Sandy Springs Weekend Things to Do This August

By 8:30 on a Saturday, the parking lot near the Morgan Falls Dog Park has already turned over twice. Some people are heading in for the farmers market at City Springs afterward, others are just there for the boardwalk. A year ago that same lot on an August morning would have been half-empty until the paddleboard renters showed up around ten.

The change is not a new coffee shop or a bigger festival. It is 1.88 miles of paved trail and a top-down deck over Orkin Lake that quietly reset which door you walk through to reach the Chattahoochee, and by extension what a Saturday in the north end of town actually looks like.

The 1.88 miles that changed the north end

Segment 2A of the Springway Trail opened with a ribbon cutting on Friday, May 2, at 1 pm along Orkin Lake, across from the boardwalk. It is easy to underrate the segment on paper. The route connects Morgan Falls Overlook Park to Roswell Road at Cimarron Parkway, and it is an 8 to 12-foot-wide multi-use, paved trail with retaining walls, a raised boardwalk, concrete decking, lighting, benches, landscaping, and trail signage.

What the map does not show is the friction it removed. Before 2A, reaching the overlook from Roswell Road meant a car. Now it is a walk or a bike, and the trail is open from dawn to dusk, works like a road with riders staying right and leaving room for passing on the left, and permits no gas-powered vehicles. That last detail matters more than it reads. It is why the boardwalk stays quiet enough at 8 a.m. to hear the herons on the lake.

The trail did not come cheap or on schedule. The city did not know there was rock under Orkin Lake when it began construction, which increased the cost and delayed the project, and total construction cost was $8.5 million, with a $3M Georgia Outdoor Stewardship construction grant and $30,000 in community support funds contributed by the Sandy Springs Conservancy. Segment 2A is one piece of what the Conservancy describes as the city's ambitious 31.4-mile trail master plan, and it is not stopping here. In early 2025 the city submitted a grant application to fund segment 2C, which runs 1.6 miles from Morgan Falls Overlook Park along the Chattahoochee River to Grogans Ferry Road.

For residents, the practical read is simple. Morgan Falls used to be a destination you drove to. It is becoming a place you arrive at on foot.

The August calendar, as it actually plays out

The trail is the ligament. Everything else is muscle. If you sketched out August at City Springs and Morgan Falls on a single page, it would look roughly like this.

The single-day headline is Saturday, August 15. The city is inviting paddlers from across the Southeast to compete in the inaugural Sandy Springs SUP Showdown at Morgan Falls Overlook Park, in a new event that showcases the Chattahoochee. It reads like a small-scale addition until you consider what the park already offers. Morgan Falls is a 30-acre space with pavilions, a boat dock, a playground, and porch swings, and when the weather is warm it is a popular spot for fishing, with stand-up paddleboard, kayak, and canoe rentals available. The SUP Showdown is the first event that treats the water itself, not the overlook above it, as the venue.

Friday nights, without a reservation

The Friday circuit is the piece longtime residents underestimate. The City Green venue opens at 4 p.m. so you can grab your spot, food trucks begin serving at 6 p.m. and the music starts at 7:30 p.m., with the headline act taking the stage around 8:30 p.m. Outside food and drink are welcome, but no outside alcohol. Lawn seating stays free.

The Movies by Moonlight cadence dovetails with it. Free admission, screenings on the big screen under a night sky, with The Lizzie McGuire Movie showing Friday, August 7, and Spy Kids following on Friday, September 4. If you have never noticed how bright City Green gets on a movie Friday, it is worth the walk over.

The dinner variable changed in March. Rumi's Kitchen, the Sandy Springs flagship, is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year and reopened on March 6, 2026, with a refreshed design, updated menu, and new offerings after a brief remodeling. Under the hood the changes are bigger than "refreshed." In March 2025 Rumi's Kitchen Sandy Springs closed for a planned $3.5 million renovation estimated to be complete in six months, and nearly a year later the flagship reopened after nearly tripling its original budget. Chef-owner Ali Mesghali installed plaster walls to absorb sound, a frequent complaint of previous Sandy Springs guests, along with a 22-seat curved marble bar, wood- and stone-inset tables, and a private dining room with a floor-to-ceiling mural by artist Dean Barger. The pastry program is new too, run by the 2021 Food Network Spring Baking Championship winner Sohrob Esmaili. Sunday brunch began on Sunday, March 15, 2026. It is the closest thing the north end has to a reset restaurant this year.

A quieter but real note on the same block: The Select Restaurant + Bar sits next to the Sandy Springs Performing Arts Center and Sandy Springs City Hall, with two hours of free parking in the underground deck and surrounding lots. If you have a Friday concert or a Byers Theatre show that lets out late, it stays open through the rush.

"Today, we celebrate not just a finished segment, but progress toward a greater vision laid out in the 2019 Sandy Springs Trail Master Plan." — Mayor Rusty Paul, at the Springway ribbon cutting, as quoted by Rough Draft Atlanta

A few new doors worth knowing

A second dining addition is on its way to the north end of Roswell Road. Local burger spot Moxie Burger has a new location on the way to Chastain Market at 4600 Roswell Road, joining the 122,000-square-foot mixed-use development, marking the sixth location for the burger joint, with existing spots in East Cobb at Paper Mill Village, Roswell, Marietta, Kennesaw and Chandler Park. It is a chain in the useful sense, not the flattening one. The signal for residents is what the tenant mix at Chastain Market is beginning to look like now that a locally grown operator has committed.

Two smaller Saturday details are worth putting on the calendar. The Sandy Springs Farmers Market is a vibrant outdoor market at City Springs that brings together local farmers, artisans, and small businesses offering fresh produce, baked goods, specialty foods, handcrafted items, and live music, running Saturday mornings from 8:30 to noon. On its Dog Days of Summer date, the market features a special appearance by the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, which is a photograph you cannot re-take once your kids age out of it.

A note on parking that catches new residents off guard. City Green has been dog-friendly in reputation, but not in policy. The Farmers Market runs Saturday mornings 8:30 a.m.–12:00 p.m. rain or shine, and City Green is a four-acre park with a splash pad, water features, a covered stage, free Wi-Fi, and rotating public sculpture installations, with pets not permitted on the lawn or plaza. The dog walk goes to Morgan Falls. The lawn chair goes to City Green.

Looking ahead to September

If you build a routine in August, the payoff shows up six weeks later. The Blue Stone Arts & Music Festival returns to Sandy Springs September 25 and 26, now in its fourth year, as a vibrant, free event featuring live music from nationally acclaimed acts, an expansive Artist Market showcasing more than 60 artists and makers, and an Emerging Artist Exhibit. The 2026 lineup is stacking up around headlining performances by Nicotine Dolls and Allen Stone, with strolling art along Blue Stone Rd across the free two-day event. It is the closing bracket of the outdoor season, and the trail will still be there in October when the concerts wind down.

The point of the roundup is not that Sandy Springs added more things to do. It is that a single piece of infrastructure changed which of those things feel connected. Morgan Falls used to be a drive. City Green used to be a downtown. In 2026 they read like the two anchors of a north-end weekend, and August is when the routine finally settles in.

If you are thinking about how a Sandy Springs address maps onto that routine, or how to prepare one for market before the fall season kicks off, Kimberly Eslinger is happy to walk through it with you. Schedule a consultation whenever you are ready.