880 North is now open!

A place to call home and find community

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“I never would have believed something this incredible would be here on our corner.”

A longtime English Avenue resident pulled up beside 880 North and stopped me to talk as I was placing yard signs around the building in preparation for our ribbon cutting.

“I’ve lived over here all my life,” he said. “To think a restaurant will be right here on this corner — incredible!”

Thursday, June 25, was a day of celebration for our team at OaksATL, our neighbors, and the city of Atlanta. As we cut the ribbon on 880 North, community members shared joy, awe, and pride with us as they celebrated the renewal taking shape on their own corner.

We were honored to be joined by Mayor Andre Dickens, Councilmember Byron Amos, and Invest Atlanta CEO Dr. Eloisa Klementich, and Reverand Anthony Motley to help commemorate the occasion. Each of these leaders played an instrumental role in carrying this project from dream to completion over the last five years. This milestone belonged to each of them, to every partner who helped make it possible, and most of all, to our community.

Grandma Cassandra, our longtime resident and faithful encourager, was the first to arrive at the tent. In tow, she brought seven grandchildren who celebrated with us through the ceremony and again when we opened the building for a community block party that evening.

Mr. Emmanuel Jackson, another legacy English Avenue resident whose story helped shape the earliest days of our work, arrived shortly after Grandma. We were honored to have him front and center in our ribbon cutting photos, exactly where he should be.

Countless neighbors shared feedback on this project through community meetings over the course of several years. We were grateful to have many of them in attendance, and we are particularly thankful for Annie Moore, 880 North’s direct neighbor, who has been kind, thoughtful, and caring to OaksATL throughout two years of construction.

English Avenue neighborhood association president, Tracy Bates, and Neighborhood Planning Unit president Leonard Watkins also helped steward OaksATL through community feedback processes. Both were in attendance, and we are deeply thankful for their leadership in English Avenue and Vine City.

880 North features six two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartments serving households earning approximately 50 to 80 percent of the Area Median Income. These homes will be paired with OaksATL’s stability programming, the 23:22 Plan, which includes additional rental support for residents facing extremely low wages or short-term financial hardship.

The project also includes two ground-floor retail spaces designed for neighborhood-serving food and beverage small businesses. These spaces will be held at affordable rates for commercial tenants, creating a sustainable launching pad for small businesses to begin or expand their brick-and-mortar journey. The remaining two ground-floor spaces include an OaksATL leasing office and a laundry facility.

We are deeply grateful to our project team, including SHAPE: Studio H Architecture Planning Environments, who designed a beautiful building that fits well within the neighborhood context, as well as Metro Consulting Associates, Sykes Consulting, and Pursuit Engineering.

There are so many stories to tell about 880 North, but for me, it will always come back to community.

I ended my day around 8:30 p.m., after the DJ had packed up from the community block party, walking around to collect the same yard signs I had placed earlier that morning. As I was walking, a woman pulled up in her sedan beside 880 North.

She looked up at the building from the driver’s seat, in total awe of the place now revealed — fence down, ribbon cut, and rising at Lindsay Street and North Avenue. Smiling ear to ear, her face stayed fixed on the building as the sedan rolled up to the stop sign. Finally, she took her gaze off the third floor, made eye contact with me, and we both laughed.

She mouthed, “I can’t believe this,” paused for a moment longer, and continued down North Avenue.

880 North is now leasing, and we have already received an influx of applications from legacy residents right here in English Avenue. This project was shaped by neighbors and built for the long-term good of this neighborhood. Its story has just begun. Soon, apartments will fill with families in need of high-quality, affordable housing, and small business owners will begin their brick-and-mortar journeys on a corner that sat waiting for renewal.

We are honored that you have been along for the ride with us this far, and we cannot wait to share more with you as OaksATL continues to rebuild places, restore dignity, and renew community in English Avenue.