Months after a heated public hearing on the fate of Atlanta’s historic 148 Edgewood Ave. building, Georgia State University is set to move forward with its demolition plan to create a Greek Life greenspace.
It’s a controversial move for the 1926 property. It was originally built by Georgia Power as a facade to store neighborhood electrical supply equipment. The university acquired the 8,800 square foot industrial space in 1966, and it has been used for various academic purposes since.
“Georgia State’s decision to destroy this building, which is structurally sound and architecturally significant, is mystifying,” Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation CEO W. Wright Mitchell said.
The historic property is a contributing structure to the Martin Luther King Jr. Landmark District. It also made it on the Georgia Trust’s 2025 Places in Peril list. The university itself even said in a 2014 campus preservation plan that the space was “worthy of long-term preservation and investment.”
But in early May, the university announced plans to tear down the building and create the “Fraternity and Sorority Life Plaza” as a dedicated greenspace for the school’s Greek life. Once demolished, the space would be turned into a grassy lawn, walkway and bench area dedicated to the Greek organization councils.
GSU plans to salvage some of the brickwork from the 148 Edgewood Ave. building and incorporate it as a “tribute” to the space.
At the May hearing, preservation advocates and local leaders pushed the university to reconsider demolition and look towards adaptive reuse to create a dedicated building for the “Divine Nine” historically Black Greek-letter organizations that have no dedicated space.
But the meeting quickly devolved from a developer presentation into a shouting match between those opposed to and in support of the demolition. Some pushed for the green space as a way to improve the growing college campus. Others said the change would undermine efforts to create a historically aware Atlanta.
In the wake of the meeting, Atlanta Preservation Center Executive Director David Yoakley Mitchell said it was more of a “presentation” than a dialogue to fill the school’s mandated public hearing. He added later that “nobody left that meeting thinking we accomplished anything.”
Since the university owns the property, it is exempt from historic protections that could preserve the building. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp also authorized the demolition. After the May hearing, the developers and the school kept largely silent on future plans.
But in August, Georgia State University revealed it would move forward with the additional demolition and park plan, with no changes to account for the uproar. Yoakley Mitchell said he only found out about the move through the Atlanta-Journal Constitution’s legal ads. He called the announcement “limp.”
Local and statewide historic preservation groups quickly condemned the decision. They again pushed for a $12 million renovation to rehabilitate the largely intact space and sounded the alarm on what a demolition could do to the historic district.
“By removing this building from the Landmark District, GSU will erode the significance of the district and eradicate a tangible link to our city’s past,” Wright Mitchell said. “The Georgia Trust condemns GSU’s short-sighted decision not to adaptively reuse this property in a manner that could benefit Georgia State students and the city of Atlanta.”
The Georgia Trust called it an “avoidable loss.” Yoakley Mitchell called it a wake-up call that should encourage people to make their voices heard.
“We continuously say this is a wake-up call, or this is the one that’s going to define things,” Yoakley Mitchell said. “If this building is removed, don’t expect anything to ever change.
To What??
…to create a Greek Life greenspace.
Oh .. perfect.
Sad, sad, sad. There is so little left to preserve. We need to preserve and repurpose what is left!