Star Metals developer sets sights on Eastside Beltline properties

An Atlanta Beltline-adjacent site in Reynoldstown where big development ideas have been kicked around for nearly two decades could finally see movement soon—but with a larger scope than ever planned before. 

Officials with the Allen Morris Company, a Florida-based real estate firm with a growing Atlanta presence, tell Urbanize Atlanta they’re in talks to help develop a vacant, formerly industrial 930 Mauldin St. site in Reynoldstown that counts direct Eastside Trail access. 

Allen Morris is entering a joint partnership with longtime property owners and developers Metzger & Co. The latter company in 2022 unveiled a revised, Perkins & Will-designed development vision for the site that would have blended retail and residential in a unique, Z-shaped structure, claiming one of the last large development sites left along Reynoldstown’s section of the Beltline.

But according to a neighborhood source, the project’s scope has recently grown to include the 205 Holtzclaw St. property immediately south of the Mauldin Street site, which the developers have purchased. Formerly home to the DooGallery, that site houses an empty lot and low-rise, warehouse-style buildings today. 

Allen Morris and partners have scheduled a meeting Thursday to discuss rezoning and other details with the Reynoldstown Civic Improvement League, a volunteer community organization. 

“Our intent is to work with RCIL to conceive a project that will be mixed-use with multifamily residential and retail,” Allen Morris officials wrote to Urbanize Atlanta today via email. “Construction timing, scope, and other details are highly conceptual until we receive feedback from RCIL. 

“We look forward to working with the neighborhood,” the message continues, “to develop a project that inspires, impresses, and improves the lives of all who interact with it.”

Metzger & Co.’s development plans for Mauldin Street have been proposed, off and on, for more than 17 years, long before Beltline hysteria swept over the historic eastside neighborhood.

Back in 2008, the Beltline and Atlanta City Council approved a three-story, 108-unit building that Metzger & Co. had brought to the table, but it never went forward.

Eight years later, the developer pitched a larger project with 40 more apartments and about twice the height. City officials and neighborhood leaders vocally criticized that proposal’s lack of affordable housing, how it didn’t interface well with the Beltline, and for what they called poor construction meant for a 20-year life cycle. A rezoning application was unanimously rejected at an NPU meeting, and the project fizzled.

More recently, Metzger & Co.’s retooled plans called for 142 apartments (15 percent reserved as affordable housing) and 2,700 square feet of retail spaces fronting the Beltline, in a 140,000-square-foot building that would have topped out at six stories. But those designs, according to sources, have been scrapped, though they'd been approved by NPU and other neighborhood groups as part of a successful rezoning process in 2022. 

According to LoopNet, the 1.3-acre Mauldin Street site is home to a 31,000-square-foot industrial building now. It last sold for $2.2 million back in 2006—cheap by today’s standards for Eastside Trail-adjacent acreage.

Elsewhere in Atlanta, Allen Morris, a national developer, is actively planning the final phases of its growing Star Metals District now, as the upscale Stella at Star Metals tower nears completion. 

About two miles west of there, the company is putting together a massive Bankhead project along the Beltline’s Westside Trail that would also claim underused, formerly industrial properties. 

Allen Morris also opened the Bryn House project in North Druid Hills in 2023.

...

Follow us on social media: 

Twitter / Facebook/and now: Instagram  

• Reynoldstown news, discussion (Urbanize Atlanta)