Downtown affordable housing build finally moves toward construction

The long process of financing, planning, and revising a large-scale affordable housing venture on a vacant but centrally located downtown corner appears to be winding down, with construction finally on the horizon.

The team behind the Trinity Central Flats proposal across the street from Atlanta City Hall filed for building permits last week with Atlanta’s Department of City Planning, as Bisnow first reported.

That paperwork sheds light on what the tweaked, finalized version of the mixed-use proposal would bring to the southeast corner of Trinity and Central avenues downtown—nearly three years after city officials picked developers to build it.  

According to building permit filings, the 10-story, brick-and-precast Trinity Central Flats will include 219 apartments at the .84-acre site. It’ll top out at 123 feet tall.

At ground level, the project now calls for 6,700 square feet of retail space (800 less square feet than earlier designs) in three storefronts positioned along Central Avenue.

Six ordinance variations for the project were approved during the Special Administrative Permit process, according to permit filings.

A bicycle storage room with exterior access, an arts and crafts room, a computer lab, a gym, a laundry facility, and other communal spaces are in the works.

Vacant and fenced-off for well over a decade, the Trinity Central Flats site is within walking distance of three MARTA stations, as city officials have noted in calling it one of Atlanta’s “most convenient locations.”

The Atlanta City Council voted unanimously in spring 2021 to offload the corner parcel for $1 to Invest Atlanta.

Invest Atlanta’s Board of Directors approved up to $3 million in Eastside Tax Allocation District funding in September 2023 to help get Trinity Central Flats off the ground at 104 Trinity Ave.

Invest Atlanta, the city’s economic development arm, is considered a partner in the $72-million, public-private development. The $3 million Eastside TAD Ascension Fund Grant joins a list of other federal and state funding sources, including tax-exempt bonds and tax credits.

Construction is scheduled to be complete in 2026, following an 18-month building process, as Invest Atlanta officials told Urbanize Atlanta last year.  

Trinity Central Flats will offer rents as low as $893 monthly for 450-square-foot studio units, reserved for tenants earning no more than 50 percent of the area median income. Plans call for other apartments to be reserved for people earning up to 60 and 80 percent AMI.

The largest market-rate rentals in the building—three-bedroom units with 1,165 square feet—will charge $1,532 monthly, according to Invest Atlanta.

Invest Atlanta says 187 units total will be offered at 60 percent AMI or below. The agency lists Radiant Development Partners and Capitol Hill Neighborhood Development Corporation, a neighborhood booster group established in the early 1990s, as project leaders.

The development team was picked in December 2021 following a public selection process. Elsewhere in Atlanta, Radiant is a partner in a Beltline-adjacent project with an affordable housing component near Lindbergh.

Designs by architecture firm SSOE/Stevens & Wilkinson also call for an 18,000-square-foot urban garden atop a connected, existing parking deck next door—and the largest solar array on any multifamily building in Georgia, officials have said.

Those green, sustainable facets are expected to reduce energy use in the building’s common areas by 30 percent, bringing down residential utility bills in the process.

The Trinity Avenue property will remain under Invest Atlanta’s ownership and be leased for 99 years instead of sold outright. That arrangement, as city officials put it in 2021, is meant to help developers “achieve deeper, longer-term affordability for residents and local businesses by saving millions of dollars otherwise spent on land acquisition in a traditional property sale.”

The project might not be the only injection of affordable housing in the area.

Immediately to the east, affordable housing developer Gorman & Company is planning to redevelop part of Trinity United Methodist Church's property on Washington Street into 54 senior housing units, with today's sanctuary transformed into a large event space. 

Find more imagery and context for the Trinity Central Flats project in the gallery above.

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