Next to Beltline, another neighborhood board rejects development plan

Plans for a major redevelopment of affordable housing communities on both sides of a recently finished Atlanta Beltline trail are encountering significant pushback at the neighborhood-governing level.  

Three neighborhood boards in recent weeks have voted heavily against design and funding plans Boston-based developer Wingate Companies is putting together for a two-part project where low-rise Trestletree Village housing complexes have long stood. 

The latest vote came Tuesday, when the Grant Park Neighborhood Association voted 40-3 to formally oppose Wingate’s request for $25 million in Invest Atlanta funding for the project. 

GPNA leaders plan to send a letter in coming days to Invest Atlanta officials relaying the voting results and communicating their rationale for recommending the $25-million grant be declined. 

Wingate officials have said the requested funding would be used to help build three separate apartment buildings—two at market-rate, the other deemed affordable housing—and parking on the south parcel, where Trestletree Village South now stands in Ormewood Park. 

Earlier votes by two other boards—the GPNA Land Use and Zoning Committee and SAND (South Atlantans for Neighborhood Development)—were heavily in favor of opposing Wingate’s development plan. 

The core issue for naysayers is that Wingate is planning to consolidate all of Trestletree’s 188 Section 8 housing units into a single new mid-rise apartment building on the south parcel. The result, detractors and current Trestletree residents fear, would be that an under-resourced group becomes isolated in a part of Atlanta undergoing substantial growth, much of it fueled by the Beltline. 

“Urban planning best practices across the country have proven that seamlessly integrating Section 8 units throughout a development is the best way to set under-resourced residents up for success,” GPNA president Robert Selby wrote via email following this week’s vote. “A place where you can knock on any door in a development and not know who’s behind it.”

SAND's letter to Invest Atlanta generally applauds Wingate's plans to rebuild and modernize Trestletree housing, requesting that a percentage of units also be set aside as workforce housing—at 60 percent of Area Median Income levels at maximum—in addition to the affordable housing piece. 

The letter also includes this passage: 

"While SAND endorses the preservation of the 188 current affordable housing units, the redevelopment should require that the 188 affordable housing units be throughout the Trestletree North and Trestletree South properties and any residential buildings constructed on these properties. This requirement is necessary to ensure true socio-economic integration; and to prevent a starkly bifurcated community."

The Trestletree Village North section is in Grant Park, and Trestletree Village South in Ormewood Park. The community was developed between the early 1940s and 1950s and 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. 

Wingate is under contract to purchase both Trestletree parcels, totaling 44 buildings, by the end of 2026. 

According to GPNA, developers have previously said roughly 800 units could be built across both parcels, though the north section could be left vacant for several years as a placeholder for future development. 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. 

Rachel Edwards, Wingate Capital’s vice president of acquisitions and development, told Urbanize in May the primary goal with Trestletree is to improve resident safety and upgrade the quality of aging housing on both properties, while locking in long-term affordability for tenants. 

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. 

Beyond the GPNA letter to Invest Atlanta, next steps call for forwarding results of recent votes to NPU-W for a vote next month. NPUs, or Neighborhood Planning Units, are citizen advisory councils in Atlanta that provide input to zoning, planning, and land use officials at the city level.  

According to officials at this week’s GPNA meeting, Invest Atlanta plans to vote on the requested $25-million Trestletree grant in September.

...

Follow us on social media: 

Twitter / Facebook/and now: Instagram  

• Grant Park news, discussion (Urbanize Atlanta)