A long-anticipated affordable housing project, Trinity Central Flats, in downtown Atlanta near City Hall is on the brink of construction after three years of planning. The development will offer a mix of affordable and market-rate units, incorporating sustainable features and community amenities. Funding from public-private partnerships, including Invest Atlanta and tax credits, will make rents as low as $893 per month.
Rendering courtesy of SSOE
Trinity Avenue Mixed-Use Housing Development will be located in downtown Atlanta, across from Atlanta City Hall at Trinity and Central Avenues.
The lengthy process of financing, planning and revising a large-scale affordable housing venture on a vacant but centrally located downtown Atlanta corner appears to be winding down, with construction finally on the horizon, Urbanize Atlanta reported Oct. 14.
SSOE Group, a multi-national design and engineering services company based in Ohio, with two offices in Atlanta, is the firm in charge of building Trinity Central Flats, along with its architectural subsidiary, Stevens & Wilkinson.
The development team was picked in December 2021 following a public selection process.
The two companies behind the Trinity Central Flats project, across the street from Atlanta City Hall, recently filed for building permits with Atlanta's Department of City Planning, a recent report by Bisnow noted.
That paperwork sheds light on what the tweaked, finalized version of the mixed-use proposal would bring to the southeast corner of Trinity and Central avenues, nearly three years after city officials picked the developers to build it.
Six ordinance variations for the project were approved during the Special Administrative Permit process, Urbanize Atlanta noted.
Building permit filings show that the 10-story, brick-and-precast concrete Trinity Central Flats will include 219 apartments at the 0.84-acre site and will top out at 123-ft. tall.
At ground level, the project's plans now call for 6,700 sq. ft. of retail space — or 800 sq. ft. less than earlier designs — in three storefronts positioned along Central Avenue, according to the online news site.
Additionally, a bicycle storage room with exterior access, an arts and crafts room, a computer lab, a gym, a laundry facility and other communal spaces are in the works.
Residents will be able to enjoy an 18,000-sq. ft. roof garden on the parking deck, which is also being designed to feature a solar harvesting area, the largest solar array on any multifamily building in Georgia, the project developers said.
Those green, sustainable facets are expected to reduce energy use in the building's common areas by 30 percent, bringing down residential utility bills in the process.
Construction is scheduled to be complete in 2026 following an 18-month building process, officials with Invest Atlanta, the city's economic development arm, told Urbanize Atlanta last year.
Affordable Homes in Heart of Atlanta
Vacant and fenced-off for well over a decade, the Trinity Central Flats site is within walking distance of three MARTA transit stations, leading city officials to call the building one of Atlanta's "most convenient locations."
The Atlanta City Council voted unanimously in the spring of 2021 to offload the corner parcel for $1 to Invest Atlanta. More than two years later, the agency's board of directors approved up to $3 million in Eastside Tax Allocation District (TAD) funding to help get Trinity Central Flats off the ground at 104 Trinity Ave.
As a result, Invest Atlanta is considered a partner in the $72 million, public-private development. The Eastside TAD Ascension Fund grant joins a list of other federal and state funding sources, including tax-exempt bonds and tax credits.
Trinity Central Flats will offer rents as low as $893 monthly for 450-sq.-ft. studio units, reserved for tenants earning no more than 50 percent of the area median income, or AMI. Plans call for other apartments to be reserved for people earning up to 60 and 80 percent AMI.
Invest Atlanta said that the largest market-rate rentals in the building — three-bedroom units with 1,165 sq. ft. — will go for $1,532 monthly.
The Atlanta agency lists Radiant Development Partners and Capitol Hill Neighborhood Development Corp., a neighborhood booster group established in the early 1990s, as the project leaders at Trinity Central Flats.
The property will remain under Invest Atlanta's ownership and be leased for 99 years instead of sold outright. That arrangement, as city officials explained it to Urbanize Atlanta in 2021, is meant to help developers "achieve deeper, longer-term affordability for residents and local businesses by saving millions of dollars otherwise spent on land acquisition in a traditional property sale."
The project might not be the only injection of affordable housing in the area, the online news site noted.
Immediately to the east, affordable housing developer Gorman & Company is planning to redevelop part of Trinity United Methodist Church's property on Washington Street into 54 senior housing units, with the current sanctuary transformed into a large event space.
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