The Goat Farm in West Midtown announced Tuesday its 12-acre campus will begin reopening in phases this spring.
The multi-disciplinary cultural center unveiled plans for its mixed-use expansion plan in 2019. According to a news release, the campus at 1200 Foster St. NW will include about 500,000 square feet of art studios, living spaces, creative offices, and multidisciplinary venues and exhibition areas. The various spaces will be built across 12 existing historic structures and three newly-built structures. Plans also include a restaurant and bar, a cafe, and an art book shop.
According to the release, this campus expansion aims to help advance The Goat Farm’s goal of exploring how places can better support and fund art and culture. The Goat Farm model uses rent from the real estate to generate arts funding and support on an ongoing basis with a focus on presenting new genres and experimental artistic works.
The first phase of art studios, totaling 60,000 square feet, is already 98% pre-leased, according to the release. The art studio wait list sits at 1,218 practitioners and creative businesses.
Pre-leasing for phase one of more than 200 living spaces has begun. Announcements about pre-leasing creative offices, including another phase of art studios, are expected to be made in the coming months.
The architectural director of design for the overall project is the New York-based interdisciplinary studio, Bureau V Architecture (BVA). According to the release, BVA’s clients include the Brooklyn Public Library, National Sawdust and the San Francisco Opera. BVA’s work has also appeared in many institutions including the Centre Pompidou, the Guggenheim Museum and MOMA PS1.
Arts programming at The Goat Farm is expected to resume in 2025.
The campus will also have a collection of permanent and rotating public art installations from local artists such as In Kyoung Choi Chun, Sara Santamaria, Jane Foley and multidisciplinary design studio/artist collective Zoo as Zoo.
“There will be a mix of sculpture, large scale works, interactive new media, and an annual juried collection of small installations all meant to become a free campus-wide public space gallery as the collection grows over time,” the news release said.
Some of the already selected works are from Atlanta artists such as Carley Rickles, Antonio Darden, Nikki Starz, Crystal Jin Kim and Branden Collins.
The new campus will house the artist-in-studio residency programs for both The Creatives Project, a nonprofit that supports creatives through affordable housing programs, and Tila Studios, a co-working and community space for Black women artists. The Goat Farm is also reviving its performance-based residency program with the movement platform glo, founded by choreographer Lauri Stallings.
The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (MOCA GA) is in the final stages of its capital campaign and finalizing the architectural design for its new 26,000-square-foot permanent home, which is in The Goat Farm’s campus expansion plans, according to the release. The museum is being designed by award-winning Atlanta-based firm Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects. Construction of the museum is expected to begin in 2024.
“Placing a collecting museum amongst hundreds of local practitioners within a nexus of arts programming spaces and curators is a first in Atlanta,” said Anthony Harper, the original founder of The Goat Farm, in the news release. “MOCA GA is already community oriented so the net result will be interesting to watch unfold over time.”
The overall project redevelopment and expansion plan is a collaboration between The Goat Farm and Atlanta-based real estate development firm Tribridge Residential. The joint venture partnership is also co-developing the vertical construction and renovation of the campus.
