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Rick Warren arrived in English Avenue in 2007, after the $9 million implosion of his Gwinnett County waste management business. But he saw opportunity in the wreckage of the real estate crash along the Atlanta Beltline, which is slated to pass just west of English Avenue.
The Buckhead resident and real estate investor is now facing his first of potentially 13 trials for code violations.
Attorneys for Arthur Blank’s foundation and a local land bank were 90 minutes from closing on a deal to buy and redevelop two dozen blighted properties when the sale was stopped in its tracks.
It was Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed who halted the deal in May, said the attorney handling the closing for the Fulton County/City of Atlanta Land Bank Authority.
Reed's issue? Apparently, the person poised to profit from it: Rick Warren, the real estate investor now on trial for housing code violations in the English Avenue and Vine City area.
Now the $667,500 deal is in limbo. And some wonder if Reed was right to take a stand against a developer he’s described as a housing “predator,” or if the mayor is delaying the type of improvement he vowed to shepherd in communities near the future Falcons stadium.
“This deal, as it’s laid out to me, was going to accomplish exactly what the mayor wanted, at no cost to the city,” said Warren, who believes he’s been maligned by Reed. “I don’t understand why you step in and stop the deal.”
The Land Bank Authority planned to use funds from the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation to purchase properties connected to Warren. A spokeswoman for the mayor said it was the Land Bank that decided to halt the purchase, adding that allowing investors like Warren to profit would be a “slap in the face” to English Avenue and Vine City residents.
Warren and his companies own well over 100 properties in some of Atlanta's poorest neighborhoods, and residents have complained of filth and crime in many of them, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation found last year.
Reed, for his part, isn't saying whether he intervened. But that's not stopping the mayor, who made headlines when he appeared in court for Warren's housing trial last month, from making his feelings about it known.
In a recent interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he said that Warren — who he believes has contributed to the rampant blight on Atlanta's west side — shouldn't turn a profit with the help of a governmental entity.
“You are not going to be involved in a favorable transaction with the kinds of problems that we know are in his property inventory,” Reed said, adding that Warren should see jail time for his housing code violations.
John Gordon, founder and chair of Friends of English Avenue, questions why the mayor has set his sights on Warren given the number of absentee owners in the area. Warren pledged $15,000 to his nonprofit to help with a summer teen jobs program focused on neighborhood clean-up, but ultimately didn’t pay because of his mounting legal bills, Gordon said.
“It very much smacks of politics and grandstanding to me, when there are so many things that need attention that I’ve personally asked the mayor to look at in the past,” said Gordon, who wants greater focus on eradicating drug lords there. “It just seems like a misguided use of the mayor’s time to be focusing on one developer.”
The Blank Foundation, which has pledged $15 million to help improve the neighborhoods around the new Falcons stadium, did not initially respond to several calls and emailed requests for comment.
On Thursday, after the story was published, Foundation President Penny McPhee issued the following statement: “The blighted property issue is an important priority of these communities, and we are involved in trying to resolve this issue through our work with the mayor’s office and the Land Bank Authority. We will continue to work with them to put in place the right solution to this problem.”
Chris Norman, executive director of the Land Bank, said he cannot discuss active real estate transactions, but said the Land Bank and the Blank Foundation entered into a “program-related investment” arrangement in recent months through which the Blank Foundation will provide capital to the authority for land acquisitions.
The Land Bank, which consists of Atlanta and Fulton representatives, is tasked with returning blighted properties to productive use. Reed has said the authority will play a bigger role in coming years, and recently appointed disbarred former councilman H. Lamar Willis to its board, though that selection was rejected by the Atlanta City Council earlier this week.
Documents obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reveal that, in addition to the purchase of 24 properties, the parties were also in talks to purchase another two dozen parcels at a later date.
The properties in the first deal are owned by R City LLC, Wurban Holdings LLC, The Westline Group LLC, West Star Holdings LLC and Canopy Development Group, documents show.
It’s unclear what Warren and his associates paid for the properties. Under the now-stalled deal with the Land Bank, the corporations owning the properties would have been paid an average of about $28,000 for each home or lot.
Reed said while there’s “an appropriate conversation” around whether the city or foundation should obtain the properties as part of a broader strategy, he doesn’t believe Warren should be able to sell his properties unless he brings each of them up to city code.
Warren said none of the properties under the Land Bank deal has existing code violations — a statement the AJC could not immediately verify. He and an attorney for the Land Bank Authority said that all back taxes and sanitation fees on the properties were paid prior to the scheduled closing last month.
The real estate investor also said these properties are separate from those for which he’s facing housing code violation trials.
Bill Dodson, the attorney for the Land Bank, said he believes the deal is on hold — not dead. He thinks Reed has “an absolute right and obligation” to be concerned with the matter as a public agency is involved.
Still, Dodson said it would be difficult to enact real change in English Avenue and Vine City without involving Warren.
“If Rick Warren owns or controls a significant number of properties needed for the initiative, somehow or other, there’s got to be a way to acquire them,” he said. “It’s up to the mayor and his staff to figure out what is the best way to do that for the city.”
Benjamin Wills, an English Avenue resident and principal of Peace Preparatory Academy, said even if Warren is held up as an example, foreign absentee investors aren’t likely to know or care.
“I think any time we start ranking the sins of one person, we’re not getting anywhere because we’re not having a constructive dialogue about the overarching plan for the community,” Wills said. “…So when people are acting in a way that’s not in the interest of those people, but in the interest of money or for political gain, that’s the issue I’m concerned with.”
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