Mayor Kelly Girtz broke a tie in favor of a land swap for a student housing development north of downtown that will net Athens-Clarke County millions of dollars for affordable housing, as well as a free public parking deck and sewer improvements.
The intergovernmental agreement between the Athens-Clarke County government and the Athens Downtown Development Authority approved June 10 creates a public-private partnership for Chicago-based developer Core Spaces to build student housing on two city-owned surface parking lots off Jackson Street north of Dougherty Street. The project also encompasses the nearby Hotel Abacus, formerly Graduate Athens.
In exchange, Core Spaces will contribute $7.9 million to ACC’s affordable housing trust fund under the county’s inclusionary zoning law, which offers developers density bonuses or relief from parking requirements in exchange for affordable housing construction. Downtown, developers are allowed to pay into the trust fund rather than build the below-market-rate housing themselves. The project will generate an estimated $3.8 million in annual property taxes, with $1.5 million going to a tax allocation district for infrastructure in the eastern downtown and East Athens area. In addition, Core Spaces will make $2.7 million worth of improvements to a sewer main along College Avenue that are necessary for future phases of The View at NoDA (the Bethel Midtown Village affordable housing redevelopment) and build a 200-space public parking deck just north of the parcel. Free parking for Lay Park will still be available at the Lyndon House Arts Center next door, and Core Spaces will relocate the Lay Park playground elsewhere on the property.
Additional benefits include wider sidewalks, retail and public spaces to activate the northern portion of Jackson Street, as well as a mural that will be given to the Athens Cultural Affairs Commission as part of a planned Jackson Street “art walk.” A facade easement would protect the historic foundry building, and representatives for the developers told Flagpole they intend for it to continue to include a music venue.
“We’re coming at this with a lot to offer that doesn’t just self-benefit the development, but benefits the community,” Jake Strickland, vice president of Atlanta real estate developer Mallory & Evans, told commissioners. Mallory & Evans bought the hotel property for $25 million last year.
Commissioner Mike Hamby added clauses to the intergovernmental agreement devoting at least half the affordable housing funding to two Census tracts in East Athens, and all of the TAD revenue to East Athens, rather than the 70/30 split between East Athens and area around Akins Ford Arena that the commission previously agreed on. “Whatever promises are made, this language adds assurances to those promises,” Hamby said.
Commissioner Melissa Link, however, said she would like some of the TAD money to go toward operating a forthcoming Black history museum at the arena, but interim county attorney John Hawkins said TAD revenue is generally used for capital projects, not operating costs.
“A project like this is why we have an inclusionary zoning ordinance,” said Link, who championed the policy. “A developer might not be able to build affordable housing for a lot of reasons—it’s an inappropriate location, or that’s just not what they do—and that’s why we have that payment-in-lieu option.”
Link got involved in politics when a Walmart was proposed at the development that eventually became The Mark, the student apartment complex near the intersection of Oconee and East Broad streets. “This is not The Mark,” she said. “This is something where the developer is willing to work with us.”
Link also said that hundreds of bedrooms for college students will ease competition for families seeking housing in single-family neighborhoods. “If we can put [students] in a tower on the edge of downtown, we can get them out of neighborhoods,” she said.
In a rather unusual combination, commissioners Patrick Davenport, Allison Wright and John Culpepper joined Link and Hamby in favor of the agreement, while commissioners Tiffany Taylor, Dexter Fisher, Stephanie Johnson, Carol Myers and Ovita Thornton opposed it.
Myers, Johnson and Thornton said they still had questions about the agreement, which first came forward just a few weeks ago. “This was not a transparent process, not just for commissioners, but for the public,” Myers said.
“I’m not sure about turning all of downtown into an extension of North Campus, a dormitory site, and that seems a little bit like the direction we’re going in,” she added.
Taylor—whose district will benefit most from the TAD funding—said she appreciated Hamby’s amendment, but she has pledged never to vote in favor of student housing. “I feel like it’s going to make downtown more student-oriented and not so family-oriented,” Taylor said. “A lot of my constituents don’t come across the river… because we’re not wanted, or it’s not welcoming.”
The public was similarly split on the proposal. “County property should be used for people who live and work in Athens, not student housing,” said Michael Ruppersburg.
Affordable housing advocate Barbara Daniel agreed. “Do not put no more student homes up as of now,” she said.
But longtime East Athens community leader Fred Smith Sr. praised the development for the affordable housing funding it would provide. “This is the type of project we’ve been waiting for,” he said. “We’ve been waiting for developers to take advantage of the ‘in lieu of’ clause in the inclusionary zoning ordinance.”
Former commissioner Russell Edwards argued that adding to the housing supply will bring down prices, benefiting everyone. “The more we can encourage the construction of new houses, the more it will benefit those who don’t have houses,” he said.
Although this proposal was new to commissioners and the public, the concept of redeveloping those parking lots has a long history. The 2014 downtown master plan marked them and other surface lots as ripe for infill development. In 2020, after identifying a need for more parking downtown, ACC and the ADDA approved an intergovernmental agreement to seek a developer to build senior housing and a parking deck on the lots.
However, because of the parcel’s odd shape, it proved difficult to build on. So county officials approached the Graduate chain of college-town hotels about getting involved. “We tried to engage with the old owner of the property, but they would not engage with us,” Girtz told Flagpole. Mallory & Evans was interested in redevelopment, but as student apartments rather than senior housing, according to Girtz.
The intergovernmental agreement is not final, but rather “an agreement to come up with a future agreement,” said Joe Gatto, managing director for acquisitions at Core Spaces. A more detailed agreement will have to come back to the mayor and commission for approval, and it will have to go through a rezoning process as well, if the ADDA parking lots are included. But the developers plan to move forward with the Hotel Abacus redevelopment even without those lots—in which case the city would receive no concessions.
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