Once filled with bales of candy and stacks of telegrams, two brick buildings in southwest Atlanta now act as storage sheds for racks of car parts, engine blocks and tires.
A glance at the properties today — littered with junked cars and scrap metals — doesn’t hint at the buildings’ century-old histories, let alone conjure up thoughts of loft offices or swanky restaurants. But to Andrew Braden, he sees boundless potential beneath the surface.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
“These would make incredible boardrooms,” Braden said, looking at open space between an array of concrete pillars while ignoring the piles of car doors. “Or you can chop it up and have conference rooms. There’s just a lot you can do with a space like this.”
Braden is a principal at Atlanta development firm Braden Fellman, which paid $6.1 million in early October to acquire the two buildings along Glenn Street SW. With some retrofitting and cleanup, he said, the structures can be reborn as about 78,000 square feet of office space for small businesses and nonprofits.
The developer specializes in adaptive reuse projects, converting aging buildings into modern workplaces, abodes and restaurants. It’s challenging — and usually expensive — work, but it’s a practice that prevents historic structures from being razed and has resulted in some of Atlanta’s most popular developments like Ponce City Market.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Atlanta’s office market is still reeling from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of remote work schedules, increasing the number of developers looking at converting obsolete towers into more desired uses like housing.
While Braden Fellman’s work is of a smaller scale than downtown’s high-rises, breathing new life into Atlanta’s overlooked historic buildings serves its own purpose, said Atlanta Preservation Center Executive Director David Mitchell. He said finding novel ways to reuse historic structures with good bones helps “respect and protect the identities of each community that makes Atlanta” unique.
“Historic preservation is a catalyst for respecting a space and adding value, worth and dignity back,” Mitchell said. “It brings respect back to an area of Atlanta that has a long history.”
Raw potential
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Located just south of I-20, Braden Fellman’s new buildings have seen southwest Atlanta change throughout the past century.
The Western Union Telegraph Co. in 1923 built a reinforced concrete warehouse along a rail spur as its southeastern headquarters. The two-story building was a hub for wirelessly transmitted messages, effectively the precursor to today’s fax machines and emails.
In 1930, the Johnson-Fluker Wholesale Candy Manufacturing Co. moved into a neighboring four-story building with a distinctive smokestack. The confectioner’s presence added to the area’s growing industrial sector, which has decayed in the decades since.
“The buildings are in great condition,” Braden said. “They’re raw, but the structures are great.”
The developer bought the buildings from C&L Used Auto Parts, which used them as a scrapyard. Braden said the planned redevelopment, which will likely take about a year to deliver, will derive its name from C&L to pay homage.
The buildings are at the intersection of Atlanta’s Adair Park, Mechanicsville and Pittsburgh neighborhoods, which are former industrial powerhouses that suffered from disinvestment. It’s an area that’s begun to attract new attention. The Lee + White mixed-use development along the Beltline has revitalized the area’s former “Warehouse Row” and hospital system Atrium Health last month purchased the 40-acre MET Atlanta property for nearly $70 million.
Braden Fellman’s first project in this part of Atlanta came in 2019 when it bought and transformed a former industrial building along Northside Drive SW into Abrams Fixtures and Lofts.
The building’s 33 loft apartments and nearly 60,000 square feet of rental office and retail space are about 90% leased, and The Vine Club, sandwich shop Sammy’s and omakase restaurant Ryoku are preparing to open later this year. The project’s success led the developer to look at nearby opportunities to expand its adaptive reuse model.
Terminus Design Group, a local architecture startup, was among the first tenants to join Abrams Fixtures, leasing about 2,000 square feet for a half-dozen employees. Co-founders Chris Hunkele and Neil Waddle said the ability to transform a historic space with its own character is hard to match with new construction.
“Instead of tearing something down like this and building a boring five-story wood apartment building that you see everywhere, you maintain the history and maintain what Atlanta is about,” Waddle said.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Making conversions possible
Changing a building’s use isn’t as simple as placing a few desks atop a former factory floor and putting it on the market.
It takes capital investments to incorporate the modern trappings of an office floor plan into a building designed to store reams of paper or boxes of candy. The federal government and the state have programs to help offset those costs, which Braden said are critical to making this type of adaptive reuse project possible.
Federal Historic Tax Credits, which are overseen by the National Park Service, help cover 20% of all rehabilitation expenses for buildings that meet certain criteria. Usually they have to be at least 50 years old or be places on the National Register of Historic Places. Georgia’s program is similar and pulls from a $30 million annual fund.
Braden said the financial assistance comes with strings attached, since there’s an extra layer of government oversight and some aspects of the building can’t be changed.
“You don’t have ultimate flexibility if you go with the tax credits,” he said. “You’ve got to ultimately be preserving the historic features of the building or the area, so I think that’s why some people stray away from it.”
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
But Braden and several other Atlanta projects are pursuing these tax credit programs, aiming to deliver transformational developments.
The 2 Peachtree Street project, an effort by four developers, aims to turn a 40-plus story office tower that used to house government workers into hundreds of affordable apartments in downtown Atlanta. Integral Group Chairman Egbert Perry, who is leading the development team, said historic tax credits will make or break the effort.
Pulp and paper giant Georgia-Pacific also announced last month it plans to convert its skyline-defining high-rise in downtown Atlanta into a mixed-use tower with shops, restaurants and some of the highest-altitude apartments in the Southeast. That project is still in its early design phases, and it’s unclear if historic tax credits are on the table.
South of the Five Points MARTA station, the co-founders of Atlanta Ventures recently acquired the city’s largest collection of century-old brick and stone buildings in an area called South Downtown, which are primed for renovation and reuse. Braden Fellman was under contract to buy the portfolio in mid-2023, but the deal fell through.
Mitchell with the Atlanta Preservation Center said the buildings recently acquired by Braden Fellman should add another example for how to breathe new life into Atlanta’s historic structures from a bygone era.
“Using these historic buildings as the anchors for the reactivation of these communities will ensure they’re never losing their identity,” he said. “You’re only enhancing it.”
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