ATLANTA — City and community leaders broke ground Thursday on the second phase of the redevelopment of the former Bowen Homes housing project on Atlanta’s Westside.
Former residents, community advocates, development partners and officials gathered to honor the community’s history and mark the next phase of its redevelopment.
The project will add 112 homes, including 69 designated as affordable housing and 10 workforce units, according to officials.
John Bowen said his great-grandparents would be proud of what the former public housing development is becoming.
“To see it reborn, and to know this rebirth is going to continue decades into the future is just very gratifying,” Bowen said. “It won’t just be a few people moving in, it won’t just be isolation, it will be large numbers of families coming in over the decades.”
Bowen Homes was demolished in 2009, becoming the last of Atlanta’s public housing projects to be torn down. The 74-acre site near I-285 and Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway has remained vacant since.
The redevelopment is being carried out in partnership with The Benoit Group, McCormack Baron Salazar and Walton Construction.
Atlanta Housing officials say Bowen Homes was named in honor of John Wesley Edward Bowen Sr. and his son, John Wesley Edward Bowen Jr., whose lives helped shape faith, education and Black leadership in Atlanta.
“My great grandparents moved their family here in 1893, and it has continued to this day and far into the future. The family legacy in Atlanta has continued on,” Bowen said.