In Sweet Auburn, tweaked mixed-use build set for groundbreaking

A historic but ailing Sweet Auburn corner is weeks away from seeing the beginnings of new construction, developers tell Urbanize Atlanta.

The changes will come as part of a two-phase project called Sweet Auburn Grande that aims to revive corners located on the southwest and southeast sides of where Auburn Avenue meets Jesse Hill Jr. Drive.

The corners in question are currently dead zones of boarded-up, historically significant buildings and surface parking lots.

The Invest Atlanta Board of Directors last week approved a $28.3 million tax exempt loan for one facet of the project the agency says will save a historic site and incorporate more than 90 units of affordable housing in Sweet Auburn.

For phase one, revised Sweet Auburn Grande plans call for building 109 multifamily residences along Auburn Avenue, located at the southeast corner of the Jesse Hill Jr. Drive intersection.

Roughly 8,700 square feet of commercial space (2,000 square feet less than previously planned) will be included at street level, along with structured parking, per Invest Atlanta.

Finalized plans call for 109 apartments, with 92 of them reserved for residents earning 80 percent of the area median income or less.

The project is being led by Gorman & Company, a Wisconsin-based developer with expertise in building affordable housing.

Joel Reed, Gorman’s Southeast market president, tells Urbanize Atlanta the project’s refined phase one has received building permits and is ready to move forward. Reed expects to close on the property next month and begin construction in November. 

The schedule calls for 23 months of construction, which would put the roughly $56-million project’s opening in October 2026.

The project will incorporate—as opposed to demolish, as earlier plans had called for—the historic but long-vacant 229 Auburn building (Atlanta Life Insurance Building). That ailing structure once housed pioneering Black businesses during the district’s heyday, including Atlanta State Savings Bank, the first Black-owned bank in the city and Georgia’s first state-chartered Black bank.

The building was constructed in 1908 and more recently housed the Butler Street Community Development Corporation, according to Invest Atlanta.

Earlier plans had called for fewer affordable housing units (57 total) but with a deeper affordability threshold (50 percent AMI) for those rental options.

Meanwhile, across the street, the Sweet Auburn Grande project’s second phase calls for restoring two more historic structures: the 1920 former Butler Street YMCA-JD Winston Branch and the Walden Building. An attractive, functional public greenspace would also be added at the corner, at the base of the iconic John Lewis HERO Mural.

The Butler Street CDC, which owns the 219 Auburn Avenue property that’s currently a parking lot, rechristened that corner “Good Trouble John Lewis Memorial Park” in 2022.

Gorman officials have said development costs are expected to come in around $18 million for that phase, but restoration work on the former YMCA building would have different funding sources.

A timeline for construction has yet to emerge as complex financing deals are worked out, but Reed previously said a late-2025 start date for moving phase two forward isn’t out of the question.

Elsewhere in Atlanta, Gorman completed the Residences at Westview, a 60-unit affordable housing complex near Westview Cemetery. Development officials said during that project’s ribbon-cutting in February they expect to deliver 350 new housing units across Atlanta over the next two years.

In the gallery above, find more context and imagery pertaining to the vision for these important corners of Sweet Auburn. Below is a before-after preview of phase one: