Westside Future Fund put a shovel in the ground Monday at 280 James P. Brawley Blvd. NW, starting construction on what the nonprofit calls its first ground-up development in Vine City. The site sits directly across the street from John F. Kennedy Park and Hollis Innovation Academy, and about two blocks west of Rodney Cook Sr. Park — walking distance from the western edge of downtown.
The plan is small and specific. Building permit filings describe two three-story residential structures totaling 18 units, one holding 12 apartments and the other six, sharing a 13-space surface parking lot. The nonprofit puts the total project cost at $6.7 million. Westside Future Fund describes the housing as high-quality and affordable and says the site was chosen to expand housing options in a well-connected part of the neighborhood, though it has not published rent levels or an income-tier breakdown.
What the buildings will look like was, until recently, an open question. The organization declined to release renderings ahead of the ceremony. A day after the groundbreaking, project designer Eric Kronberg of Kronberg Urbanists + Architects supplied a rendering and clarified the framing: his firm had already designed a larger ground-up mixed-use project for the nonprofit, making 280 James P. Brawley the first ground-up build in Vine City specifically rather than the organization's first overall.
The land had been vacant and, in the nonprofit's words, blighted. That is the part worth watching for anyone tracking how the Westside redevelops. Building new units on empty parcels adds housing without pushing existing residents out, which is the stated point of the Westside Future Fund model and the reason the organization tends to buy vacant land and older buildings rather than occupied ones.
The Brawley project joins a short but growing list. A few blocks north on the same street, the nonprofit is renovating English Avenue's landmark Yellow Store property into a mixed-use building. Earlier this year it completed two English Avenue housing projects with throwback residential designs that together added close to 60 homes. The organization's working footprint covers English Avenue, Vine City, Ashview Heights, the Atlanta University Center and Just Us, the cluster of neighborhoods immediately west of the downtown core.
Original reporting: Urbanize Atlanta (2026-08-12)