Church at Wieuca‘s plans for about 13 acres surrounding its Buckhead church building include the development of more than 450 units and a 512,000-square-foot office tower, according to a rezoning application for the project filed late last month.
Formerly known as Wieuca Road Baptist Church, the 66-year-old church announced in March that it has picked Atlanta-based real estate company Greenstone Properties to lead the proposed development, which is centered on the Buckhead church building at 3626 Peachtree Rd. and across Wieuca Road from Phipps Plaza. The site also borders 40-story mixed-use tower 3630 Peachtree Rd. and the proposed site of a Ritz-Carlton tower from the west. To the north are single-family neighborhoods.
“Together, we intend to create a vibrant, walkable neighborhood where the community can live, work and worship together,” Greenstone Properties Partner Harvey Rudy said in a statement earlier this year.
“Church at Wieuca’s iconic sanctuary and steeple will serve as the spiritual center, and greenspaces and walking paths will create a connected community. The proposed new development will complement the surrounding area with probable elements to include Class AAA office, high-rise multifamily residential, single-family and other for-sale residential options.”
Plans submitted in May call for a 512,000-square-foot office building at the northeastern corner of Wieuca and Peachtree Roads and a 400-unit apartment tower just north of that and along Wieuca Road. Both buildings could reach heights of 415 feet, site plans show.
The project’s northern half would consist of 18 detached cottage homes and 39 townhomes, with two parking decks on both ends of the site providing more than 2,000 spaces.
The site plan is laid out in such a way to account for the different uses found to the north of the site versus its south, according to the rezoning application.
“To fit within this context, the proposal locates the multifamily and office uses at the Property’s southern end within the Peachtree Road corridor, preserves the Church as a transitional civic/institutional use in the center of the Property, and locates new single-family residences on the norther portion of the Property, between the Church and existing single-family residences to the north,” The Galloway Law Group writes in a summary of the project.
“This design thus responds to the Property’s location in a transitional area by proposing uses that match the existing uses to which they are nearest.”
The church will retain about 6 acres for a reformatted campus. About half of revenues from the redevelopment will fund mission and ministry projects in and beyond the Buckhead community, it said earlier this year. Along with the steeple and sanctuary, Wieuca Day School, Wieuca After School, Camp Wieuca, and Claire Gibbs House will remain on site as part of the campus
In addition to a rezoning, the project applicant is requesting a Comprehensive Development Plan Amendment from High Density Commercial, Low Density Residential, and Single Family Residential land use designations to the HDC land use designation.
“The Church at Wieuca is excited about our commitment to serve our community for years to come,” associate pastor Joshua M. Speight said in a statement. “It is our hope, pending all approvals, that construction could begin on the proposed Wieuca Neighborhood Development, which will include a redesigned church campus, as early as the fall of 2022.”
