Development Groups Seek Head Start on Proposed Beltline Projects

However, the rezoning applications for the development of a potential 2,760 condominium units and possibly up to 250,000 sf of ground-floor retail are not expected to receive priority treatment. That's because city officials themselves are still studying a master plan for the entire 22-mile Beltline redevelopment project, sources in a position to know, and who have monitored the Beltline proposal from the beginning, tell GlobeSt.com.

One group, headed by long-time Atlanta real estate investor Wayne Mason and shopping center developer Jack Halpern, has its eye on the 135,000-sf Amsterdam Walk shopping center in the Virginia-Highlands neighborhood of Midtown. The site is next to Piedmont Park in the affluent northeast Atlanta sector.

Mason already owns five of the 22 miles in the Beltline project. An intense acquisition rush for choice developable land is shaping up, according to industrial brokers intimate with investors and developers planning new projects within the Beltline corridor.

The Mason-Halpern team has told city officials it would demolish Amsterdam Walk and replace the center with four plaza-encircled buildings that would each have condos built atop ground-floor retail. Although their 12.4-acre site could accommodate 1,900 condos, if the land were rezoned, the developers have told city officials the condo number is still undecided. The amount of new retail would be at least 135,000 sf.

A second group is headed by locally based residential builder Elijah Enterprises and two New York City-based companies, A. Aleem Construction and Transcorp Construction, according to Atlanta City hall staffers. This group's proposed mixed-use East Medinah Village would be developed on a 6.2-acre site near a blighted sector of the Peoplestown neighborhood, less than a mile south of Turner Field. The site formerly housed an auto parts junk yard.

The three-phased project would include 770 condos built above 150,000 sf of street-level retail, the group has told city planning and zoning officials.