong Street, near the Borough 33 apartments. The part through Alton Park still requires cleanup of contaminated land, stormwater work and a crossing under Alton Park Boulevard. Meanwhile, the end that opened first runs straight into one of the busiest construction areas in South Chattanooga.
The Route, Start to Dead End
The city-built section is just under half a mile long. It follows West 33rd Street from St. Elmo Avenue to Borough 33, the Chattanooga Times Free Press reported on opening day. Past Borough 33, an earlier path built with that development adds about a third of a mile and ends at DeLong Street. Together, the two pieces add up to a little less than a mile.
Heading inland from the river, the route goes like this:
- Start on the Riverwalk along St. Elmo Avenue. The City of Chattanooga's Riverwalk page lists the nearest named access point as the Wheland Foundry trailhead at 1503 Middle Street. The city's Riverpark page also lists a Bike Chattanooga station there.
- Turn up the short connector just south of Broad Street Fast Lube. It runs behind the business and climbs to the old rail grade where the trestle crosses St. Elmo Avenue.
- Cross South Broad Street on the new brick crosswalk. It was built for people on foot and on bikes, and Chattanoogan.com reported it finished in the spring, before the rest of the section opened.
- Follow West 33rd Street past Borough 33. This piece opened first, across the road from Broad Street Fast Lube next to a large apartment complex.
- Stop at DeLong Street. This is the current dead end.
Turning around at DeLong puts you back on the Riverwalk with two directions to choose from. South goes toward St. Elmo. North goes toward the Foundry District and Erlanger Park. The ballpark opened on April 15, 2026, and Erlanger Park says the Riverwalk runs right through it. Creature Comforts runs its beer garden in the repurposed Shed next to the stadium, at 2666 Pipe Way.
Why the Trail Opened at the River End
The connector opened in this order because of which pieces were cheapest and simplest to build first.
The Trust for Public Land bought the original rail bed in 2018 and has managed design and construction since then. When finished, the project will turn 1.3 miles of that former rail line into a multi-use path, according to TPL's announcement of the opening. Following the rail corridor also kept the trail out of the area around Chattanooga Creek, where cleanup would have cost much more.
In May, contractor Kane Industries asked to add $650,000 to its contract after crews found "larger quantities of foundry sand" than expected, which brought landfill disposal fees with it. Foundry sand is what you would expect to find on a rail line that served a part of town named for its foundries.
Private development also shaped the order. Borough 33 is J.A. Fielden's 20-acre South Broad project: 310 apartments in three buildings, plus townhomes and retail, completed in 2022. Its developers built the path from DeLong to Broad themselves, and they also contributed to the city's section. That made the gap between the Borough 33 path and the Riverwalk the logical next piece to build.
| Segment | Where it runs | Who paid | Status this fall |
|---|---|---|---|
| Borough 33 path | DeLong Street to Broad Street, about a third of a mile | Built as part of the Borough 33 development | Open |
| City-built phase | Broad Street crossing to the Riverwalk at St. Elmo Avenue | $500,000 TDEC grant, city capital funds, Borough 33 developers | Open since Oct. 9, 2026 |
| Next phase | DeLong Street to Southside Community Park | $6.4 million federal HUD appropriation | In design and environmental permitting |
| Clifton Hills trail | Southside Community Park to Clifton Hills Elementary | Was part of a $20 million EPA grant | On hold since the grant was canceled |
The Times Free Press put the cost of the city-built phase at just over $2 million. City Council member Raquetta Dotley and Alton Park community advocate Maria Noel cut the ribbon on Broad Street.
The Crossing at 33rd and Broad Is About to Get Busy
The brick crosswalk on South Broad sits at one corner of a five-acre site where a much bigger project is underway. Station 33 is a $130 million development at South Broad and 33rd streets. Plans call for five buildings with about 500,000 square feet of homes, offices and shops, plus a food hall, a restaurant and a 120-room Aloft hotel, the Times Free Press reported after the August groundbreaking. Barbera Development leads the project with The Kinsey Company, and completion is targeted for fall 2028.
Up the Riverwalk at the Foundries, more construction is planned. New City Properties, working with EBSCO Real Estate and Sweetwater Holdings, has planned a $100 million, six-story building with about 287 homes directly north of Erlanger Park. It will sit next to the left-field concourse and the Riverwalk. Chattanoogan.com reported a groundbreaking scheduled for November 13, with completion expected in fall 2028.
So the open part of the connector links two large projects along South Broad, both expected to finish in 2028. Maria Noel made that connection herself at the opening. She told the Times Free Press that investment is coming to South Chattanooga, from new housing to the Erlanger Park stadium, and that the connector invites people and opportunity into neighborhoods like Alton Park. For now, though, the path connects to Alton Park only on the plans.
Past DeLong Street
The next phase picks up at the DeLong Street dead end and runs to Southside Community Park. TPL says $6.4 million in federal funding through the Department of Housing and Urban Development pays for it, secured with the support of Rep. Chuck Fleischmann. After that, the plan follows the old rail line under Alton Park Boulevard to an end point near 38th Street.
This is the section the opening-day speakers described as the hard one. TPL Tennessee State Director Noel Durant told the Times Free Press it will require a route that crosses the neighborhood, stormwater management, and cleanup of contaminated brownfields along the way. He gave NewsChannel 9 a rough timeline:
"It's a really complicated stretch, and so our goal is to work on that over the next oh you know under a year, and then we'll move transition towards towards construction."
That puts the next construction work somewhere in the second half of 2027 at the earliest, and no construction start date has been set. The trail from Southside Community Park to Clifton Hills Elementary has a harder problem. It depended on a $20 million federal grant that the city and TPL received in 2024, and that project went on hold after the EPA rescinded the grant in the summer of 2025. Durant told Chattamatters that these are generational investments that "don't stop when we hit a roadblock like a grant termination."
The ambitions go beyond Alton Park. NewsChannel 9 reported that TPL hopes to build more connections from Missionary Ridge and East Lake Park to the Tennessee River, and that the city calls the connector the first step in its South Chattanooga Plan linking Alton Park, Clifton Hills and East Lake to downtown.
Until the next phase is built, the connector runs from the trestle over St. Elmo Avenue, across the brick crosswalk on Broad, and down West 33rd to DeLong Street. That's a little under a mile of new path, connected to the full length of the Riverwalk.
Change along South Broad is something our team follows closely, from new trail crossings to the projects going up around them. If you own a home near 33rd and Broad, in St. Elmo, or anywhere along the Riverwalk, Don Ledford Group can talk through what this corridor means for your property. Start the conversation and get your instant home valuation.
