The Atlanta Preservation Center (APC) has sent out an urgent message to round up support to save a building in the Martin Luther King Jr. Historic District. The Trio Laundry Dry Cleaning Building at 20 Hilliard St. was built in 1910 and survived the Great Fire of 1917, but is already being demolished by the city.
The property was purchased in 2009 by the Atlanta Housing Authority (AHA) with no plans for redevelopment beyond remediation of soil and water contamination. By 2011 part of the building’s roof collapsed. Because the roof was not repaired or the structure stabilized, the building has continued to deteriorate to the point that the City of Atlanta condemned it in December 2012 due to “immediate hazardous conditions to neighboring properties and the general public.” In June 2014 AHA applied for a demolition permit and, without any public notification or community engagement, the City issued a demolition permit earlier this month.
The APC is urging residents to call the mayor’s office, AHA office and contact their councilperson to stop the demolition. Find out more at this link.
This is a great building in a fantastic part of town. Who currently holds the deed to the property, the City? What are the options for saving it? Would it need to be sold, or what can we do? I have (what I believe to be…) an amazing idea.