A corner that sat vacant and fenced-off for well over a decade, in the shadow of Atlanta City Hall, is finally a construction site.
Trinity Central Flats is fully under way at the southeast corner of Trinity Avenue and Shirley C. Franklin Boulevard, the street formerly known as Central Avenue. The project has been in the pipeline since the waning days of the pandemic. It calls for 218 apartments and 7,500 square feet of ground-floor retail facing City Hall, on a sloping 1.3-acre site the Atlanta City Council voted unanimously in spring 2021 to sell to Invest Atlanta for $1.
Every unit will be offered below market. All are capped for renters earning 80 percent of Area Median Income or less, and the large majority - 193 apartments - are reserved at either 50 or 60 percent AMI. No resident will pay more than 30 percent of their income, with Atlanta Housing HomeFlex vouchers available for supportive housing units.
The Invest Atlanta board approved a revised development budget of more than $90 million last summer, up from a previous $72 million, including $45 million in tax-exempt bond financing. Construction is expected to take two years, putting the opening around late 2027.
Plans filed with the city in 2023 describe a 10-story brick-and-precast building topping out at 123 feet, with a bicycle storage room accessible from outside, an arts and crafts room, a computer lab, a gym, laundry and other communal spaces. The site is within walking distance of South Downtown, Underground Atlanta and three MARTA stations - a location city officials have called one of Atlanta's most convenient.
Project leaders are Radiant Development Partners and Capitol Hill Neighborhood Development Corporation, a longstanding ecumenical ministry made up of three downtown churches.
It may not stay the only one on the block for long. Immediately to the east, affordable housing developer Gorman & Company plans to break ground this spring on a 16-story tower as part of The Sanctuary, a $41.3 million remake of Trinity United Methodist Church's historic campus that would add 89 mixed-income units. Two sizable affordable projects side by side, in the heart of downtown, would be a genuinely unusual sight.
Original reporting by Josh Green for Urbanize Atlanta, published January 2026.
