Plans are coming into clearer focus for how a national developer intends to transform large swaths of empty land at the edge of Hapeville’s historic commercial core.
Mill Creek Residential hopes to break ground in coming months on a nine-building apartment community (with a small retail section) called Modera Hapeville in an area emerging as a hotbed of ITP development.
The site in question, located at the intersection of Porsche Avenue and Elm Street, consists of 17 different parcels totaling about 8.3 acres. It’s next door to the world’s busiest airport, Porsche’s growing North American headquarters, and the south ITP city’s artsy downtown row.
Mill Creek officials this week provided Urbanize Atlanta with updated renderings illustrating in technicolor how the nine buildings would take shape—with one section all but overlooking Porsche’s expanding test track for employees and guests. (As with other projects in the area, “noise attenuation features” are a likely bet.)
As shown in 2022, the former Modera site's proximity to Porsche's expanded campus and longer Porsche Experience Center Atlanta track. Google Maps
Now cancelled, Mill Creek's plans for nine buildings of new construction with an existing car-repair business shown at bottom that proved a sticking point for these plans. Courtesy of Mill Creek Residential; designs, Dynamik Design
Phil Carson, Mill Creek’s vice president of development, said the project received unanimous approval from the Hapeville Planning Commission in January for both plat consolidation and site plan. It’s expected to come before the city’s Design Review Committee this month.
Seven apartment buildings would stand four stories each, joined by a two-story clubhouse and one five-story podium building with rentals stacked over retail and amenities. That retail portion would be about 7,600 square feet, per project filings.
Expect about 300 multifamily units in garden-style buildings with “an industrial modern aesthetic” and a separate, taller building for leasing and amenities, according to an application filed with Hapeville’s Economic Development Department.
Greenspace, a pool, and a clubhouse game room are also in the works.
The Modera project's entry where Porsche Avenue meets Elm Street. Courtesy of Mill Creek Residential; designs, Dynamik Design
The Hapeville project would mark the 10th Modera-branded development across metro Atlanta.
A two-phase project in Buckhead and a Modera-branded complex in Reynoldstown near the BeltLine have recently opened, while Modera Decatur, a 10th Street high-rise in Midtown, and a newer venture near the BeltLine’s Southside Trail are under construction now.
Other residential developments in progress around Hapeville’s downtown include a 285-unit multifamily project called SCP Hapeville, 68 rental townhomes along main-drag North Central Avenue, and a relatively dense single-family enclave called the Stillwood.
Developer interest in Modera’s section of Hapeville dates back about 20 years. With plans to build a new urbanist hub called “Asbury Park,” Main Street Partners once assembled about 80 underused parcels in the area, but the Great Recession squashed redevelopment plans.
Texas-based D.R. Horton, the country’s largest homebuilder, is planning to build more than 100 townhomes on another 8.3 acres immediately west of the Modera proposal. Veteran Atlanta developers Coro Realty and Miller Lowry Developments partnered in 2020 to buy the 16 acres in question and are offloading them now.
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