A Baptist Church Sells 6.5 Acres Beside Atlanta’s BeltLine. Now 353 Homes Are Planned on the Site

• Mount Ephraim Baptist Church sold about 6.5 acres off West Marietta Street in Atlanta
• Developers plan 300 apartments and 53 townhomes on the site
• 46 apartments will be affordable to households earning 50% to 80% of area median income
• The church plans to relocate

Church land beside Atlanta’s BeltLine is now attracting major developers. Urbanize Atlanta reported in September 2023 that Mount Ephraim Baptist Church had sold about 6.5 acres off West Marietta Street in the Knight Park/Howell Station neighbourhood, just east of the BeltLine’s Westside Trail. According to planning filings, the church plans to relocate.

Two developers are now at work on the site. Trammell Crow Residential is planning Alexan Howell Station, with 300 apartments: 41 studios, 192 one-bedroom and 67 two-bedroom units. Empire Communities is planning Empire Howell Station, with 53 townhomes, 40 of them with three bedrooms and 13 with two.

Of the apartments, 46 are to be affordable to households earning 50 to 80 per cent of area median income. Projected rents for those units ranged from $506 to $1,350 a month for studios and $651 to $1,735 for two-bedroom homes. The plans also include 5,530 square feet of commercial space on Church Street, expected to include a coffee shop, 400 parking spaces for the apartments and 88 for the townhomes. Completion of the apartments was estimated for June 2025.

The article did not say how much the church received or where it would move. But the pattern is familiar in fast-changing neighbourhoods: as land values climb, congregations weigh the value of their property against the cost of staying, and many choose to sell and rebuild elsewhere.

Selling can give a church capital for a new start, but it also means leaving the community that grew up around it. Leasing land or partnering with a developer are alternatives that let a congregation keep a foothold while sharing in development value.

Atlanta has a large and growing Caribbean community. For church boards in Atlanta and in Jamaica’s own fast-rising districts, the Mount Ephraim sale is a prompt to value land carefully, compare selling with leasing or partnership, and plan where the congregation will worship next before signing.

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