Atlanta Housing is putting the final piece of its 30-acre Englewood South puzzle on the table, and this one is the big one. The agency is now seeking developers for roughly 500 new mixed-income housing units on the last vacant parcels of the project, sitting directly south of Grant Park, Zoo Atlanta, and the under-construction segment of the BeltLine's Southside Trail.
If you have driven through Chosewood Park in the last two years, you already know something is happening down there.
So what exactly is Englewood South?
Englewood South is a 30-acre redevelopment of former public housing land. The site once held Englewood Manor, built in 1970 and home to 324 families before it was demolished in 2009. Atlanta Housing has been rolling out the redevelopment in phases. Phase one is already under construction with more than 460 units across six blocks, including family rentals, senior rentals, townhouses, and duplexes. This new phase covers the last 8 acres and three blocks of the site.
Inside this final phase, plans call for 400 or more mixed-income apartments across two multistory buildings, plus a separate 80-unit age-restricted building for residents 55 and older. All of it will face a new 6-acre park with a water feature that is being built as part of the community. RFP responses from developers are due June 16.
Why "mixed-income" is the word to watch
Here is where the skepticism kicks in, and rightfully so. We have all seen "mixed-income" projects in Atlanta that ended up feeling a lot more income than mixed. The promise on this final phase is market-quality construction with affordability baked in, on land the public already owns. That changes the math in a way private development on the BeltLine usually cannot.
What does this mean for Chosewood Park?
Chosewood Park has been quietly one of the more interesting neighborhoods in the 404 to watch, partly because it sits on top of the Southside Trail and partly because places like Hudson & Alphonse have already started giving residents a real anchor on Englewood Avenue. Add 500 households on the south end, plus retail, plus a finished BeltLine segment, and the daily rhythm of the neighborhood shifts. More foot traffic. More demand for coffee, dinner, a dog park, a corner store. More reasons for the rest of the city to actually come down here instead of stopping at Grant Park and turning around.
And Atlanta Housing is not done. The RFP materials also flag a future Englewood North site fronting the BeltLine, which means the agency's footprint in this corridor is still expanding..
How does this connect to the bigger Southside picture?
The Southside Trail is the missing link that makes the BeltLine an actual loop. Once it opens in June, Chosewood Park is not "south of everything" anymore. It is on the loop. That is a fundamental change in how the neighborhood functions, and Atlanta Housing is moving to put 500 homes there before the trail ribbon is even cut. That timing is not an accident.
500 units of mixed-income housing on publicly owned land, dropped right onto a BeltLine segment opening in June, is exactly the kind of move Atlanta has been talking about for a decade and rarely actually pulling off. The final phase of Englewood South is happening, and it is going to redefine what Chosewood Park feels like by the time the Southside Trail ribbon gets cut. If Atlanta Housing picks the right development partner here, this becomes the model every other city agency points to. That is the bar, and it is reachable.
