Grant Funds Promise Enhancements to 20 Intown Façades

September 2,2014

by Josh Green

The piecemeal makeover of downtown Atlanta continues! Invest Atlanta, the city's economic development arm, has selected 20 buildings on the eastern and western fringes of downtown to help with aesthetic enhancements, and the beneficiaries include commercial, live/work developments and some well-known retailers. Invest Atlanta plans to award nearly $2 million as part of its Downtown Façade Improvement Program, and today they released a list of 20 recipients along the Atlanta Streetcar corridor, including Noni's Bar & Deli, Vesuvius Pizza, Sweet Auburn Real Estate and the forthcoming Bad Dog Taqueria. Awards will range from $20,000 to $400,000, and the result could be a serious spruce-up for corridors like Edgewood and Auburn avenues to the east and, on the flipside of downtown, Marietta, Walker and Luckie streets.

Each of the grant recipients already had façade updates in the works, and they'll be required to commit at least one-third of funding to the total cost, Invest Atlanta officials said. The process, launched earlier this year, "called for grant applicants located within the Westside and Eastside TADs to submit projects for consideration that had the potential to visually enhance the Atlanta Streetcar corridor," according to a press release. See a full list of recipients right here.

In a statement, Mayor Kasim Reed called the planned façade redoes another example of "unprecedented" development happening in Atlanta right now. "This public/private partnership is leveraging combined resources to ignite economic development opportunities for Atlanta Streetcar Corridor," said Reed. "The development happening today in Atlanta is unprecedented and projects like this continue the momentum and ensure continued growth opportunities for downtown and the Sweet Auburn neighborhood."