Two downtown projects that have spent years in the conceptual stage moved closer to becoming real this week, and a third — a shuttered hospital campus in Old Fourth Ward — got its first serious public sketch of a second life.
The Development Authority of Fulton County is reportedly set to issue up to $370 million in federally tax-exempt bonds for Teachers Village Atlanta, the workforce housing tower at 98 Cone St. that has been three years in the making, according to the Atlanta Business Chronicle. The project, from a local affiliate of New Jersey-based RBH Group, now calls for 426 apartments, roughly 26,000 square feet of ground-floor retail, and 9,000 square feet of amenities in a 375-foot building. RBH has described it as a first for Georgia: every apartment marketed to teachers, other school employees, and seniors as affordable housing. More than half the units are reserved for independent-living seniors, with the remaining 200 or so classified as workforce housing. Rents have not been specified. Invest Atlanta approved more than $30 million in bond and grant financing for the teacher-designated homes back in 2021.
The Stitch, meanwhile, is now the only highway-capping project still standing in downtown or Midtown after the Connector Park concept withdrew from the funding race last month. At a town hall on Wednesday, project officials released new details and renderings showing a first phase that caps the Connector between Peachtree and Courtland streets across 4.5 acres, paired with upgrades to the surrounding street corridors. Roughly $200 million is committed, engineering is underway, and construction on phase one is expected to begin in either 2026 or 2027. The full 14-acre buildout is now forecast for 2036, pending funding — a long horizon, but the first concrete one the project has offered.
In Old Fourth Ward, the former Atlanta Medical Center campus has sat shuttered since Halloween 2022, through nearly two years of development moratoriums and debate over what should replace it. With the latest moratorium set to expire in October, the city's Department of City Planning has begun sharing tentative plans with neighbors for a mixed-use conversion of the Wellstar Health System property: as much as 2.4 million square feet of residential, 120,000 square feet of commercial and retail, and 240,000 square feet of offices. An 11-story hospital tower and some other aged structures could be retained and converted, though demolishing the rest is estimated at $25 million on its own. Notably absent from the sketch is any medical use, a point of frustration for some residents. No timeline has been set.
Original reporting by Josh Green for Urbanize Atlanta, published August 2024.
