A century-old building on one of Old Fourth Ward's more architecturally eclectic corners is looking for its next owner, after the last plan for it did not happen.
The wedge-shaped former church at 597 Auburn Ave., dating to 1900, is listed at $700,000 and marketed as a true fixer-upper with enormous potential. Rachael Smith of Bolst Real Estate Atlanta has the listing.
The plan that fell through
As of early 2023, construction appeared imminent on a conversion of the 2,700-square-foot building into offices and programming space for Remerge, a community nonprofit serving Sweet Auburn. Those plans did not come to fruition. Remerge operates its community building, institute and studio elsewhere in Sweet Auburn today.
The corner it sits on
The .083-acre property sits where Auburn Avenue meets Old Wheat Street, and the intersection is one of the more visually unusual in the neighborhood. LottaFrutta's colorful original location is across the street to the west. On another corner stands the Wigwam, the neighborhood's Miami-inspired Art Deco condo landmark.
The building was previously rezoned to allow commercial uses, which widens the field of what a buyer could do with it without returning to the city first.
The economics of a small landmark
At $700,000 for 2,700 square feet on less than a tenth of an acre, the price is not really about the building's square footage. It is about the corner, the walk to Krog Street Market and the Eastside Trail, and a wedge-shaped 125-year-old facade that cannot be reproduced.
The counterweight is the fixer-upper language, which on a structure of this age typically means the renovation budget rivals the purchase price. That arithmetic is presumably what stopped the last plan, and it is the same arithmetic the next buyer will face.
Original reporting by Josh Green for Urbanize Atlanta, published December 2025.
