AH to install billboard atop HQ to raise money for affordable housing, scholarships

By Sean Keenan

Seeking new revenue streams to fund affordable housing creation and scholarship programs, Atlanta Housing (AH) officials are planning to erect a billboard atop the agency’s downtown headquarters. 

From where the building stands, on John Wesley Dobbs Avenue, upwards of 400,000 cars cruise by it on the Downtown Connector daily, GDOT materials show. 

On Wednesday, during the AH board of commissioners meeting, authority leaders elected to green-light a 10-year contract — with four five-year options to extend — with a company that would install and operate a digital billboard on the HQ’s rooftop.

The proposal provides a few options for a “video wall”: One plan calls for a $1.5 million, 20-foot-by-60-foot billboard, and another, smaller one, the size of which is yet undecided, would cost $500,000 to install.

If AH officials go with the former option, they estimate it would reel in about $600,000 annually, whereas the latter option would make $100,000 a year. 

That money, said AH board chair Christopher Edwards, “could help us build more affordable housing and fund scholarship programs.”