"This opportunity was made possible through the thoughtful use of Redevelopment Bond funds approved by our citizens." That's Mayor Steve Tumlin, explaining why AMB Sports and Entertainment just agreed to build a $100 million professional soccer training headquarters on Franklin Gateway, a corridor away from Marietta Square that most people driving through still associate with a vacant IKEA lot.
If you've been comparing Marietta neighborhoods by scrolling listing photos and reading about the Square's restaurant boom, you've been reading the wrong chapter. The Square story is real, but it's the visible one. Franklin Gateway is the corridor that spent thirteen years quietly setting up a much bigger swing, and understanding how that swing was funded tells you something the Square's foot traffic numbers never will: which parts of this market move because of buzz, and which move because someone already paid to make the buzz inevitable.
The bond came first. The excitement came thirteen years later.
In 2013, Marietta voters approved a $68 million Redevelopment Bond. Of that, $64 million was earmarked specifically for the Franklin Gateway corridor, a stretch of the city that had lost the kind of retail energy that keeps a commercial strip relevant. That money didn't buy a ribbon-cutting. It bought land, assembled parcel by parcel over more than a decade, including the tract at 1033 Franklin Gateway that the city repurchased from IKEA in late 2025.
That's the part of this story that doesn't show up in a drive-by. When Arthur Blank's ownership group, AMB Sports and Entertainment (AMBSE), agreed in March 2026 to buy roughly 33 acres there for the future headquarters of NWSL Atlanta 2028, the deal wasn't discovered. It was cultivated. The Marietta City Council voted 7-0 to approve the arrangement, which the city valued at about $21 million in combined cash and land, including a 10-acre parcel the city will receive back for a future community park. Construction broke ground on April 24, 2026, with Blank and NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman on site for the ceremony.
The training facility will sit almost directly across from the Franklin Gateway Sports Complex and a short walk from the Children's Healthcare of Atlanta Training Ground, where Atlanta United already trains. Once the NWSL facility is finished, AMB Sports and Entertainment will have put close to $200 million into this one corridor.
Here's the number that matters more than any of those totals: the original bond dedicated $64 million to prime the corridor. The single private deal that just landed dwarfs that figure. Public capital didn't chase a hot market here. It built the runway years before anyone else believed a runway was needed.
What's actually landing on the ground
| Facility | Status as of August 2026 | Investment |
|---|---|---|
| Children's Healthcare of Atlanta Training Ground (Atlanta United) | Operating | Part of AMBSE's earlier corridor investment |
| NWSL Atlanta 2028 headquarters and training facility | Broke ground April 24, 2026 | Over $100 million, roughly 38,000 square feet, four full fields, two half-pitches |
| Combined AMBSE corridor investment | In progress | Approximately $200 million |
The plan calls for the NWSL facility to open ahead of the club's 2028 debut season, which puts a hard date on when this corridor stops being a construction site and starts being a daily fixture, complete with staff, visiting teams, and the kind of steady foot traffic that a training ground brings even without a stadium attached.
Franklin Gateway isn't waiting on that alone, either. Casa Grande Bar & Grill opened there in February 2026, part of the Marietta Family Restaurants Group, the same ownership behind the long-running Marietta Diner. That's a smaller, faster signal than a $100 million soccer deal, but it points the same direction: operators are willing to bet on a corridor that, until recently, read as underused.
Why the Square gets the headlines and Franklin Gateway gets the capital
If you only follow restaurant openings, the Square looks like the center of gravity in Marietta right now, and it earns that reputation. But restaurant openings are a lagging indicator. They tell you where people already want to be. A voter-approved bond earmarking $64 million toward a specific corridor, followed a decade later by a $100 million private commitment from one of the most recognizable ownership groups in American sports, is a leading indicator. It tells you where a city already decided people should end up.
For anyone weighing neighborhoods inside Marietta rather than just comparing Marietta to Kennesaw or Acworth as a whole, that distinction is the actual decision point. A corridor funded this way isn't hoping for a catalyst. It already has one, with a fixed opening window tied to a 2028 sports season, four fields, and a headquarters building that will need staff parking, visiting team logistics, and youth programming space nearby.
None of this means every street near Franklin Gateway behaves identically, and it isn't a promise about what any specific property will sell for. Corridor-level investment and individual home value are two different measurements, and the gap between them is exactly where a buyer needs someone who can read city redevelopment records, not just listing photos. What the bond-to-groundbreaking timeline does tell you is how patient this particular kind of growth is, and how long the quiet phase can last before the visible phase starts. If you're trying to time a move around a neighborhood's trajectory rather than its current snapshot, Franklin Gateway is a real example of what that lag looks like in practice, thirteen years from bond approval to shovels in the ground.
What to actually watch between now and 2028
A few markers will tell you more about how this plays out than any single headline:
- Whether the city's promised 10-acre community park parcel gets a public timeline once the NWSL facility construction settles in
- Whether additional restaurant or retail operators follow Casa Grande's lead along Franklin Gateway over the next year
- Whether AMB Sports and Entertainment names the NWSL club, which Blank has said will happen later in 2026, and whether that naming brings additional media or fan traffic to the corridor ahead of the 2028 season
None of these are guarantees about resale value. They're the kind of ground-level signals that tend to move faster than official market reports, and they're worth checking against county redevelopment updates rather than secondhand chatter.
Frequently asked questions
Is the NWSL Atlanta training facility open yet? No. Construction broke ground on April 24, 2026, with the goal of opening before the club's first season in 2028. As of August 2026, the site is under active construction, not yet operating.
Does this mean home prices near Franklin Gateway are about to jump? The research here documents public and private investment commitments, not residential sales data for that specific corridor. Infrastructure and anchor tenant investment can influence how a neighborhood functions and how future demand behaves, but it isn't a substitute for a property-specific valuation. If you're weighing a purchase or sale near this corridor, that's a conversation worth having directly rather than assuming a headline number applies to a particular street.
Is Franklin Gateway close to Marietta Square? It's a separate corridor within the city, distinct enough that it has developed its own commercial identity, separate from Square-area dining and retail, even though both fall under the same Marietta address.
Who is funding all of this? Two sources. The city of Marietta used a $68 million Redevelopment Bond approved by voters in 2013, with $64 million dedicated to the Franklin Gateway corridor, to acquire land over more than a decade. AMB Sports and Entertainment, the Blank family's sports organization, is now investing more than $100 million in the NWSL Atlanta 2028 facility itself, part of a combined roughly $200 million AMBSE commitment to the corridor once both training grounds are complete.
If you're trying to figure out what a neighborhood's trajectory actually looks like versus what its current listing photos suggest, that's the kind of read worth getting before you make an offer, not after. Amber Stout has spent her career learning which Marietta corridors are catching up and which ones are still setting up the next decade, and she can walk you through what a street near Franklin Gateway, or anywhere else in the Marietta market, actually means for your specific plans. Schedule a free consultation and get a read on the market that goes past the headline.
