PROJECT OF THE YEAR: MIXED-INCOME
Columbia Estates
When most developers talk about their affordable housing projects, they generally want to build them to look like market-rate projects. But when Columbia Residential in Atlanta designed the mixed-income Columbia Estates development to replace the Atlanta Housing Authority’s Perry Homes, it aimed for something totally different. “We planned it as a traditional neighborhood development,” says Ron Harwick, vice president of James, Harwick and Partners Inc., the property’s architect. “We didn’t want it to look like multifamily. So, we broke it down and made it into estate homes.” Harwick thinks this goal was achieved for the project, which has a unit mix of 40 percent public housing, 40 percent market-rate, and 20 percent affordable. “When someone drives by and looks at it, it doesn’t look like a multifamily development,” he says. “It looks like a neighborhood of the past.”
Creating this wasn’t easy, though. The project was developed on a hillside, and the last thing Harwick wanted to do was use retaining walls to stabilize it. Instead, he designed the project in steps so that he could adjust to the changes in grade. Add in wood doors, and you had the making of an attractive mixed-income development. “They added richness and texture to the elevation,” Harwick says. “It established an element of quality.”
Quality was also in abundance on the inside. The project has 42-inch-tall kitchen cabinets, a decorative column between the dining and living rooms, large walk-in closets, custom light fixtures, and crown molding in the living rooms.
–L. Shaver
Columbia Estates
Location: Atlanta; Developer: Columbia Residential; Architect: James Harwick & Partners; Opened: December 2003; Units: 124; Rent: $700 to $850 per month; Unit Mix: Two- and three-bedrooms; Cool Stuff: Gazebo, picnic area, conference room