After more than a decade of scrapped plans, dashed timelines and redesigns, one of the last large development sites between downtown and Midtown is about to see actual construction.
Atlanta Housing, which owns the long-dormant Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center, scheduled a groundbreaking ceremony for Tuesday on the first building of what is planned as a multi-phase transformation of the Old Fourth Ward property.
What breaks ground
The first building is a 148-unit apartment building reserved for low-income seniors, expected to cost $60 million.
Permitting paperwork places it on the northeast section of the property, across the street from Renaissance Park, with a 1,642-square-foot retail cafe space and a parking deck. Earlier filings describe the one-bedroom rentals at roughly 600 square feet each.
The development team includes Michaels Organization, Sophy Capital and Republic Family of Companies.
Why this one is different from the others
The Civic Center has generated announcements for years. A timeline surfaced in early 2024. Architects sketched concepts for the full 19 acres in 2026. In April 2025 Atlanta Housing's chief executive said the project was among six expected to close financing within the quarter, while the site still carried banners reading The Excitement is Building and no demolition had begun.
A scheduled ceremony for a specific, costed, permitted building is a different category of news than a projected timeline. Atlanta Housing acquired the property in 2017; the Civic Center itself closed back in 2014.
What the site could still become
Longer-range plans call for the full property to hold a mix of senior housing, market-rate apartments, communal space, and hotel, office and retail uses, built out over several years.
Whether the later phases arrive on anything like the schedule now being discussed is a separate question. What changes this week is that the first 148 homes stop being a rendering.
Original reporting by Josh Green for Urbanize Atlanta, published December 2025.