Mixed housing plans straddling new Beltline come into sharper focus

Along one of the Atlanta Beltline’s newest stretches, details continue to surface for how an older low-rise affordable housing community could be replaced with a mix of market-rate and lower-income housing in coming years. 

The Grant Park Neighborhood Association has put together an online survey and flyer/yard-sign campaign to gather input and gauge the opinions of current residents at Trestletree Village Apartments in southeast Atlanta, which Boston-based developer Wingate Companies is in the process of buying.  

The Trestletree Village North section is in Grant Park, and Trestletree Village South in Ormewood Park, counting a total of 188 units in 44 buildings. The community, developed between the early 1940s and 1950s, consists of garden-style, one and two-story residential buildings spread across two Section 8 communities on opposite sides of the Beltline’s new Southeast Trail, totaling about 21 acres. 

GPNA leadership have called a special meeting to discuss Trestletree’s potential redevelopment this evening. 

According to that board, Wingate is under contract to purchase both Trestletree parcels by the end of 2026, with plans to consolidate all 188 current Section 8, affordable housing apartments into new mid-rise construction at the Ormewood Park section. 

Wingate has applied for a $25-million grant from Invest Atlanta to help fund the project, and it’s requesting a letter of support from GPNA and other boards. According to GPNA, that funding would be used strictly to develop new buildings on the southernmost Trestletree parcel in Ormewood Park.  

Draft renderings submitted by Wingate indicate the northern parcel would become denser, market-rate multifamily buildings and new parking structures, while the south section would see a mix of affordable and market-rate housing, with most of the latter being adjacent to the Beltline corridor. Communal greenspaces and amenities would be dotted throughout. 

According to GPNA, developers have previously said roughly 800 units could be built across both parcels.

No current Trestletree residents are expected to be temporarily or permanently displaced as site plans come together, a Wingate executive told Urbanize Atlanta earlier this year. 

In the short term, tentative plans call for the north parcel to be left vacant for future redevelopment that, according to GPNA, might not come for another five years or more. 

Rachel Edwards, Wingate Capital’s vice president of acquisitions and development, wrote in an email to Urbanize Atlanta last month that all draft images submitted to date are part of planning exercises based on the property’s development rights and existing zoning. 

The chief goal of the Trestletree project, according to Edwards, is to improve housing quality and resident safety, and to preserve long-term affordability for tenants today and in the future. 

“Significant reinvestment is required to address aging [Trestletree] housing stock and ensure these homes remain viable for decades to come…  adjacent to one of Atlanta's most significant public infrastructure investments,” Edwards wrote. 

A flyer circulated around nearby blocks last month urged residents to push back against Wingate’s proposal, arguing the denser redevelopment of Trestletree would dimmish the area’s character and increase vehicle traffic “exponentially” in a new Beltline district with nearby schools, among other complaints. 

GPNA has scheduled the special information session for 6:30 p.m. today regarding Trestletree redevelopment, prior to its general meeting. 

GPNA’s Land Use and Zoning Committee is scheduled to vote on a formal Trestletree recommendation on June 25, followed by a vote by GPNA’s general body on July 21. Those recommendations will then be forwarded to NPU and Invest Atlanta governing boards.

More specifically, according to GPNA, the two questions below will be specifically voted on at the June 25 meeting: 

• Item 1: Relocation out of Grant Park
  Does GPNA support Wingate’s proposal to permanently relocate all current residents from the North Parcel (Grant Park) to the South Parcel (Ormewood Park), effectively removing this affordable housing footprint and economic diversity from the Grant Park neighborhood?
• Item 2: Affordable housing consolidation
  Does GPNA support Wingate’s proposal to consolidate all affordable and Section 8 housing units into dedicated buildings on a single parcel, rather than integrating them into a mixed-income housing model?

Current rents at Trestletree Village range between $479 and $812 monthly for qualified renters required to pay no more than 30 percent of their income. All units have two bedrooms, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. 

Adjacent to both apartment coves, the Beltline’s 1.2-mile Southeast Trail (formerly called Southside Trail—Segments 4 and 5) officially opened in April, following nearly three years of construction. 

Find more context and visuals in the gallery above. 

[UPDATE: 6:04 p.m. June 16: Wingate officials send over updated massing plans (below) for the south/Ormewood Park site, noting: "This new plan preserves greenspace and provides natural buffers on both sides with the Beltline and the Tapestry Greenspace."] 

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• Ormewood Park news, discussion (Urbanize Atlanta)