Images: Huff Road development enters construction home stretch

Two years after demolition and groundwork kicked off, an upscale multifamily project that’s being marketed as an “exceptional addition” to Blandtown is rounding into shape. 

The latest intown project from Charlotte-based Crescent Communities, Novel Blandtown, is scheduled to open in early 2027, bringing another 250 apartments to the growing Atlanta Beltline-connected district. 

The residential project has claimed a 3-acre site on Huff Road, a vital connection in northwest Atlanta where infrastructure improvements including a partial road-widening are in the works. 

Novel Blandtown is replacing a former showroom for home improvement store PDI Kitchen, Bath, and Lighting at 1095 and 1121 Huff Road. (The scope also included a vacant, triangular lot next door.) The project’s title echoes other Crescent ventures across the country while embracing the historic neighborhood’s atypical name.

The site is located across the street from AuthenTEAK Furniture, X3 Sports, and other Blandtown businesses. 

Novel Blandtown calls for a seven-story multifamily building with 250 upscale apartments and a 4,700-square-foot, one-story structure for retail topped with a patio overlooking Huff Road. That standalone retail component, however, is being reserved as a future phase. 

In its place, for now, will be an urban plaza with “dynamic hardscaping” and a grassy knoll for socializing and relaxing, as project designers Niles Bolton Associates architects have said. 

Novel Blandtown will include a clubhouse and pool-topped, six-story parking deck with 322 spaces described by designers as “carefully concealed.” Plans also call for about 50 spaces for bicycle parking, according to designs brought before the Beltline Design Review Committee in 2023.

To comply with the Beltline’s Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance, 10 percent of Novel Blandtown apartments will be reserved for tenants earning 60 percent of the area median income or less, per the Beltline DRC.  

When the project debuts, Beltline connectedness should be a selling point. 

The newest section of the Beltline’s Westside Trail opened about two blocks away, directly west (up a steep hill), in 2022. Last fall, a Northwest Trail segment of the Beltline stretching toward Buckhead also opened, and an expansion of that leg is now underway. 

Crescent’s investments along Huff Road continue a surge of residential building for the historically industrial neighborhood. 

Neighboring projects that have claimed underused Blandtown parcels include Minerva Homes’ 34-unit Hayden Westside townhomes and Empire’s Longreen project, which is consuming an area roughly equivalent to three city blocks along Huff Road.

Crescent Communities also built a 340-apartment community called Novel West Midtown that opened in 2023 on Fairmont Avenue—practically next door to Novel Blandtown. Ten percent of those apartments were also reserved as affordable housing, as Beltline inclusionary zoning rules dictate.

Find more context and a preview of what’s in store for this latest Huff Road build in the gallery above. 

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