Five Points is where all four MARTA rail lines meet, and it has looked like a concrete bunker since 1979. That’s the problem the authority is spending roughly $230 million to fix, without closing the station for a single day.
Skanska USA Building began what MARTA calls surgical deconstruction of the existing canopy in November 2025. The phrase isn’t marketing. Crews are taking the structure apart in pieces above a station that keeps moving roughly 20,000 riders a day beneath them, which rules out the demolition methods that would otherwise apply to a 47-year-old concrete deck. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill designed the removal sequence and the replacement.
Project Scope
The 144,400-square-foot hub is being rebuilt around a new 32,000-square-foot mass timber canopy that opens the platform level to daylight for the first time. Three new pedestrian entrances replace the single constricted approach, and the surface bus operation is consolidated into a centralized hub instead of the scattered curbside arrangement riders use now. Seven bus routes and all four heavy-rail lines feed the site.
MARTA is delivering the work under a construction manager at risk contract, which is the usual answer when the schedule has to bend around live operations and the deconstruction quantities can’t be fully defined at bid. Deconstruction runs through 2027. The authority has committed only to a tentative 2029 reopening for the completed station.
Why It Matters
Transit agencies across the country are sitting on 1970s-vintage stations built during the last federal capital wave, and most of them face the same choice Atlanta faced: close for two years, or pay a premium to build over your own riders. MARTA picked the second, and the cost of that decision is visible in the delivery method and the four-year duration.
The mass timber canopy is the other thing to watch. Timber at this scale, on a public transit structure, exposed to weather and to the fire and durability questions that come with a station environment, is not yet routine. If it performs, it gives agencies an alternative to the steel-and-precast default. Funding is a mix: the More MARTA half-penny sales tax carries most of it, with $13.8 million from the State of Georgia and a federal RAISE grant on top.
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Project Team & Details
| Owner / Client | Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) |
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| Architect | Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) |
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| General Contractor | Skanska USA Building Inc. |
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| Status | Under Construction |
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| Delivery Method | CMAR |
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| Funding Source | Mixed |
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