The Garrison, a nearly 300-unit spread of apartments and rental townhomes at 1104 Avondale Ave SE in Boulevard Heights, has topped out and started leasing, just as the Atlanta Beltline's newly opened Southeast Trail comes within an easy stroll. Developer TPA Residential is working on an 8.2-acre site that used to be a city chlorination facility and an illegally capped landfill, a long-problematic patch of ground that needed years of cleanup before any vertical construction could get off the drawing board.
According to Urbanize Atlanta, the project centers on a 212,000-square-foot multifamily building with roughly 228 apartments, plus 63 rental townhomes spread across 10 separate structures. The leasing site lists one, two and three-bedroom layouts, with one-bedrooms advertised from about $1,545 and three-bedroom townhomes from $3,690. Some homes are being marketed with as much as eight weeks of free rent, per listings on The Garrison. While the construction crews finish out the exteriors, TPA is already walking prospective renters through select units.
Cleanup, tax breaks and a costly remediation
Turning a former dump into new housing was never going to be cheap. Documents reviewed by county officials put remediation and removal costs at about $7 million, and the Development Authority of Fulton County voted in 2022 to approve a $3.7 million tax abatement to help make the numbers work, according to reporting by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. DAFC members argued the incentive was necessary after earlier developers walked away from the difficult site, which neighbors had long described as little more than a mound of dumped material. The development team also tapped the state brownfield tax credit program to offset voluntary cleanup costs.
Retail space question under review
Not everything about the project is settled. A zoning complaint filed in June claims the development is using a 750-square-foot corner space as a resident lobby instead of the active retail, like a coffee shop, that zoning rules call for. The Department of City Planning told Urbanize Atlanta that the complaint is currently "in research" and under review, and TPA did not immediately respond to an inquiry about how that corner is configured. If the city orders a change, it could reshape how lively the street level feels and how the development plugs into the Beltline corridor.
Where it sits on the Beltline map
The Garrison is less than two blocks from the Southeast Trail and is set to be one of the first sizable residential projects fronting the newly linked Beltline mainline network. The Southeast Trail opened in April, and recent Southside segments have been tied in to create a much longer continuous loop, according to Atlanta BeltLine, Inc.. City and Beltline officials say the new connections should funnel more daily foot and bike traffic through Boulevard Heights, a selling point developers have leaned on heavily. That kind of proximity helps explain why TPA has already shifted into leasing mode even as exterior work and townhome construction continue across the multi-block site.
Affordability and next steps
TPA’s plans call for 15 percent of units to be reserved as affordable under BeltLine-area inclusionary rules, and filings reviewed by county authorities indicate roughly 43 units set aside for households earning 80 percent of Area Median Income, according to the BeltLine's planning guidance. With leasing live on the project website and showings underway, neighbors and city planners are likely to watch both the retail-space review and the first move-ins closely to see whether the promised street-level activity and affordable homes show up as advertised. For now, the property that once drew complaints about dumped debris is settling into a new role as one of the most visible infill projects along the Southeast Beltline corridor.
