Peachtree homeless shelter up for sale

Gene Kansas think there is one piece of Atlanta property that could fetch a premium price in an otherwise crashing commercial real-estate market: The Midtown home of the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless.

The Task Force, which runs a controversial, mega-homeless shelter at 477 Peachtree, has put its 96,000-square-foot building up for sale for $10.5 million — after years of fielding complaints about its denizens from the neighborhood and city officials.

“The property, because of its use and because of its location, is going to get a premium when everything else is crumbling,” Kansas said. “There are people who will be willing to pay more just not to have them there.”

The Task Force has had a prickly relationship with city leaders for years, and some neighbors claim that the shelter has become a home base for petty criminals and beggars who won’t take no for an answer.

Task Force officials contend they offer services and shelter each night to 700 men, who have few other resources available to them. Task Force Board Chairman Bob Cramer said the sale offer gives city officials and business owners the opportunity to put up or shut up.

“For so long people have told us, ‘We would like to get anybody but you guys in that building,’” he said. “Well, if they are serious, this is the time and it might never come again.”

The Task Force put the building up for sale to pay $1.2 million in debts — including a $160,000 city water bill — and to give it the financial means to serve a population of often hard-core homeless men who have few beds available to them in Atlanta, Cramer said. The Task Force only uses about 30 percent of its building, he said.

Ideally, Cramer said, the business community and city officials would assist the task force in getting approval to provide housing for the men it now serves elsewhere in Atlanta in return for the sale.

A month ago, Task Force executive director Anita Beaty said the group did not plan to leave the building. On Friday, she contended any sale should be contingent on an arrangement to allow the shelter a location to perform its mission.

“I think it needs to be in downtown Atlanta because of jobs and transportation needs,” she said

At a City Council financial retreat on Friday, Mayor Shirley Franklin declined to comment on whether the city would assist the shelter operators in finding another location. Cramer complained the mayor and her staff have tried to dry up the Task Force’s public and private financing in an attempt to force its closure.

“We have lost almost $1 million in public funding in the last two years and that makes the struggle almost impossible,” he said. “Our efforts to renovate the building have been hard to get off the ground and that coupled with the attacks on our public funding and even our private donors by the Franklin Administration has been relentless and it has an impact on us.”

Kansas said he is also helping the group look for a potential new location and that the sale offer has generated significant interest but no formal offers from potential buyers.

The deadline for submitting offers is March 16, he said.