Flashback: Recalling the ‘before’ version of Summerhill’s vibrant strip

Urbanize Atlanta

Quite a difference six years has made on Georgia Avenue

One year after the Braves’ final swing at Turner Field, we [Urbanize Atlanta] commissioned photographer Jonathan Phillips to spend an afternoon touring a lifeless collection of architectural eyesores where a once-thriving Black and Jewish community had been driven out by Atlanta’s so-called progress, a growth spurt that included highway expansion and major league sports.

Anyone relatively new to Atlanta won’t recognize that Georgia Avenue of six years ago.

At the time, Georgia Avenue was riddled with boarded-up windows, collapsed ceilings, shaggy unused lots, and trees sprouting along interior walls. What Phillips’ photo essay captured was a beatdown version of a unique—if not inimitable—commercial corridor, just as developer Carter was getting building permits in order and hinting at barbecue and brewery concepts on the horizon.

Fast forward to 2024, and Carter’s redevelopment—titled simply Summerhill—has transformed a significant portion of its 80-acre holdings around the former MLB stadium (now home to Georgia State University football), adding hundreds of apartments, townhomes, houses, a standalone Publix, and 20 new businesses along Georgia Avenue alone.  

As illustrated below, the old Georgia Avenue paints a stark, bleaker contrast to today. Call it Atlanta preservation at its finest, a shining example of adaptive-reuse development, or gentrification run amok, but you can’t deny the changes have breathed life and vitality into a moribund section of town that’d left so many Braves fans scratching their heads for a generation.

by Josh Green, Urbanize Atlanta