A vacant, graffiti-covered corner of Old Fourth Ward near Ponce City Market is being converted into a hip haven for pooches.
Atlanta dog-boarding business Barking Hound Village is building a new adaptive-reuse facility on a Boulevard corner where Starbucks bailed on plans for a drive-thru bistro a couple of years ago, according to building permit records filed with the City of Atlanta.
Barking Hound currently operates a facility a few blocks east of the construction site, near the BeltLine’s Eastside Trail in Poncey-Highland, but whether that will remain open isn't yet clear. Inquiries to business leaders this week for more information were not returned.
The animal daycare and boarding facility is building a 5,500-square-foot addition to a vacant building at the northeast corner of two busy intown corridors, Boulevard and North Avenue. That 619 Boulevard structure was most recently used as a medical facility.
Construction progress with an adaptive-reuse component at the 619 Boulevard site this week Josh Green/Urbanize Atlanta
Plans for the three public-facing elevations. Office of Design
Plans call for a modern-style, 9,000-square-foot structure beneath a butterfly roof, as drawn up by Decatur-based architecture firm Office of Design.
On parts of the steel-and-glass façade along both streets, designs call for green walls covered in fig ivy, while other walls would feature dog murals “to create a vitality and playfulness in keeping with the nature of the building’s use,” according to paperwork filed with Atlanta’s Office of Zoning and Development in 2022.
Property records indicate the ½-acre corner lot last traded hands in September 2022 for $2.25 million.
The site is less than three blocks from Ponce City Market and the BeltLine’s dog-paradise Eastside Trail, roughly a block north of new luxury rental complex 555 Boulevard and several other, newer affordable housing buildings. Thousands of apartments have materialized in the neighborhood across the past decade, exponentially increasing O4W’s dog population, too.
The canine facility will be expanded to the Boulevard sidewalk here, per plans filed in 2022 with the city. Josh Green/Urbanize Atlanta
Office of Design
The Starbucks would have replaced the shuttered medical facility and an empty 1940s home next door. The boarding facility's plans don’t include the residential structure, as ongoing construction clearly shows.
Starbucks had been eyeing property to build a ground-up new bistro on the corner for well over a year. Plans that came to light in October 2021 promised a 2,500-square-foot building positioned close to the intersection’s sidewalks, with a specialized, snaking drive-thru behind it.
But Boulevard Frappuccinos were ultimately not meant to be.
Find a much closer look at what’s to come—and at Starbucks’ plans that never came to be—in the gallery above.
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