Two of Atlanta Housing’s long-overdue redevelopment projects, the Atlanta Civic Center and Bowen Homes, are finally showing serious signs of promise, after years of disruptions knocked them both off track.

Eugene Jones, AH’s chief executive, announced Wednesday at the housing agency’s monthly board meeting that it had executed a master development agreement for the long-idle Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center property—and secured a $40 million Choice Neighborhood Implementation Grant to revitalize the Westside’s former Bowen Homes public housing site and surrounding neighborhoods. AH owns both properties.

Atlanta Civic Center

AH’s board of commissioners last August selected the joint venture of Republic Properties, the Michaels Organization, and Sophy Capital—two national developers and a local minority-owned investor—to build 1,311 new residences on about 15 of the iconic Old Fourth Ward property’s 20 acres. Executing the master development agreement with them allows the project to move forward. 

The potentially billion-dollar mixed-use project envisions 305 government-subsidized rental units, another 220 units priced as affordable for households earning up to 80% of the area median income (AMI)—or $77,120 for a family of four—and 786 market-rate units. The project includes restaurants, retail, office space, and a hotel, according to the development team’s winning bid in 2022.

The Civic Center has been sitting idle since 2014, as two previous redevelopment plans for the site fell apart—one last August, when New York-based Tishman Speyer unexpectedly backed out of a deal with AH without explanation, and another in 2015, when Texas’s Weingarten Realty (now Kimco Realty) withdrew from a similar agreement.

Bowen Homes

The $40 million Choice Neighborhoods grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development goes to AH and the city of Atlanta to fund…