As plans to remake Huff Road incrementally come together, the corridor’s transformative development in recent years is showing few signs of slowing down.
Like Empire Communities’ growing Longreen project (priced from the low $300,000s), the latest intown bet from Charlotte-based Crescent Communities has nearly topped out across a 3-acre site on Huff Road, a vital roadway connection in northwest Atlanta.
The Novel Blandtown project has between one and two stories left to climb at 1095 and 1121 Huff Road, replacing a former showroom for home improvement store PDI Kitchen, Bath, and Lighting.
But it’s not taking shape as orginally planned.
Novel Blandtown's frontage along Huff Road today, with one to two stories of vertical construction remaining. Photo courtesy of Philip Clinch, @philip_atlanta
Novel Blandtown calls for a seven-story multifamily building with 250 apartments and a 4,700-square-foot, one-story structure for retail topped with a patio overlooking Huff Road.
That standalone retail component, however, is being reserved as a future phase.
In its place, for the time being, will be “an urban plaza [that] uniquely integrates dynamic hardscaping and a grassy knoll into one space,” as project designers Niles Bolton Associates architects relayed last year.
The project’s title, Novel Blandtown, echoes other Crescent ventures across the country while embracing the historic neighborhood’s atypical name.
The site is located across the street from AuthenTEAK Furniture, X3 Sports, and other Blandtown businesses. The scope also included a vacant, triangular lot next door to the former showroom.
Novel Blandtown's arrangement of stacked apartments, left, and its retail component, which will now come at a later phase, per developers.
Niles Bolton Associates
Revised plans for Novel Blandtown's eastern corner at Huff Road, with a pocket greenspace now shown in project renderings. Courtesy of Crescent Communities; designs by Niles Bolton Associates
Novel Blandtown will include a clubhouse and pool-topped, six-story parking deck with 322 spaces described by architects as “carefully concealed.” Plans also call for about 50 spaces for bicycle parking, according to designs brought before the Beltline Design Review Committee in 2023.
To comply with the Beltline’s Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance, 10 percent of Novel Blandtown apartments will be reserved for tenants earning 60 percent of the area median income or less, per the Beltline DRC.
Novel Blandtown is scheduled to open in early 2027, with Peachtree Corners-based construction company Fortune-Johnson building it, according to Crescent officials. When it debuts, Beltline connectedness should be a selling point.
The newest section of the Beltline’s Westside Trail opened about two blocks away, directly west (up a steep hill), in fall 2022. Last fall, a Northwest Trail segment of the Beltline slinking toward Buckhead also opened, and an expansion of that leg is now underway.
Projected look of the building's Huff Road facade. Courtesy of Crescent Communities; designs by Niles Bolton Associates
Rooftop pool, grills, and social zones bound for Novel Blandtown. Courtesy of Crescent Communities; designs by Niles Bolton Associates
Crescent’s investments along Huff Road continue a surge of residential building for the historically industrial neighborhood.
Neighboring projects that have claimed underused Blandtown parcels include Minerva Homes’ 34-unit Hayden Westside townhomes and Empire’s Longreen project, which is consuming an area roughly equivalent to three city blocks along Huff Road.
Crescent Communities also built a 340-apartment community called Novel West Midtown that opened in 2023 on Fairmont Avenue—practically next door to Novel Blandtown. Ten percent of those apartments were also reserved as affordable housing, as Beltline inclusionary zoning rules dictate.
Such development along the Huff Road corridor is the driving force behind what’s called the Huff Road Multimodal Study.
Huff Road today includes two traffic lanes (and spotty sidewalks) for most of its length between Howell Mill Road and Marietta Boulevard, where it meets the Beltline corridor.
The initiative is striving to eventually “reimagine [the] industrial freight corridor as an accessible, safe, and multimodal network, in line with the community’s goal of creating a restorative urban environment,” according to the Atlanta Regional Commission, which contributed $200,000 to the effort in 2023.
The 83-page Huff Road Multimodal Study was officially adopted by city officials in September. It estimates the project cost at just shy of $17 million, but no specific timeline for full construction has been determined.
Find more context and a preview of what’s in store for the latest Huff Road build in the gallery above.
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