Underground Atlanta has been many things in its 150-year life. A railroad-era commercial district. A Reconstruction-era marketplace. An entertainment destination that opened in 1969, closed, reopened for the 1996 Olympics, and closed again. By 2016, when The Masquerade relocated its music venue into the complex, the rest of the space was largely shuttered.
What has happened since is not a top-down redevelopment. It is a grassroots occupation by artists, musicians, and small-venue operators who saw empty space with character, cheap rent, and a downtown address — and moved in.
The Current Landscape
As of early 2024, Underground Atlanta houses eight art galleries, The Masquerade, a comedy theater, an LGBTQ-focused dance club, multiple bars and restaurants, and food trucks. The anchor of the creative community is Mom Said It's Fine — a studio, gallery, and music venue operated by sculptor Mike Stasny, a Chicago transplant whose work features macabre themes and animal imagery drawn from his family's taxidermy background.
Stasny was recently named creative director of the Underground arts program alongside set designer Marina Skye. His philosophy toward the space mirrors the broader spirit of the revival: "Showing new love to something that's forgotten or old. Taking something that was maybe not cared for before and making it into something that could be of value, just through love."
Jamie Shelton, lead singer of gothic metal band Sister Sleep, uses the venue for performances and music video production — the kind of cross-pollination between visual art, live music, and film that thrives in spaces where the overhead is low enough to experiment.
Ownership and the Open Question
Lalani Ventures, the entertainment arm of Billionaires Funding Group, purchased Underground Atlanta in 2020 and manages the property's development. The grassroots arts community operates within that ownership structure, but the long-term relationship between the creative tenants and any future large-scale redevelopment remains an open question.
Underground sits directly above the Georgia Railroad Freight Depot — built in 1869, the oldest building in downtown Atlanta — and adjacent to the Gulch, where Centennial Yards is under construction. The land beneath and around Underground is among the most valuable in the city. Whether the galleries and music venues survive the development pressure that their presence is helping to create is the tension at the heart of the story.
What It Means Now
For the moment, Underground Atlanta functions as something rare in a city center: an affordable, walkable, weird creative district. The artists are not waiting for a master plan. They moved into the space that was available, built audiences, and created a reason for people to come to a part of downtown that had been written off. Whatever Underground becomes next, this chapter belongs to them.
Original reporting by GPB News, Georgia Public Broadcasting, January 17, 2024.