Walk the Boardwalk at Town Center on a Tuesday evening in September and you will likely have most of it to yourself. A few dog walkers circling the North Pond. Maybe a jogger on the elevated trail. The amphitheater sits empty except when the city has booked it, and even then it fills a fraction of its capacity. That quiet is not going to last. Seven weeks from now, on October 29, the $560 million Medley development opens directly across Medlock Bridge Road, and the pedestrian tunnel connecting the two sides means the park behind City Hall stops being a standalone amenity and starts being the front yard of one of North Fulton's biggest mixed-use projects. If you live in Johns Creek and haven't walked this park yet, the next seven weeks are the version of it you're going to remember as "before."
A Park Built to Be Quiet First
The Boardwalk at Town Center opened in May 2026 after a $39 million build behind City Hall on Lakefield Drive. It's a 20-acre property with a 15-foot-wide elevated trail that runs roughly a mile north toward McGinnis Ferry Road, plus a shorter half-mile loop around the North Pond. The trail threads through a three-acre constructed wetland, past terraced seating and an amphitheater built on a deck over the water, one with enough room for about 4,000 people when the city programs it for concerts.
The details reward a slow walk rather than a fast one. Along the trail is a public art piece called "Ferns," made from salvaged iron pulled from the historic Rogers Bridge, a small nod to the area's history worked into a very new park. Egrets and ducks have already moved into the wetland. Dogs are welcome on leash, and the park keeps long hours, 6 a.m. to midnight, which makes it as workable for an early run as for an evening walk after dinner.
Johns Creek's communications director described the ambition behind the project plainly during construction: "Nobody's building anything like this right there in their downtown." For a city that has never had a traditional downtown, that was the point. The park was designed to give Johns Creek a civic gathering space it never had, independent of whatever commercial development eventually surrounded it.
The State Just Confirmed What Locals Already Knew
Four days before this was written, the Georgia Downtown Association named the Boardwalk at Town Center its 2026 Outstanding Public Improvement Project, a statewide honor typically awarded to projects in established historic downtowns. Johns Creek doesn't have one of those, which is exactly why the recognition matters here. It's an outside signal that the civic half of the Town Center plan, the part built with public dollars and open to anyone, has actually delivered on what it promised, months before the private development next door even opens its doors.
The Calendar Between Now and Halloween
If you want to see the park doing what it was built for, the next several weeks give you three chances, plus a fourth date that marks the shift to something bigger:
- Saturday, September 12, 6 to 10 p.m. Nashville Nation and Everyday Dogs play a free concert at the Boardwalk as part of the city's Summer Concert Series. Food trucks and drinks on site, no outside alcohol.
- Saturday, September 26, 1 to 4 p.m. Arts on the Boardwalk, a free daytime event, brings art programming to the park.
- Saturday, October 3. The Johns Creek Symphony Orchestra performs, though this one moves to Newtown Park rather than the Boardwalk, a reminder that the city still splits its outdoor programming across more than one venue.
- October 28 through 30. Medley's three-day grand opening. A ticketed preview on the 28th benefits the Johns Creek Symphony Orchestra, the ribbon cutting and plaza celebration happen on the 29th, and a family Halloween event closes out the weekend on the 30th.
The September dates are the park behaving the way it has all summer: modest crowds, free admission, a genuinely local turnout. October 29 is the date everything about the surrounding area changes.
Why This Seven-Week Window Won't Repeat
Medley is a 43-acre project from Toro Development Company that broke ground in January 2025 directly across Medlock Bridge Road from the Boardwalk. Trader Joe's already opened there in June 2026, at which point the project stood at 78 percent leased for retail and 82 percent leased for office space. When the rest of phase one opens October 29, it brings roughly 145,000 square feet of retail, restaurant, and entertainment space, including STIR and its satellite bar Tonic House, Fadó Irish Pub, Ford Fry's Little Rey, 26 Thai Kitchen and Bar, Shake Shack, and Sephora, along with a 25,000-square-foot plaza designed to host up to 200 events a year on its own.
That's the piece that changes the math for the park next door. The Medlock Bridge pedestrian tunnel under SR 141 already connects the two sides, but one recent trail review noted that walking through it right now mostly just gets you to sidewalks along a busy road, since there's nothing much on the other side yet. That changes the moment Medley's shops and restaurants open, turning a little-used underpass into the main walking connection between a quiet civic park and a commercial destination built to host 200 events of its own each year.
Here's the practical difference, based on what's already scheduled and what the development itself is built to support:
| Now through October 28 | After October 29 | |
|---|---|---|
| Boardwalk crowd on a free concert night | A few hundred, mostly local | Likely higher, with Medley foot traffic spilling across the tunnel |
| Parking at City Hall | Rarely full | Competing with Medley visitors for the first time |
| Reason to cross Medlock Bridge Road | Mostly none, trail reviewers note there's little on the other side yet | Restaurants and retail open, with a 150-key hotel still under construction, expected in 2028 |
| Park's role | Standalone civic space | Shared frontage with a 43-acre commercial development |
None of this means the park gets worse. It means it stops being the kind of place where you can show up to a free concert ten minutes before it starts and still find a spot on the terraced seating without thinking about it.
How to Use It Before the Calendar Changes
Public parking, including ADA spaces, is available at Johns Creek City Hall, 11360 Lakefield Drive. The trail entrance sits just to the left of the City Hall front entrance. If you're walking rather than driving, the half-mile North Pond loop is the easier option with kids or a stroller, while the full mile north toward McGinnis Ferry Road gives you the wetland boardwalk and the "Ferns" installation along the way.
For the September concerts, arrive with a blanket or lawn chairs. Food trucks and a beer and wine cash bar are typically on site, but the city's rule against outside alcohol is enforced. If you've been meaning to see what all the construction behind City Hall turned into, Nashville Nation on the 12th or Arts on the Boardwalk on the 26th are both easy, free ways to do it before Medley's opening changes the crowd size for good.
If you're weighing what this kind of growth means for property values or your own next move in Johns Creek, that's a conversation worth having with someone who watches this market closely. The Key Group works with buyers and sellers across Johns Creek and the North Atlanta suburbs every day, and we're glad to talk through what a project like Medley is likely to mean for a specific street or subdivision. Schedule a free consultation whenever you're ready.
