The historic Odd Fellows Building downtown is slated to undergo redevelopment, bringing housing and retail to Auburn Avenue.
Invest Atlanta recently announced the closing of a $1.25M Eastside TAD Ascension Fund Grant for Georgia Works, a nonprofit that aims to help chronically unhoused men. Georgia Works purchased the tower portion of the building in early 2023 with a grant from the Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget.
According to Thread ATL, there will be spaces at the property for 40 current Georgia Works participants, as well as transitional housing for up to 124 program graduates. There will be two-bedroom and three-bedroom shared units.
With the redevelopment of the tower, Georgia Works will not only provide housing to participants, but also move all operations into the building. The organization is currently located at the Gateway Center at 275 Pryor St SW. More than 850 men have graduated from the program.
Included in the redevelopment are four ground-level retail spaces, which will be leased to local businesses at below-market rates, according to Invest Atlanta. Last summer, in an interview with the SaportaReport, the CEO of Georgia Works discussed the opportunities provided by the retail spaces, including how they could help provide jobs for the building’s residents.
The property at the corner of Auburn Avenue and Bell Street was built in 1912 and restored in the late 1980s. At the time, the Odd Fellows Building was the largest construction project in the U.S. to be supervised and funded entirely by Black men, WABE reports.
