ATLANTA—A blighted, residential development in East Point, GA will soon become a modern retail amenity. RH Ledbetter Properties has assembled a 30-acre site along Cleveland Avenue, just west of Interstate 85, to develop Cleveland Avenue Crossing.

On this site starting in 1946, South Towne Apartments and Suburban Court Apartments were opened as premier housing communities along Cleveland Avenue, then a burgeoning South Atlanta commercial corridor. Now, the property is home to 58 condemned, asbestos-filled duplexes with a long-term vagrancy problem.  

“Cleveland Avenue Crossing will benefit the City of East Point and its neighborhoods tenfold by creating hundreds of new jobs and thousands of dollars in tax revenues,” says Wright Ledbetter, COO of Ledbetter. The project is a 173,000-square foot retail development located in the heart of the East Point Corridors Tax Allocation District (TAD) and represents the first retail project to receive TAD financing assistance along the Cleveland Avenue corridor.  

Ledbetter acquired the majority of the property that was already rezoned C2 commercial from Mayberry Partners, LLC under a short sale agreement with its lender Colony Capital, a Los Angeles-based, privately-held independent global real estate investment firm. After acquiring the property, Ledbetter paid about $1.1 million in outstanding property taxes to Fulton County and the City of East Point.

The developer started demolishing existing structures in July. Construction is expected to begin in December. The retail center includes a 153,000-square foot Walmart Supercenter along with 20,000 square feet of shop space and four outparcels that front Cleveland Avenue. The center should be complete by Nov. 2014.

The East Point Corridors TAD, which was established in 2006 to facilitate investment in East Point's commercial core, is providing Ledbetter financing assistance valued at an estimated $2.5 million to cover a portion of the project's redevelopment costs.  The project is the first retail project along Cleveland Avenue to be approved for this public financing tool.