Even as the former General Motors plant site in Doraville was transforming into a film studio, the property’s developer prioritized a long-held vision for affordable housing on a portion of the land.
The Integral Group was more than five years into redeveloping the site when a media company stepped in, wanting to buy 124 acres to build a film studio.
“We said, ‘well, that wasn’t what we had contemplated,” said Egbert Perry, the chairman and CEO of Integral. “‘But what’s the number?’”
Integral sold the site to the company, Gray Television, under one condition. That it would carve out a three-acre site to deliver on a promise Integral made to the community: to build Doraville’s first affordable senior housing complex.
After just over a year of construction and a much longer period of planning, that project has come to life. Called Veranda at Assembly, the rental community offers 100 units for residents 55 and over.
A majority of the units — 80% — are designated as affordable housing. For the subsidized units, 20 of them are reserved for residents whose annual income is up to 30% of the adjusted household income for the metro area. This means a single-income household would have to make about $22,600 or less to rent that unit, according to 2024 estimates from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. For 60 of the units, residents making up to 60% of the adjusted household income, or $45,180, could rent that unit.
The project marked a $33.7 million investment between Integral and its partners, and stands as the first and only residential development on the 165-acre Assembly site.
Integral celebrated the completion with a ribbon cutting, where the Secretary of U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Adrianne Todman and several public officials from DeKalb County addressed the need for affordable housing for seniors.
“What we’re seeing is that more and more seniors are reaching an age where their income limits are going down, and they need access to affordable housing. That’s what this brings,” Todman said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “We’re talking about folks who worked hard all their life, who just want some place to be able to feel safe that they can afford.”
The building was the culmination of conversations Integral had with seniors in their homes, churches and libraries, said Eric Pinckney, a development executive with Integral, during a discussion held by the Urban Land Institute after the groundbreaking.
“They said, ‘Finally, someone wants to buy this (land). But I would love to stay in Doraville. I’ve been here the whole time, but there’s no place to go,’” Pinckney said.
The U.S. population of adults 65 and over is increasing at historic rates, Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies found in 2023, up to 58 million in 2022 from 43 million in 2012. Increasing alongside this population is the demand for housing that is both affordable and able to accommodate older adults’ needs. Housing can be expensive for many older adults, whose incomes often are fixed or decline over time.
A long journey
The completion of Veranda marks Integral’s final piece of involvement with Assembly, a project the Atlanta real estate investment firm began leading over a decade ago. Integral saw potential in the site to become a mixed-use, transit-oriented development that could return jobs to the former manufacturing center.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Today, Assembly is home to 19 soundstages, the headquarters of Serta Simmons Bedding, an Asbury Automotive dealership and Veranda. But decades ago, it was home to a General Motors plant that employed over 4,000 workers. The plant shut down in 2008, whereafter the land remained vacant for several years.
Integral acquired the site from General Motors with two partners – McCauley & Schmit Associates and Consolidated Asset Management Services – for $50 million in 2014. It was the fifth company to try to tackle the plot of land.
After stepping in, Integral faced several challenges in readying the land for any kind of use. It had to demolish more than 4 million square feet of buildings and remediate environmental issues.
Integral started with developing the periphery of the property. It turned a former training facility on the Southern portion of the site into Third Rail Studios, a soundstage that would quickly attract projects like Dwayne Johnson blockbuster “Rampage” and Clint Eastwood drama “Richard Jewell.” It lured Serta Simmons to relocate its headquarters from Ohio to Georgia, and sold some of its land to Asbury Automotive to expand its dealership to bring in dollars to pay down some of its loan.
In 2021, an affiliate of Gray Television, a media company that operates TV stations in dozens of U.S. markets, acquired 128 acres of the Assembly site. Gray inherited up to $1.5 billion in bonds Doraville’s economic development authority previously approved for the massive redevelopment project.
Gray would invest more than $400 million to build out a new film and TV studio complex with 19 stages. Construction wrapped late last year.
As soundstages and back lot facades designed to look like New Orleans and New York City rose over the site, Integral held firm on its commitment to deliver the senior housing development. Residents of Veranda can see soundstage No. 3 from the parking lot.
The project fulfills the Biden-Harris administration’s goal of building more residences and lowering costs for renters and homeowners, Todman said. This year, the administration proposed a national housing plan to build 2 million units of affordable housing, provide mortgage relief for first-time homebuyers and several other measures intended to bring down the cost of housing.
“This is how the housing supply problem gets resolved,” Todman said. “It’s not some magical day where we all wake up and there’s millions of units. It’s block-by-block that we’re making housing happen.”
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