A nonprofit founded by Coretta Scott King wants to re-establish community on Auburn Avenue. A $37 million development with shops, restaurants and 33 affordable homes could be the answer.
The Front Porch on Auburn, a three-story mixed-use building next to a former funeral home and some old storefronts, is scheduled to open in August. The project by the nonprofit Historic District Development Corporation (HDDC) has faced a number of challenges, including paltry support from Atlanta’s philanthropic community and setbacks from the pandemic, according to HDDC officials.
“Thinking about the name Front Porch, if you look at some of the historic photos of what was on this property, there were multifamily buildings with these huge front porches and you see people sitting outside, talking to people who are walking, and it was just a clear sense of community,” Cheneé Joseph, HDDC’s president and CEO, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“So how do we go ahead and recreate that in this project?”
Credit: Ben Gray
Credit: Ben Gray
Funeral home and Front Porch
HDDC was founded in 1980 by King, who wanted to preserve Sweet Auburn’s identity and history while also revitalizing the neighborhood where her husband, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., had been born.
Over the past four decades, the organization has led multiple equitable development projects, most notably the Studioplex building next to the Beltline’s Eastside Trail.
HDDC bought the former Haugabrooks Funeral Home and several nearby lots before the pandemic.
Credit: Christina Matacotta
Credit: Christina Matacotta
With control of most of block, HDDC officials met with neighbors to create something to fill community needs without displacing people, Joseph said.
Forrest Coley, chair of NPU-M, the neighborhood planning unit that oversees the Old Fourth Ward said neighbors wanted to honor Sweet Auburn’s history and add affordable housing.
Haugabrooks is now an event space and art gallery, and HDDC plans to open a coffee shop there this summer. More retail will follow.
Credit: Christina Matacotta
Credit: Christina Matacotta
HDDC hasn’t announced tenants, but Joseph said they are targeting Black-owned businesses. The courtyard will also feature public art suspended from the ceiling.
Above the commercial spaces and courtyard will be 33 “co-living” units, with a mix of studios, one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments, all fully furnished. People will rent their bedroom and bathroom, then share the common living spaces.
“Essentially a dorm for grown-ups,” Joseph said.
HDDC is targeting graduate students and those in the entertainment and hospitality industries. Rents will be set for people making 80% of the area median income — or $60,200 a year for individuals and $86,000 for a family of four. Lease terms will range from three months to 18 months and Joseph estimates the average rent will range from $1,200 to $1,400, including utilities.
The rooftop will have a 9,000-square-foot community garden that Joseph hopes will bring fresh, locally grown produce to the neighborhood.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
HDDC also plans to work with other organizations to offer services to unhoused Atlantans who are most vulnerable to displacement.
“We think about displacement from a home but if I’ve been unhoused in this neighborhood for however long and that slab that was here used to be my bed, and now they built a building, I’ve displaced you,” she said.
A changing Atlanta
When Mtamanika Youngblood considered moving to Atlanta from the suburbs in the early 1980s, a friend told her about a house in Sweet Auburn.
“It was rough, to say the least,” Youngblood said, about both the house and the neighborhood.
But she was drawn to the little details she could see in the home and to the neighbors, “little old ladies sitting out on their porches,” she said.
So, she and her husband took a chance and ended up integrating fully into the community. Youngblood started working with HDDC in the late 1980s, eventually becoming its founding executive director and is now chairperson emeritus.
The Front Porch aims to recapture some of that neighborhood feeling, especially as the Old Fourth Ward and downtown continue to change rapidly around it.
Coley has lived in the Old Fourth Ward for more than 20 years, when the Beltline was just a twinkle in the city’s eye. Two decades later, his house is now steps away from the popular walking trail and he has watched his neighborhood — and his neighbors — change.
“Once upon a time I would walk the streets and know who I’m passing and we would speak,” Coley said. “Now with so many transients and the demographic changing in the neighborhood, I’m looked at in fear as an African American male walking a dog.”
More change is likely with huge projects like Centennial Yards and the development of South Downtown underway and the Beltline continuing to boom.
But Youngblood and Joseph said the Front Porch project has been mostly funded by HDDC and loans. The organization put in about $6 million and the rest of the Front Porch was funded by debt and equity, according to Joseph. But there wasn’t much interest from the local philanthropic community.
“Sweet Auburn has been forgotten on different levels. We don’t have a stadium, we don’t have those big economic draws that seem to bring the type of support to other parts of the community. All we have is our history and our culture, which should be enough,” Joseph said.
“What we’re focused on is making sure that what we do here is reflective of not just Martin Luther King, but all of those different sources that actually made him who he is … . It’s great when everything’s happening, but we’re just as important here too.”
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