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Posted inLatest News

Atlanta City Council approves Westside project with lower density and more affordable housing

by Sonam Vashi

The Atlanta City Council unanimously approved plans on Monday for the Echo Street Communities development in English Avenue, one of the first large-scale developments in the area that has triggered strong alarm among many residents concerned about gentrification on the Westside.
The affordable housing plans for the project, which also includes thousands of square feet in office space and retail, match the city’s guidelines, with 35 potential additional affordable units in the works.

Posted inColumns

City needs to hit pause on Brock English Ave. project

Avatar photo by Maria Saporta

A proposed mixed-use project by Brock Built Homes and partners has become a lightning rod in the already divided English Avenue community.

Despite a lack of consensus among key players on the Westside, the project has been sailing through the Atlanta City Council’s committee meetings. It was scheduled to go before the full Atlanta City Council on Monday, July 2, but it has been delayed for 30 days. 

Posted inATL Business Chronicle

Column: Home Depot Foundation commits $6.3 million to help Westside

Avatar photo by Maria Saporta

As published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on March 16, 2018

The Home Depot Foundation will be springing into spring with a $6.3 million commitment in Atlanta’s Westside communities.

The company foundation will hold its “Springing into Service” day on March 20 – the first day of Spring, when about 100 associates will be volunteering on community projects, including working at Vine City Park and making external home repairs at a couple of nearby houses with Westside residents.

Posted inATL Business Chronicle

Meet the man who was helping the Westside before it was cool 

Avatar photo by Maria Saporta

As published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on March 9, 2018

It was 2001 when Leonard Adamsfounded a nonprofit to provide low-income housing with support services in Atlanta’s Westside.

Over the past 17 years, the Quest Community Development Organization has developed several small affordable housing communities totaling 269 units and building $22 million in assets.

Posted inATL Business Chronicle

Westside initiatives take root, ‘but there’s a long way to go’

Avatar photo by Maria Saporta

As published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Dec. 22, 2017

During a recent tour of English Avenue and Vine City, Frank Fernandez of the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation highlighted numerous initiatives that have begun to take root on the Westside.

A former check-cashing business is being transformed into a restaurant. Several vacant lots have been turned into neighborhood parks. Police officers are moving into the neighborhood thanks to an initiative of the Atlanta Police Foundation. Westside Works has a new home where it is training residents in the fields of construction, heath care, culinary arts and soon childcare.

Posted inLatest News

Georgia Trust buys three parcels near Westside BeltLine

Avatar photo by Maria Saporta

It’s a new day for the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation, which purchased three properties near the Atlanta BeltLine’s Westside trail in Washington Park and Mozley Park.

The Georgia Trust closed on the purchases Thursday – two houses and a vacant lot – with the intent of renovating the two homes and developing a new house on the vacant lot – all while keeping the properties affordable.

Posted inATL Business Chronicle

City adopts land-use vision for Westside communities

Avatar photo by Maria Saporta

As published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Dec. 8, 2017

A far-reaching land-use plan for the Westside received an important boost when it was unanimously adopted by the Atlanta City Council on Dec. 4.

The Westside Land Use Framework Plan — more than two years in the making — emerged after an unprecedented number of community meetings with more than a thousand participants.

Posted inLatest News

Opening of new Chick-fil-A on the Westside brings together top CEOs and residents

Avatar photo by Maria Saporta

The eve before the opening of the new Chick-fil-A restaurant on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive was a night unlike any other in Atlanta’s history.

The “haves” and the “have nots” huddled indoors and ate dinner in the warmth of a new Chick-fil-A restaurant on the Westside of downtown on Wednesday night braving below-freezing temperatures and ice-covered streets.

Posted inLatest News

New Friendship Baptist Church opens its doors – looking forward, not backwards

Avatar photo by Maria Saporta

Friendship Baptist Church has its own home once more.

After three years of being in temporary quarters, the historic congregation of Friendship Baptist Church held its first service in its new home on Sunday.

At the first service, there were songs of rejoice and an uplifting spirit – following feelings of displacement, dissension and disorientation.

Posted inLyle Harris

MLK’s “Beloved Community” and the G-Word

by Lyle Harris

An almost surefire way to start an argument in Atlanta is to utter the “G-word” – as in “gentrification.” In the midst of a torrid development boom, the inflow of affluent newcomers to Atlanta – and the involuntary uprooting of low-income residents that inevitably follows – reveals the racial and economic fault lines running through city’s social bedrock.

Posted inColumns

Baby steps across Northside Drive?

by Jason Marshall

By Guest Columnist MIKE DOBBINS, a professor of the practice of planning at Georgia Tech’s College of Architecture who has overseen several Tech studios that examined Northside Drive and its neighborhoods

For over 30 years Northside Drive has separated westside residents from the jobs and vibrancy that continue to grow in Downtown Atlanta with a physical wall of traffic and pavement as if to emphasize the race and class divisions that plague the neighborhoods it bounds.

Posted inColumns

Atlanta’s Westside ‘Action Plan’ strives to improve lives of residents

Avatar photo by Maria Saporta

For the past six months, a team headed by prominent planner and urbanist Dhiru Thadani has been working on an action-oriented plan for Atlanta’s Westside communities.

The team recently presented its draft Action Plan at the Transform Westside Summit, and now there will be about two months when community members and stakeholders will be able to respond to the recommendations and ideas.

Posted inColumns

A year after fire, questions plague future of Gaines Hall

Avatar photo by Maria Saporta

Second column in a two part-series. Last week: Revival of Hancock County’s Courthouse in Sparta, Ga.

The story of two eerily similar buildings reveals a tale of two cities.

The Hancock County Courthouse in Sparta caught fire on Aug. 11, 2014. Atlanta’s Gaines Hall caught fire Aug. 20, 2015. Both designed by the same architect – William Parkins – before the turn of the 19th Century.

But the similarities end when we look at how both communities have responded since their respective fires.

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