Whether you call it Howell Mill, West Midtown, Home Park, or simply the Westside, there’s one aspect of this part of Atlanta no one can argue: The Howell Mill Road corridor is unrecognizable from a decade ago.
In the ballpark of $1.5 billion in development has materialized in the past few years alone, replacing parking lots (asphalt and gravel), empty parcels, heavy equipment storage behind barbed wire, a metal scrap yard, and low-rise buildings clearly past their prime.
This half-mile stretch has morphed into a utopia for density proponents but not for transit and Complete Streets advocates—at least not yet.
Which makes it high time for a photo tour.
The residential portion of Star Metals Atlanta on Howell Mill Road, where the first phase is expected to cost north of $330 million. Josh Green/Urbanize Atlanta
In January, we hiked roughly eight blocks along Howell Mill Road with camera in hand, beginning at the standalone Design Within Reach store, opened in 2017, to just south of the $150-million 8West project by Atlantic Capital Properties and Gateway Ventures.
In between is the massive Interlock mixed-use, finishing its first phase now, The Star Metals complex’s first phase, the Osprey, and much more. When finished, the results could produce some of Atlanta’s most interesting mid-rise architecture in recent memory.
Below, we’ve paired those photos with Google Maps “before” images from 2008, 2011, and especially 2012, logged just as Atlanta was beginning to revive from a Great Recession that had crushed most large-scale private development. We end with a glimpse at one key section’s present and future. Happy (time) travels!
