The city of Atlanta’s housing nonprofit said Friday it is considering developers’ proposals for affordable housing at Mall West End and Marietta Street — breathing new life into the two faltering developments.
Details of the deals were thin because the Atlanta Urban Development Corporation board entered into a closed session Friday morning to discuss “active real estate transactions” for the two sites.
During the public part of the meeting, the nonprofit’s CEO John Majors said the two projects are among more than a dozen affordable housing proposals being actively negotiated.
Board executive Alan Ferguson said no contracts were in place with the developers, while Majors declined to divulge details to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution because he said he could not discuss “active real estate transactions.” He added, however, that the group was making “significant progress” toward finalizing the deals.
“We are working with development teams on both 41 Marietta and Mall West End and are excited about both of those deals in terms of the opportunities that they bring to introduce affordability in the city of Atlanta,” he said.
He said he could not disclose details about the development teams.
The negotiated affordable housing proposals are deals that come to the Atlanta Urban Development Corporation — an entity that the city and Atlanta Housing formed in 2023 to spur redevelopment of public land for housing — either through developers or from referrals, officials said.
“Forty-one Marietta is an existing building, Mall West End is a transformative redevelopment in a very strategically important part of the city,” said Majors. “We’re just really excited about seeing how that gets re-imagined.”
Last year, plans stalled to transform the 12-acre Mall West End site into a mixed-use community, including up to 900 apartment units, with a quarter set aside for affordable housing. The site would have included a grocery store, restaurants and retail. It hit a snag when it was reported the developers submitted a notice to terminate a contract with the mall’s ownership.
Prusik Group and development partner BRP Companies spearheaded a plan to transform the decades-old shopping center in Southwest Atlanta. It was third time unlucky for developers, after efforts to revive the site faltered in 2019 and 2021.
In a similar fashion, the development of the office space on 41 Marietta Street was thrown into doubt in April after the developer’s lender filed notice to foreclose on a $20 million loan to 41 Marietta Street Main GA LLC, affiliated with Wolfe Investments, according to Bisnow.
Along with its codevelopers, Wolfe had planned to turn the office building into apartments — a real estate strategy that gathered steam after pandemic-era remote and hybrid work arrangements left office space vacant.
