Opposition to a multi-acre homeless services community along a new Atlanta Beltline section is gathering steam from the grassroots level to Atlanta City Hall, while advocates say plans remain tentative but could lift up Atlantans on a large scale and ultimately benefit neighborhoods. 

Neighbors have organized a March 26 meeting under the banner “Westside for Economic Justice” regarding Atlanta Mission’s plans to build a 900-bed shelter on acreage where Stars Metals District developers had planned a sprawling, lively mixed-use warehouse complex. 

The neighborhood group is asking for all Atlanta City Council members to reject Atlanta Mission’s request for a Special Use Permit to redevelop a little less than half of the 15.5-acre site where Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway meets the Westside Trail. 

Neighbors are also petitioning the city to back Allen Morris Company’s previous “market-driven, multi-use” plans, which they hope will bring the type of economic activity that convinces retailers such as grocery stores to set up shop. 

What becomes of the Beltline-adjacent site “could significantly impact the Westside, the Beltline entrance, and the long-term future of our community,” reads a flyer for the meeting at KIPP Woodson Park Academy. “We deserve thoughtful development, balanced opportunity, and a future that reflects the voices of the people who live here!”

Full scope of Allen Morris' previous plans for the 15.5-acre parcel at 1060 Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway. Royal Byckovas; courtesy of The Allen Morris Company

Byron Amos, the Atlanta City Council member for the district, has come out in vocal opposition to the Atlanta Mission project, arguing that Westside neighborhoods carry a high number of social services facilities relative to other parts of the city that should be more evenly spread out, as WABE reported this week. Atlanta Mission reps in a statement told the news station their Bankhead work remains in an “exploratory phase,” with the current goal being to engage with community stakeholders and neighbors. The consolidated campus would be built from the ground up so that individuals and families in dire financial straits could “experience transformation,” per the agency.   

Atlanta Mission officials relayed during an open house last month the shelter project is tentatively set to open in 2030 at an estimated cost of $200 million. The agency would operate on roughly 7 acres of the site and sell the remaining 8 acres to a housing developer, per early plans. 

The Bankhead site owned by Allen Morris Company is at left, looking south, as seen along the Beltline's Westside Trail when it opened last summer. Josh Green/Urbanize Atlanta

Atlanta Mission, a homeless support organization established in the 1990s, is under contract to buy the Bankhead warehouse complex from Allen Morris.  

The Florida-based developer previously envisioned the property becoming a mix of new housing and creative warehouse reuse on an immense scale, eventually. The scope called for 1,600 residential units and 700,000 square feet of commercial space, to include the adaptive-reuse remake of a 60,000-square-foot warehouse into a Beltline-fronting town center, project officials told Urbanize Atlanta in 2024. 

Allen Morris bought property for $31 million in 2022. Early the following year, Microsoft announced its planned 90-acre Westside campus would be shelved indefinitely. The two properties are roughly a 1/2 mile apart. 

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