Hundreds of affordable apartments are being built along Boulevard as part of a years-long effort to revitalize the Old Fourth Ward’s main corridor.
The neighborhood where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. grew up has seen explosive growth over the past 10 years, but mostly along the Atlanta BeltLine. On Boulevard, a half-mile from the nearly $1 billion Ponce City Market along the Eastside Trail, the same kind of investment is lagging.
Along a mile of the corridor between North Avenue and Ralph McGill Boulevard are numerous two-story apartment buildings with green doors that stand behind black gates. They are the subsidized Bedford Pines apartments where low-income residents could afford to live in the neighborhood even as home prices jumped from $280,000 in 2013 to $660,000 in 2018, according to the Old Fourth Ward Economic Security Task Force.
Massachusetts-based Wingate Cos. has owned and operated Bedford Pines since the 1970s. In recent years, it started its “City Lights” master redevelopment plan.
