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CONNECTORS<br />
Let’s be honest: It is darned difficult to discover<br />
something new when you wheel by it at 40 m.p.h.,<br />
radio thrumming and windows<br />
rolled tight.<br />
In 1999, Georgia Tech student Ryan Gravel<br />
submitted a master’s thesis envisioning this<br />
blighted area as the anchor of a 22-mile series<br />
of trails encompassing Atlanta’s downtown.<br />
In 2005 construction began on this rails-totrails<br />
conversion. Now, with more than half<br />
the expanded, 33-mile network complete,<br />
the revitalization driven by this catalyst<br />
infrastructure project has been remarkable.<br />
Anchored by the Ponce City Market—itself part<br />
of an imaginative reclaiming of what was once<br />
the largest Sears store in the South—the fences<br />
and razor wire are gone, and businesses that<br />
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