Downtown development pressures are breaking through the interstate barriers, and Mechanicsville is one of the closest neighborhoods to the churning development engine. A catalyst project for the neighborhood went before Neighborhood Planning Unit-V today to present a proposed live-work mixed use townhome development for rezoning. The development would create 18-25 office/home units on an assemblage of parcels in Mechanicsville, located between Richardson Street and Crumley Street on Pryor Street. The project is requesting a rezoning of 4 of the 5 parcels in the assemblage from SA04 to SA01 to allow for a mixed-use development in the area previously slated for multifamily. The project is scheduled to head to the Zoning Review Board on September 2nd or 9th, 2021.
The developers, Lynch Land Holdings LLC plan to build The Signature at Pryor, as its been titled, on two blocks of Pryor Street. The townhomes would be built in 5 rows perpendicularly from Pryor Street, with vehicular and pedestrian access between each row. The buildings themselves are slated to be 4 stories, and units would be 2,800 – 3,2000 square feet each. Each unit would feature a street-level office with a residential unit above. The units will be listed for an average of $700,000, and will include access to amenities such as a gazebo and a dog park within the development.
The neighborhood is located just south of downtown, and just southwest of the Interstate 20 and 85 interchange. To the south, the southern Railway has further disconnected the neighborhood to the surrounding communities of Pittsburgh, Summerhill and South Downtown.
With its direct access to downtown, its almost surprising that Mechanicsville has taken this long to become Atlanta’s latest “Unicorn Neighborhood” as deemed by the Urban Land Institute’s 2020 mTAP / Cener for Leadership report. However a history of segregation, urban renewal and disinvestment has taken its toll on the community, and only recently have developers begun to take notice of the economically depressed area. Lynch Land Holdings reflect this fact in their application and state that “Mechanicsville is prime for development” due to the economic fallout of 20th century urban policy.
