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| Residential development continues in Cabbagetown |
Two of the central narratives of the post-civil war history of the American South are the civil rights movement and the rise of industrial urbanisation in an agrarian society. Residents of Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward and Cabbagetown neighbourhoods live with the shades of both of those stories daily.
Located just east of the city centre, the area includes the birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr and the church where his ministry galvanised the struggle for equal citizenship for black Americans, as well as the site of the first textile processing mill built in the post-bellum South.
Today these adjoining areas – the historically black Old Fourth Ward and historically white Cabbagetown – are a bright spot of continued residential and commercial development in a city that has been hit hard by foreclosures. And the days of racial separation are mostly gone, with an eclectic mix of black and white professionals drawn to the area by its proximity to the city centre, growing nightlife and restaurant culture.
Just a few miles north of these vibrant urban neighbourhoods, in upscale Buckhead, a banner, draped over five storeys of a new high-rise residential condominium marks the broader reality of the Atlanta property market: “Make an offer. We’ll make a deal.” In contrast, a drive through the streets and avenues of Cabbagetown and the Old Fourth Ward is a trip in a time machine, back to the pre-crash days when attractive neighbourhoods sprouted new bars and restaurants, when “wet paint” signs marked new or renovated houses, and when construction workers in hard hats could be spotted standing in groups watching one of their number working.
“It’s not booming here by any means but it seems to be holding its own,” says Bob Gottlieb, a long-time property developer in Cabbagetown and the Fourth Ward.
For both areas, the path to current relative prosperity passed through hard times. Even today the locale adjacent to the Martin Luther King Jr National Historic Site and Center is blighted by an abandoned public housing project and drug dealers loiter on street corners just blocks from of one of the nation’s most visited historic sites. King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church is boarded up as the interior undergoes restoration.
Another of Georgia’s famous 20th-century figures, Jimmy Carter, former US president, placed his Carter Center just north and east of the Old Fourth Ward but the non-governmental organisation’s headquarters is separated from the neighbourhood by a limited access road.
One resident of the Old Fourth Ward, Indra Tobias, came to the area to open a beauty salon. She had decided she wanted to live above her business and when she found a building with a small retail space on the ground floor a block south of Edgewood Avenue in 2002 she moved in. “After the first few nights, I called my dad to ask if I needed to invest in a pistol,” she recalls. “A dog was mandatory.”
Slowly she adapted to the urban environment as the neighbourhood itself improved. Today, she and a friend organise weekly runs that regularly draw as many as 50 participants ranging in age from nine to 76 years.
Typical of the verve of the Fourth Ward is Rolling Bones, an upmarket barbecue restaurant serving a menu that includes not only beef and pork but also duck and trout. The establishment, housed in a remodelled petrol station, boasts a full wall of dining awards and a framed cover of the issue of a gourmet magazine in which it was featured. Noni’s Bar & Deli, housed in a building owned by Gottlieb, serves a full line of American craft beers and gets good reviews for its Italian-flavoured menu.
Cabbagetown’s history is tied to that of the textile mill that opened there in 1881. At the time the area was sparsely settled so the factory owners built housing for the poor whites recruited from North Georgia to produce the fabric. An archetypal company town, the housing stock – still in place – consists of small cottages and narrow “shotgun houses”, so-called because of their design, which features a long hall running from front to back, through which it was said a shotgun blast could pass without hitting anything.
Until the mill finally closed in 1977 Cabbagetown remained an insular working-class community. It then went to sleep until the start of Atlanta’s urban renaissance in the 1990s.
Because of the concentration of Victorian frame housing, the whole of Cabbagetown is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, as is the old mill, now converted into urban lofts.
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| Restaurants and bars are opening up in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward |
It was during the run-up to the Olympics that Gottlieb began to take an interest in residential real estate in the neighbourhoods. He wanted to renovate an old house, so he started exploring areas where housing was cheap. When he found Cabbagetown, he did not even know its name. But before long he had begun buying property and eventually built up a portfolio of about 30 houses. In 1999 he began buying and developing property in the Old Fourth Ward, much of it commercial. A self-acknowledged “bottom feeder” in the property business, his assessment is that for real bargain seekers, “Cabbagetown’s done”. Another of the people behind the awakening of Cabbagetown is Russell Meyer, a builder who moved to the neighbourhood about 15 years ago and has remodelled houses and built new ones that remain true to the historical characteristics of the area. When he arrived, he says, “there were no real estate agents and no pizza delivery”.
Cabbagetown, which has only 300 residential units in total, has been mostly redeveloped, but a few independent renovators are still undertaking projects. Keven Brantley is hard at work on a two-bedroom, one-bathroom shotgun house of approximately 1,000 sq ft with a freestanding brick fireplace at the centre of the living/dining area. When he finishes the project he expects to price the house in the mid-$100,000 range.
A new-construction two-bedroom, two-bathroom bungalow with a living room that has a vaulted ceiling and custom cabinetry is on the market for $290,000.
In the Old Fourth Ward a newly built three-storey, three-bedroom, three-bathroom brick loft-style building with ground floor office space lists for $399,000. It is built to the highest certification for “green” construction and includes a rooftop deck that doubles as a rainwater collection basin. A renovated 1908 two-storey frame house, complete with six fireplaces, is a short sale listed at $299,000.
Not everyone who sings the praises of the neighbourhoods actually lives there. For instance, LeJuano Varnell spends about half of each workday in the Old Fourth Ward, even though he lives on the other side of the city centre. Varnell, who recently returned from a year in Dubai, helped establish a local business association.
“This neighbourhood is a lot to wrap your head around,” he says. At the height of the property boom, some commercial real estate in the area was selling for $2m an acre, he says, but some of those same properties are back on the market, post-foreclosure, for about $500,000. “I’ve never understood the real estate market here,” he acknowledges.
John Blankenship, managing broker of the Resolute Group, which focuses on the the urban Atlanta market, says: “Cabbagetown and the Old Fourth Ward represent an insulated area of value due to their unique characteristics. Unlike most of Atlanta, which tends to be newer and more uniform, both neighbourhoods have real history and character. The value proposition is that properties like these cannot be easily duplicated.”
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Estate agencies
The Resolute Group, tel: +1 404875 2211, www.resolutegroup.com
Keller Williams Realty, tel: +1 404541 3500, www.kw.com
Developers
Bob Gottlieb, tel: +1 770310 8704
Kevin Brantley, tel: +1 770310 9934
