Memorial Drive travelers may have noticed recently what appears to be a reminder of the Great Recession’s economic slump and a rare occurrence amid the eastside’s current construction frenzy: an idle, if not abandoned, multifamily residential site.
But according to project leaders, that’s not the case. Though the townhome venture has grappled with issues common in the industry today, they say.
Efforts to create a pocket of townhomes on a cleared corner lot where Memorial Drive meets Dahlgren Street in Edgewood, about three blocks east of Moreland Avenue, have been in various states of planning or construction for more than a decade.
A venture called The Carlyle—a modern-style, gated community of three-bedroom units—began on site with four finished townhomes but was never finished, although infrastructure including a street was installed.
The Edgewood Square site along Memorial Drive, just east of Moreland Avenue. Google Maps
The project's Memorial Drive facade today.Josh Green/Urbanize Atlanta
The tides appeared to be turning in summer 2021, when builder Base Residential resumed the project with a goal of sticking as closely as possible to original designs.
The new project name: Edgewood Square.
By last summer, all new units at 20-home Edgewood Square had gone under contract, continuing a surge of buyer interest in Memorial Drive townhome projects such as Walker Place, Warren South, The Warren, The Moderns, and Empire Communities’ 66-unit Paintbox community. The first new Edgewood Square units were expected to deliver in September, followed by the final building around December.
Six months later, all 16 new townhomes remain under construction, with a portion of the project an exposed plywood structure behind chain-link fencing.
Construction on the community's remaining 16 homes, as seen in early July. Josh Green/Urbanize Atlanta
Josh Green/Urbanize Atlanta
According to listing agent Allen Snow, an Atlanta Fine Homes Sotheby’s International Realty associate broker, the project is still under construction and “back on track” with the bulk of lots expected to close in February. Another six lots (one through six) should be completed and ready to close in June, Snow says.
Two contracts have been lost since last summer, and Snow expects those units to list in March in the $600,000s, marking a new high. (The priciest unit listed to date costs $590,000.)
“There were a multitude of reasons for the lengthier than normal construction phase,” Snow wrote via email this week. “They included supply chain shortages for building materials, a shortage in labor, and delays with the city and [the Department of] Watershed Management.”
All new residences are three-bedroom, three-and-½-bathroom townhomes, with just under 2,000 square feet. They’ve sold from the mid to high-$500,000s so far.
Find more context and images in the gallery above.
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