, 1966 Originally constructed as a four- to six-lane expressway in the 1950s, the stretch of I-85 between the southern merge with I-75 and North Druid Hills Road was reconstructed as part of the
Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT)'s
Freeing the Freeways program. This project included rebuilding all overpasses, new
HOV-ready ramps (with the system implemented in 1996), and a widening of freeway capacity. Concurrent with this project was the construction of the
Civic Center station as part of the West Peachtree Street overpass, which opened in December 1981. The section between LaGrange and Newnan was incomplete for a much-longer time that the rest of I-85 in Georgia and required a two-lane detour on
US 27 and
US 29 between those cities. The northern section between Newnan and Grantville was completed first, then the stretch further south to LaGrange was completed in 1977. The portion of the highway from the Buford Highway Connector to SR 400 was constructed during the early 1980s and was designed as a replacement for the original four-lane routing of I-85 (now
SR 13). In addition, the new viaduct was designed to accommodate connections to the SR 400 tollway (then in planning), HOV lanes, and a bridge carrying the
North Line (then under construction, now the Red Line). Until 2000, the state of Georgia used the
sequential exit numbering system on all of its Interstate Highways. The first exit on each highway would begin with the number 1 and increase numerically with each exit. In 2000, GDOT switched to a
mileage-based exit system, in which the exit number corresponded to the nearest milepost. On October 1, 2011, GDOT converted the HOV lanes in northern Atlanta into express/
HOT lanes. It was not until the completion of
SR 316 in the 1990s that there was finally a relatively quick, multilane expressway connecting Athens and Atlanta, (
US 78 is also multilane between Athens and Atlanta but it is not expressway-grade) although SR 316 still is largely at-grade. On March 30, 2017, a fire started at approximately 6:15 pm in a storage area under the highway along Piedmont Road in the
Piedmont Heights area of
Midtown Atlanta. This caused the collapse of
a section of I-85 northbound. The highway in both directions needed to be demolished and replaced. According to GDOT, the work was completed ahead of schedule. Both the north and south bound portions of the Interstate were open by May 15, 2017, a month ahead of expectations. In May 2017, the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners voted to accept about $6 million (equivalent to $ in ) in federal funds, to be used to acquire land to build a new diamond interchange on I-85 at SR 324/Gravel Springs Road between the interchanges for SR 20, and Hamilton Mill Road/Hamilton Mill Parkway. The board voted in July 2019 to accept about $20 million (equivalent to $ in ) in federal and state grants to pay for the construction of the new interchange. E.R. Snell Contractors was chosen to complete the work. Since an overpass already existed for SR 324, the entrance and exit ramps, deceleration lanes on I-85, traffic signals, and turn lanes were the main aspects of the interchange to be added. The main purpose of the new interchange was to provide another access point from I-85 to
Mall of Georgia. ==Exit list==