Invest Atlanta helps fund development by locals, for locals in English Avenue

On Nov. 21, the Invest Atlanta Board of Directors pushed ahead on its second “Community Builders” redevelopment on the city’s Westside. The board approved $260,000 in grant funding for longtime Westside resident and local neighborhood leader Tracy Bates’ redevelopment.

Bates is part of the economic development organization’s “Community Builders” program, and her six-unit property will mark the program’s largest project to date since its creation in 2017. With the last chunk of grant funding, Bates will redevelop the building at 471 English Ave. into six units, with five at 50 percent or below the area median income. Construction will begin in March 2025 and last approximately 12 months.

The building will have one two-bedroom unit, priced at $1,210 a month for 700 square feet, and four one-bedroom units priced at $1,008 monthly for 350 square feet. The units will remain affordable for 15 years. One unit will be left unrestricted.

Invest Atlanta’s Senior Vice President of Community Development Phil Perkins called the project a “success story,” and other members shared their excitement to watch the years-long project finally come to fruition.

“I echo all of these sentiments, and I’m glad to still be here standing so many years later,” developer Tracy Bates said. “I appreciate the support of everyone on this team.”

The Community Builders program is focused on the long-neglected neighborhoods of English Avenue, Vine City and Castleberry Hill. English Avenue was once a hub for Atlanta’s middle-class Black communities, home to prominent figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Maynard Jackson.

In the years since its peak, English Avenue has deteriorated into poverty. By 2018, two-thirds of the neighborhood had depopulated, and what remained was largely abandoned and run down. But organizations like the Westside Future Fund and Invest Atlanta are working to revitalize the neighborhood for legacy residents and community members.

Around 2016, Invest Atlanta started eyeing a program that could help residents before development got too splashy. President and CEO Eloisa Klementich said many people had inherited properties that were blighted or vacant and needed support. Klementich’s big goal was to make sure development happened with residents, not to them.

“We created the program to help people who didn’t have experience,” Klemetich said.

Phase one was an education piece, according to Vice President of Planning and Strategic Initiatives Jennifer Fine. Participants like Bates went through a six-month “development boot camp. From there, they received small pre-development grants.

Bates got $12,00 from the Westside Tax Allocation District to refine her plan, survey and do the architectural drawings. Fine said it “gets people in the position to get funded.”

Invest Atlanta doesn’t fully fund the projects — Fine said the developers need to have skin in the game — but the board approved the final chunk of funding for Bates’ project to get it finished. The rest of the funding came from $400,000 in construction debt. Bates will work with local nonprofit oaksATL to develop the building.

All together, Invest Atlanta has worked on the 471 English Avenue project for five years. It will be the second start-to-finish community builder project, but it is the biggest in the entire lineup.

“It is exciting for us now to see that someone went through the program and now has been able to build their capital stack to actually be here today,’ Klementich said.

The Community Builders program is funded through the Westside Tax Allocation District (TAD), which was created in 1992 to create financial incentives for long-neglected neighborhoods like Vine City and English Avenue. Fine said leveraging the TAD helps to fund both residential and commercial projects to “build successful neighborhoods.”

“It was kind of, in part, a legacy program to help elevate folks within the neighborhood to be able to take advantage of these anticipated opportunities,” Fine said. “To not only create future affordable housing for new residents or existing residents who want a better place to live but as a way of wealth generation.”