A “God-Size Vision” on Peachtree Street: A Downtown Atlanta Church Starts a $105 Million Housing Tower

• Atlanta First United Methodist Church is building 170 apartments on its 1.8-acre downtown site
• 136 units will be affordable, including 42 for households at or below 30% of area median income
• Some rents start at $485 a month; market units run $2,000 to $2,700
• The first phase is budgeted at more than $105 million

One of downtown Atlanta’s historic churches is putting its land to work. Atlanta First United Methodist Church, at 360 Peachtree Street, has scheduled a groundbreaking with Mayor Andre Dickens for the first phase of a housing development on its 1.8-acre site, Urbanize Atlanta reported in October 2022.

Phase one is a 16-storey building with 170 apartments. Forty-two will be reserved for households earning 30 per cent of area median income or less, with rents from $485 to $672 a month, and 94 more for those at or below 60 per cent, at $970 to $1,552. The remaining 24 will be let at market rates of $2,000 to $2,700. The first phase is expected to cost more than $105 million.

The church issued a request for proposals in 2019, seeking developers to help realise what it called a “God-size vision” for inclusive housing. It chose Evergreen Real Estate Group, a Chicago-based nonprofit, with Moody Nolan as lead architect and Balfour Beatty and H.J. Russell & Company as general contractors. The first apartments were expected in 2024.

The church’s sanctuary, a Gothic Revival building dating from 1903, houses what is said to be the only Atlanta church bell known to have survived the Civil War. The housing plan puts the congregation’s wider site to work while the historic church remains its home.

Atlanta’s Jamaican community has grown quickly, and many newcomers from the Caribbean start out renting in expensive urban cores. The Peachtree project shows how a church with prime land can partner with specialist developers rather than sell. For Jamaican churches in Kingston, Montego Bay or Mandeville that sit on valuable town-centre lots, a long-term partnership that keeps ownership in church hands can produce housing and income without surrendering the land.

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