The Adair Park community in Southwest Atlanta has everything a home-buyer could want in a neighborhood, the community's president says.
There are historic homes, parks and caring neighbors. One of them -- Timothy O'Mara -- even promises that kids who pick up trash can get a bike from those he reconditions at his Beltline Bike Shop.
There's one problem: of the community's 600 homes, only half are occupied. About 150 have absentee owners and the remainder are up for sale, said Teague Buchanan, president of the neighborhood association Adair Park Today.
A program launching today called Committed to Communities is intended to change that. Put together by the community and those who sell real estate in the area, the program is designed to promote southside neighborhoods using their proximity to Atlanta's Beltline as an enticement.
The Beltline is a 22-mile stretch of abandoned railroad tracks that boosters are working to transform into a corridor of transit, parks and mixed-use development.
An open house will be held from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday for about 20 homes along Allene Avenue, Brookline Street, DeSoto Avenue and adjacent streets in Adair Park, Capitol View, Pittsburgh and Sylvan Hills neighborhoods, said Derrick Duckworth, a community Realtor and founder of The Beltline Team, a group of real estate agents who specialize in selling in the Beltline area. Home prices range from $90,000 to $189,000.
Buchanan, who has been living in the Adair Park for four years, said it is critical for neighbors to take a lead on promoting the community. The area has one of the highest vacancy rates in the country. Foreclosures, homes lost to mortgage fraud and absentee investors who may not care about their properties have hurtneighborhoods that should be turning people away because of their proximity to the city center, he said.
"If we don't, who will," he said of promoting the community.
Since the Beltline work has cleaned up overgrowth, added an art project and paved trails, neighbors have tried to spruce up their communities.
Ethan Davidson, a spokesman for Atlanta Beltline, said a goal is to connect communities both physically and figuratively. When residents see their communities as viable places to live, they feel good about promoting that sentiment to others.
"It's a good example of how the public and private forces are supposed to coalesce in this project," he said.
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