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Home & Real Estate
Trends • Development • City Living
Westside Story
Atlanta’s Westside and West Midtown
boom is going strong
By Kathy Dean
A s Atlanta continues to grow, developers and homebuyers
are heeding the advice to “Go West.” The city’s Westside
has always offered a prime location, convenient to top
city venues with easy access to transportation. For many
decades, however, the once-industrial area was overlooked.
“Initially the area started to grow as vacant land, warehouses
and factories were selling at incredible values allowing developers to
convert or remove rundown structures to start developing the area,”
said Travis Reed, Realtor with Ffarry Norman, Buckhead Office. Ffe
pointed to White Provision as a prime example. The upscale 98-unit
condominium development is a rebuilt 1910 meat-packing plant
once owned by Swift & Company.
Last September, the Atlanta BeltLine’s Westside Trail was
opened, and more good things are coming with plans for the 280-
acre Westside Park and 2 billion-gallon Bellwood Reservoir on the
site of Bellwood Quarry. Once finished, Westside Park will be larger
than Piedmont Park by nearly 100 acres.
According to Rodney Ffinote, Associate Broker with Ansley
Atlanta Real Estate, this is good news for residents and the local real
estate market.
“West Midtown is one of the hottest markets in Atlanta right
now,” Ffinote said. “The Westside Park project is going to create
an area that will rival Piedmont Park. We’re seeing homes in West
Midtown coming on the market and we have multiple offers within
hours because everyone wants to get a jump on an area that’s prime
for growth.”
Ffe stated that the BeltLine is the largest contribution and
driving factor that Atlanta has seen in a great while. “It’s bringing
Intown neighborhoods together and has become what we call
Atlanta’s waterfront’,” Ffinote said. “The closer to the BeltLine you
are, the more desirable your property becomes.”
Reed gave credit to the Art on the Atlanta BeltLine program for bringing people from
throughout the Atlanta area to see the installations done by performing and visual artists. “The
BeltLine has caused a boom in the neighborhoods close to it,” he said.
Established developments in the area are in growth mode, too. Georgia Tech has begun
construction on the Campus Safety Building, a new home for its campus police, and the
university’s Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design will rise at the corners of State
Street and Ferst Drive.
Atlantic Station is starting a major expansion this year. It will add Atlantic Yards, a
$ 189-million office project along 17th Street, andT3 Foundry Park, a stack of creative offices
aimed at younger, tech-sawy employees. Both projects are expected to bring in 2,000 more
workers once they’re completed in 2020. Also slated for Atlantic Station is a block of 364
apartments by AMLI — with 25,000 feet of street-level shops — and an Embassy Suites hotel.
It’s important to note that Atlanta’s Westside and West Intown are not just newly
rediscovered tracts of industrial plants and warehouses. Several beautiful, vibrant neighborhoods
have been flourishing there. Loring Ffeights and Berkeley Park, both located between Midtown
and Buckhead, are two prime examples.
“Atlanta continues to grow and one of the places we have space to grow is on the west
side of the city. That’s why so much is happening so quickly,” explained Katherine Urquhart,
Realtor, Kat U. Realty and social director for the Loring Ffeights Neighborhood Association.
“Loring Ffeights is a very small community, just 320 homes,” she said. “We’re one of the
last few Intown neighborhoods with tons of trees and a lot of the homes have beautiful views of
the Midtown skyline.”
The community hasn’t experienced a drastic spike in housing costs due to the BeltLine,
according to Urquhart. She said that, unlike some areas further west, Loring Ffeights didn’t see
the low prices that were common there.
“The BeltLine doesn’t hurt anything, of course,” she said. “And due to the general increased
interest in the BeltLine and Westside Park, an average home in Loring Ffeights lists for
$550,000 or more.”
Adjacent Berkeley Park stretches from Northside Drive to Ffowell Mill Road. Will Crick,
president of the Berkeley Park Neighborhood Association, said that since he bought his home
22 March 2018 | [E]
Travis Reed,
Harry Norman Realtors
Rodney Hinote, Ansley
Atlanta Real Estate
AtlantalNtownPaper.com