After more than three years of construction, Pendergrast Farm has completed its 20th and final home, closing out an unusual residential experiment in northeast Atlanta that pairs new-construction houses with a working one-acre farm. The 8.7-acre community sits in Briarcliff Woods, north of Emory University and just east of where Interstate 85 meets Clairmont Road, reached by a wooded drive off Briarcliff Road.
The last house to go up, called The Glasshouse Retreat, is located at 2179 William Way and is listed for $1.6 million, according to Urbanize Atlanta. The five-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bath home runs just over 3,500 square feet and comes with a two-car garage, an elevator, and a full granny or teen suite on the ground level. Its family room has glass walls on two sides that open to the common green, a detail that gives the house its name.
A Farm Built Into the Neighborhood
What sets Pendergrast Farm apart from a typical new subdivision is the land around the houses. Per developer Healthy House of Georgia, 70 percent of the DeKalb County site is preserved as greenspace under a conservation easement, including 5.5 acres of restored woods and streams laced with walking trails. At the center of it all is an actual, working one-acre urban farm, where a large greenhouse and edible landscape features have been added.
The farm isn't just ornamental. Pendergrast Farm hired an onsite farmer in 2024, and the same report names Vincent McKoy, a graduate of the HABESHA Works Program with five years of professional experience, as the person brought on to manage the onsite farm. According to a September 2024 announcement on Pendergrast Farm's own site, McKoy was also tasked with developing a Community Supported Agriculture program that would let residents and the surrounding community subscribe to what the farm grows.
Trails, a Pool, and a Shared Community House
Beyond the farm itself, residents get roughly 1.5 miles of walking trails, a saltwater swimming pool, and a Community House with a gym, a common hangout area, and rentable guest suites. All 20 homes in the community were built with EarthCraft-tested construction, the outlet's report notes. The community's location also puts it near the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, and, per sales representatives, commercial nodes including downtown Decatur.
Candace Fuqua, an Avenue Realty broker and owner, described Pendergrast Farm as an example of an urban biophilic community in Atlanta — shorthand for design meant to emphasize human connections to nature and manmade outdoor spaces in its planning and architecture. Project representatives have also called the development a mini Serenbe, but intown, a comparison that nods to the much larger agrihood 30 miles south of the city. The idea, as the project has promoted it from the start, was to blend farm-to-table living with urban convenience rather than requiring a drive out of town for either.
Part of a Broader Atlanta Trend
Pendergrast Farm's finish arrives as more Metro Atlanta housing developments experiment with growing food on-site. Some area apartment complexes and housing communities are going beyond the traditional amenities, building shared garden spaces and even farms into the residential package, according to a Rough Draft Atlanta report. That same reporting places Pendergrast alongside Serenbe as one of only two farm conservation communities in Georgia, and traces the broader concept locally back to East Lake Commons, which launched in 1998 as a conservation community clustered around historic farmland.
An earlier description of Pendergrast Farm's site plans, reported while the project was still under construction and about 80 percent sold, called for a half-mile trail system and meadows among other features — a shorter trail figure than the roughly 1.5 miles now described in coverage of the finished community. Pendergrast Farm is an 8.7-acre conservation community at 3398 Briarcliff Road, according to earlier reporting by Decaturish dating back to the project's early construction phase in 2021.
