A $4.1 million project to turn English Avenue’s iconic and fraught “Yellow Store” into a “community hub” is under construction, as the Westside Future Fund leads the revitalization of the depopulated and disinvested English Avenue neighborhood.
It is a major project on a key property in the Westside Land Use Framework Plan, the fund’s guiding text as it works to bring English Avenue “back to life.” Project leaders estimate redevelopment of the store will be finished by late 2026.
When English Avenue was in its heyday in the 1960s as an African American middle-class community, the “Yellow Store” building was packed with beloved businesses. There were four apartments atop the commercial space, with a record store, a shoe store and Cantrell Soda and Sundaes underneath.
But as English Avenue fell to disinvestment, so too did the store. Most commercial tenants left and it became a hotbed of drug trafficking and violence. The fund bought it in 2019 for just north of $600,000 from Larry Cantrell, son of soda shop operators Charles and Louise Cantrell.
President and CEO John Ahmann said after purchasing the building, many people “expected a teardown” of the property and a total redo, given its history. The fund held several community meetings to determine the future of the location.
“We take a lot of stewardship in terms of bringing it back to life,” Ahmann said.
Eventually, they decided: “We would redevelop in a way that honored its history and what it meant to the community.”
The building was chosen for retail development to increase local access to goods and services. With around 3,500 square feet of space, it was too small for a full grocery store – so the fund opted for a “bodega” or “corner store” vision.
From there, it raised $2.5 million in philanthropic donations, pulled $850,000 from the Impact fund and received a $750,000 grant from Invest Atlanta. The money would pay for repairs, remodeling and improvements to the long-standing building.
“I want to be authentic, right back to reflecting it as a community hub,”Ahmann said. “Supporting the neighborhood, and an amenity for people who live in the neighborhood.”
Day & Day Company and eightvillage joined the project to handle design and architecture. On the Day & Day Company website, the project is listed as “ground floor retail, a community-oriented cafe, live/work rental properties on the second floor and an expansive shared garden.”
“The design is actually going to implement a new kind of backyard patio with outdoor seating,” Pavan Iyer, eightvillage founder, said.
While the design and construction teams are preserving the building, it is a mix of formal and informal preservation. Certain elements, like the beige brick and blue tiles, are being preserved to match the original early 1900s construction.
“It’s a restorative project,” Iyer said. “ The yellow store already has some really wonderful architecture that we’re just trying to restore.”
But Ahmann explained the team did not know the condition of the Yellow Store until getting inside, and it revealed some major issues like the need for an entirely new roof. Iyer said there was significant fire damage inside, too. The building essentially had to be “rebuilt from the inside out.”
“We’re essentially having to rebuild a lot of the historical elements of the building in order to kind of bring it to life,” Iyer said.
It also revealed the need for some structural changes to fit modern needs. The design punches out a chunk of the wall for a larger interior-exterior sliding door to a tree-laden backyard patio with outdoor seating.
“It’s a modification, but it is matching the progress of what’s going on in the neighborhood,” Iyer said.
The fund has not announced its anchor tenant in the retail space, but it has guaranteed one thing: affordability. The four multifamily two-bedroom one-bathroom units will likely be affordable, and Ahmann said the fund will offer “reduced rent for commercial” that is lower than current rental rates.
“We want to be very intentional about repopulating these neighborhoods,” Ahmann said.
