In an unusual arrangement for downtown, an apartment tower that opened as almost entirely market-rate has converted a significant share of its units to affordable housing.
Invest Atlanta approved a $4 million Westside Tax Allocation District Ascension Fund grant to expand affordable options inside Generation Atlanta, the 17-story building at 369 Centennial Olympic Park Drive.
Five units became 71
Kaplan Residential developed the 336-unit building in 2021. Of those apartments, exactly five were originally designated affordable, reserved for households earning 60 percent of the area median income or less.
With the TAD grant, current owner The Frankforter Group converted an additional 66 market-rate apartments to the same 60 percent AMI standard. That brings the total to 71 units, or more than 21 percent of the building.
Invest Atlanta is executing a Land Use Restrictive Agreement on the property to preserve that affordability for 30 years, which is the piece that separates this from a temporary concession. The converted units are complete and available now to qualifying households. Market rents in the building otherwise start around $1,300 for a 547-square-foot studio.
The building's history
Generation Atlanta broke ground in 2018 on a previously vacant 1.8-acre lot that Kaplan had acquired for $6.4 million. Kaplan sold the finished building to Montreal-based Frankforter Group in late 2021 for $126.9 million, at the time the highest price a multifamily property had ever fetched in downtown Atlanta. Niles Bolton Associates and Focus Design handled the design.
Why the mechanism is interesting
Most affordable housing downtown arrives through new construction, which takes years and depends on land, financing and a developer willing to build it. Converting existing market-rate units in a four-year-old tower produces income-restricted homes on a much shorter timeline, in a building that already has a doorman, a pool and a view of Centennial Olympic Park.
It also requires a willing owner and public money. Whether the model gets repeated elsewhere downtown is worth watching.
Original reporting by Josh Green for Urbanize Atlanta, published April 2025.
