For seventeen years, the answer to what was going in on the old Bowen Homes land was nothing. Grass grew behind the fence along Yates Drive and Wilkes Circle, where 101 buildings once stood.
That answer changed again on Oct. 8, when Atlanta Housing, Mayor Andre Dickens, Councilmember Dustin Hillis, former residents and members of the Bowen family broke ground on the redevelopment’s second phase. The ceremony also introduced that the community would be named after Ariel Serena Hedges Bowen who was a pioneering Black educator, musician, writer, activist, and civic leader. In her honor, the new name for the community is Ariel Place at Bowen.
Phase II is a roughly $50 million project with 112 homes scheduled for completion in January 2028. Plans include a community room, co-working space, children’s study areas, a fitness and wellness center, outdoor gathering spaces and a playground.
Next door, Phase I’s 151 apartments are about 70 percent complete. Construction is expected to finish in December, with move-ins following in early 2027.
That puts 263 homes under construction on land that has held none since Bowen Homes was demolished in 2009.
What 112 homes means if you live near Hollowell
For residents of Carey Park, Almond Park and the Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway corridor, the immediate change is more construction.
Phase I is expected to wrap at the end of this year. Phase II continues into January 2028. Across the first six residential phases, Atlanta Housing plans to deliver 756 homes by April 2031.
Of the 112 Phase II homes, 34 will be Atlanta Housing-assisted, 35 will be restricted to households earning up to 60 percent of area median income, 10 will be workforce units and 33 will rent at market rates. The units will range from 714 to 1,905 square feet.
Underwriting documents propose monthly rents of $1,050 to $1,506 for the 60 percent AMI apartments, depending on bedroom count. Those are planning figures, not final advertised rents. Residents of the 34 Atlanta Housing-assisted units would generally pay an income-based share instead.
Former Bowen households who participated in an Atlanta Housing-assisted relocation before demolition receive the first opportunity to return to authority-supported replacement units. That preference does not cover every home in the redevelopment.
Atlanta Housing has said 36 of 42 former Bowen households participating in an agency survey expressed interest in returning. That measures interest among the households surveyed; the agency has not published the total number of people who retain return rights.
The homes have dates. The neighborhood does not.
The full redevelopment plan calls for approximately 2,000 homes across 12 phases, with roughly 40 percent designated affordable. It also depicts a grocery store, neighborhood retail, trails, greenspace and a new elementary school. No grocery operator, signed lease or delivery date has been announced.
The housing has a construction schedule. Most of those other pieces do not.
Atlanta Public Schools is seeking a construction manager for a new 900-seat A.D. Williams Elementary School, but the district has not published an opening date. No public delivery date exists for the grocery store, neighborhood retail or major greenspace improvements.
The closest thing to another opening on the calendar is a new Center for Hard to Recycle Materials facility planned for the site in early 2027.
Developer Eddie Benoit Jr. has also acknowledged that completing all 12 phases could take years beyond 2031. That is important context: April 2031 applies to the first six residential phases, not the entire neighborhood.
Why that gap is familiar
Bowen Homes opened in 1964 with 650 apartments across 101 buildings. It was built partly to house people displaced when Buttermilk Bottom was cleared for construction of the Atlanta Civic Center.
The development once had its own school and library. Atlanta Housing demolished it in 2009, making it the last of the city’s large family public housing projects to be razed. Former residents and activists contested the decision even as others welcomed the complex’s closure.
Atlanta has already seen what can happen when housing arrives before the neighborhood amenities promised with it.
At the former Herndon Homes site, 298 homes have been completed and another 178 are under construction. But the approximately 30,000 square feet of Northside Drive retail once expected to include a grocery store still has no announced delivery date.
Homes were built. The grocery space remains unresolved.
I am not skeptical of the buildings, because 151 apartments at 70 percent complete and 112 more funded is real work by people doing it, and nobody can take that away from this agency or this developer. What I am skeptical of is the calendar, and the only honest way to hold it is piece by piece: did phase one actually hand over keys in December, did leasing and right-of-return information get published where a former resident can read it, did APS attach an opening date to A.D. Williams Elementary, and are the first six phases still saying April 2031 a year from now. Write those four down. The housing is the easy part of this promise. The grocery store is where you find out.
