Photos: How development is changing prominent eastside corner

With delays caused by ballooning, post-pandemic construction costs behind it, The Lodge project barreled ahead early this year and has since transformed a formerly vacant, blighted corner along a main north-south Atlanta thoroughfare.

But what stands today where Ormewood Park meets East Atlanta Village, should developers’ plans pan out, will be just the beginning.

Residential components of The Lodge project—including its multifamily portions—have topped out along Moreland, Glenwood, and Portland avenues, with façade work either completed or well underway.

What makes the multifaceted project truly unique, however, is the 1940s former Masonic Lodge at its core, which remains structurally sound despite years of vacancy and neglect, project officials have said.

An official with the Clark Property R+D firm said the development team is currently waiting on building permit approvals for commercial facets of The Lodge project that will include repurposing the Masonic building for retail and restaurant uses.

Other commercial facets will include a new ground-up, four-story spec office building with revised, brick-clad designs at the corner of Moreland and Glenwood avenues, and the adaptive-reuse of a single-family home fronting Glenwood Avenue, according to a project rep. 

“We expect to start construction of [those facets] when the permits are approved, hopefully sometime this summer,” wrote the source to Urbanize Atlanta via email.

Plans for the corner building call for ground floor retail space with three levels of offices above. Each floor will be white-boxed, or left as raw space for future tenants, according to project filings recently submitted to the city.

The project’s name pays homage to the Masonic Lodge that was built in 1947 and used for years as a Masonic Grand Lodge upstairs with a Kroger at street level.

The Lodge initially broke ground with demolition work in 2021, combining eight parcels that had previously housed individual homes, a parking lot, and ancillary buildings. Then came funding delays caused by hiked construction costs in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The site went idle for well over a year.

More recently, affordable housing specialists Rea Ventures closed on development financing with the Georgia Department of Community Affairs to build 42 units of affordable housing on site, allowing the project to proceed.

Rea Ventures is developing The Lodge’s separate residential component, called The Abbington at Ormewood Park. Across the site, plans call for a new four-story structure and two smaller buildings to include a mix of studios up to three-bedroom rentals. For 30 years, rents will be restricted to no more than 30 percent of income for those making between 30 percent and 80 percent of area median income.

Across the project, developers are aiming for 60 percent AMI on average for residents to ensure a mix of incomes, officials have previously told Urbanize.

That means the largest units, the three-bedroom options, are expected to rent from between $583 and $1,500, per the development team. Funding from the federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program, Invest Atlanta, and Partners for Home is helping make the project financially feasible.

Commercial and office spaces at The Lodge, meanwhile, are being developed by a joint venture between Clark Property R+D, King Properties, Porch & Square, and RAD Group.

Project officials said in January The Lodge’s 33,000 square feet of office, retail, restaurant, and event space was 67 percent pre-leased via King Properties. No tenant announcements have been made.

Find more context and aerial photos of The Lodge today in the gallery above.

[UPDATE: 12:38 a.m. June 28: An earlier version of this story included a source's name who has since asked that it be removed.]

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