Westside church floated for restaurant, brewery, retail redo

A marketing push is underway that aims to turn a Westside church that’s been closed and boarded up since before the COVID-19 pandemic into a more active use.

Situated at 688 Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway, across the street from the new Echo Street West district, the English Avenue property in question most recently operated as Saint Mark Baptist Church.

According to marketing materials, the 8,313-square-foot space was originally built in 1999 on a .6-acre lot, just west of Northside Drive. Today the former church faces Westside Motor Lounge, an Echo Street West food-and-beverage destination that features live music and an outdoor component.

Drawings compiled by Atlanta-based Difference Design Lab show the former church converted into a social space with outdoor seating, large windows, and huge garage-style doorways in front. The former church has steel-frame construction and could be “an incredible shell for a restaurant, micro-brewery, flex work space, large retail,” or another church, according to the property’s LoopNet listing.  

The posted leasing rate is $21.65 per square foot, per year—a figure that includes property taxes, utilities, and services for the building, per the listing.

Marketing materials cite proximity to Echo Street West, the BeltLine, Westside Park, and—optimistically—Microsoft’s planned but shelved 90-acre Westside campus as perks of the location.

“This location will soon look like the equivalent of placing your business across the street from Ponce City Market,” goes the spiel.

According to Fulton County property records, the church sold the property to an LLC called Cantata Properties in March 2022 for $1.35 million, the most recent sale on record.

Echo Street West isn’t the only sizable investment that’s transformed formerly underused properties in that part of the neighborhood.

Roughly two blocks away, Mill Creek Residential is building a 373-unit apartment venture called Modera Westside Trail as a nod to the BeltLine’s Westside BeltLine Connector trail. No retail is planned for that development.  

Also nearby, Georgia Tech’s next phase of the multi-building Science Square district opened in April, and the second (and largest) phase of Herndon Square, an affordable housing venture, is fully under construction now.

Find more context and images related to the empty church—and future home of Holy Suds Westside Beer Factory?—in the galley above.

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