As curious commuters have noted, a private construction project is barreling ahead along a busy Southwest Atlanta corridor within a few steps of several magnets for outside investment.

But exactly what’s coming remains something of a mystery.

The oddly shaped, ham hock of a lot is in the literal shadow of elevated MARTA tracks at 889 Lee Street SW, less than a block north of the mixed-use Lee + White warehouse district, and the Atlanta BeltLine’s Westside Trail beyond that.

A Chevron gas station borders one edge of the site, and a street called Rose Circle the other. MARTA’s West End station is about two blocks farther north.

Classified as vacant commercial land, the .85 acres last traded for $676,000 in 2019, according to Fulton County property records.  

Infrastructure construction has been ongoing for at least a couple of weeks. An Alpharetta-based LLC called United Apartments at Lee Street is listed as the owner but couldn’t be reached this week for comment.

That LLC was registered the same month the West End property last sold, records indicate.

Inquiries to the local Neighborhood Planning Unit and other community leaders, like a weekend visit to the site, have yielded little concrete evidence as to what’s coming so far.

“The plan [for the Lee Street site] that was presented a few years back was apartments and townhomes,” Marquise Tony McNeal, president of West End Neighborhood Development, or W.E.N.D., a nonprofit community group focused on revitalization, wrote in an email to Urbanize Atlanta. “Unfortunately, we have yet to receive any updates as of late.”

Expect an update on these pages if more information comes in. Until then, here’s some visual context:

The .85-acre construction site in relation to MARTA's Gold and Red lines, Lee + White, and the BeltLine. Google Maps

Construction progress on Lee Street as of Sunday. Josh Green/Urbanize Atlanta

Where the site narrows near Rose Circle. Josh Green/Urbanize Atlanta

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