Wingate Presents Redevelopment Plan for Vacant Boulevard Lot

OLD FOURTH WARD — Wingate Cos., which owns and manages the federally subsidized, low-income housing complex on Boulevard, plans to construct an 80-unit, four-story building aimed at seniors.

The initiative, which the company says could break ground as early in the fourth quarter of this year or within the first quarter of 2014, would bring new life to the southwestern corner of Boulevard and Angier Avenue.

The existing structures at 420 and 430 Boulevard, which were part of Wingate's Village of Bedford Pine complex, burned down in 2005.

City Lights, as the project is called, would be open only to senior citizens 62 and older, Wingate officials said at a meeting Monday of the Fourth Ward West Neighborhood Association.

All units would be one-bedroom and parking — which will be built under the structure — would be accessed via an entrance on Peace Avenue.

T. Gene Lockard, who is Southeast regional vice president for Wingate, said the company wants to be a partner in the neighborhood's desire for change along the Boulevard corridor.

When Wingate took over the Bedford Pine properties in the 1970s, he said it was a transformational period for Boulevard.

With this project, which is in keeping with the Old Fourth Ward's master plan for high-density, mixed-use construction, Wingate aims to do it again.

"It's worn, it's tired, it's time for a change," Lockard said.

"What you see today is not what you're going to see five years from now or 10 years from now."

The company said this will not add any net new units to its existing portfolio of 733.

Getting to a point where the company could present its plans was some two years in the making.

Because the Bedford Pine is Section 8 housing — contracted federally subsidized apartments for low-income residents — Wingate had to obtain approval from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Under existing rules and its government contract, the apartments that burned down, would have to been rebuilt.

But a slew of negotiations between Wingate officials, HUD and Atlanta City Councilman Kwanza Hall, whose District 2 includes Old Fourth Ward, led to Washington's approval.

That's because companies have to satisfy HUD's concerns that poor and working class Section 8 recipients aren't being pushed out or displaced.

Indeed, HUD contracts are difficult to change, as residents of Ormewood Park and Grant Park have found with the Trestletree Village complexes in their neighborhoods.

It's a particularly sensitive issue in Old Fourth Ward, which is undergoing a tilt-a-whirl of gentrification and economic development, including the $180 million Ponce City Market, the Atlanta Streetcar and the $35 million Bohemian House, among other projects.

The Boulevard corridor is the neighborhood's main artery, but nearby residents have long complained that property owners along the stretch of the street between North Avenue and Ralph McGill Boulevard is aesthetically unappealing, at best, and dangerous, at worst.

Hall, who noted Wingate owns about 40 percent of the rental properties on that stretch of Boulevard, said City Lights is a start.

"This is not perfect, but it does get the ball rolling in the right direction," Hall said, adding the neighborhood needs to bring other property owners with interests on Boulevard into redevelopment discussions.

Even so, some area homeowners expressed doubts about Wingate's commitment to change during the meeting, citing instances of rodent and roach infestations as well as alleged drug activity around its properties.

The company said it spends about $250,000 a year on security, to supplement what the Atlanta Police Department does.

And last year, the company supported efforts that led  to the creation of a mini-precinct at the Atlanta Medical Center, part of Hall's ongoing Year of Boulevard initiative.

For its part, Wingate signaled it's wholly focused on its Boulevard holdings at Bedford Pine, which Atlanta Magazine reported as being the largest Section 8 housing project in the Southeast.

The company has other properties in metro Atlanta, including a complex on North Highland Avenue in Inman Park.

But the company said it would likely shed those properties and sell them to other developers over time as part of its long term strategy.