Preserving history, and a legacy, in the city

Tony Franklin is a skinny figure in a big blue coat, a walking testament to Martin Luther King Jr.’s unfinished war on poverty. He is part of the army of panhandlers who roam Atlanta’s Auburn Avenue, bearing down on the tourists who flock to the civil rights leader’s grave.

There will soon be 159 new homes on Auburn Avenue, all of them condos that Franklin cannot afford. But he is proud of them nonetheless. He is a black man. And he believes there is something almost sacred about this long-neglected urban thoroughfare that in its heyday was known as “Sweet Auburn.”

“It’s going to be beautiful, man,” Franklin said recently, nodding toward the naked beams of the partially built condos. “This is a historical street, and yeah, it needs to be rebuilt.”

Fortune magazine once called Auburn Avenue “the richest Negro street in the world.” During the Jim Crow era, it was home to a thriving mix of black-owned businesses, clubs and stores. The owners and patrons hailed from black Atlanta’s moneyed and aspiring classes, and on Sundays they crowded powerful churches presided over by pastors who helped spearhead the civil rights movement.

But the leaders’ great triumph, integration, scattered the black elite, and Auburn Avenue suffered. For years, the tourists who came here to view King’s grave -- along with his birth home, family church, and the nonviolence center founded by his wife -- also encountered a street plagued by boarded-up buildings and one of Atlanta’s most intense concentrations of chronically homeless people.

Now change is coming to Auburn Avenue again. After decades of flight from Atlanta’s urban core, people are returning to the central city, attracted by short commutes and the promise of community. They may even return to the commercial stretch of Auburn Avenue, despite its sketchy reputation.

The block-long condominium complex is called Renaissance Walk at Sweet Auburn, and it is the first of a number of developments that promise to populate the street with a new generation of bourgeoisie. With its pool, gym and 27,000 square feet of retail space, the project has also sparked standard worries about gentrification -- only here, they are intensified by the specter of King and his lofty ideals.

“I think we have a special responsibility, given where we are,” said Mtamanika Youngblood, a critic of the Renaissance project and vice chairwoman of the Historic District Development Corp., which builds and refurbishes affordable housing in the area. “As a co-worker used to say, ‘The man is laying in the street.’ Dr. Martin Luther King is right there! It means we have to be smarter, more creative, more thoughtful.”

To Youngblood, King’s concept of the “Beloved Community” -- a global vision of connectedness and sharing -- can be interpreted locally to mean guaranteed housing for poor and middle-class people, not just the wealthy. The cost of the Renaissance condos will range from the low $200,000s to more than $600,000; the median home price for that ZIP code, according to HomeSmartReports, is $258,000.

Youngblood also worries that the visible remnants of Auburn Avenue’s proud history could be compromised in the rush to redevelop. She is angry that the builders tore down an old motel, the Palamont Motor Lodge, to make way for Renaissance Walk. Though the Palamont had been closed and neglected for years, Youngblood argued that as one of the few hotels that catered to blacks during segregation, it was worth saving.

Joan Garner, the Development Corp. president, worries that the project will introduce bland chain retailers to an area that was renowned for independent black businesses. Her broader concern, she said, is that the neighborhood will “grow into something completely different from what the area has been.”

“The challenge is, how do you weave the old and the new in a way that’s representative of the historic aspect of the community?” she said.

The driving force behind the condominium project is Big Bethel AME Church, the oldest black congregation in Atlanta and a longtime anchor of Sweet Auburn. Its partner in the project, Integral Group, is a black-owned firm best known for replacing traditional public housing with mixed-income apartments.

Both the church and the developer believe the Auburn Avenue project honors history and social justice. It incorporates the facades of four original businesses on the block, and it will feature a museum-like space to tout the history of Sweet Auburn. Twenty percent of the homes are being offered at below market rate.

Big Bethel’s senior pastor, Gregory V. Eason Sr., says his church has already ensured that the poor will be included in Sweet Auburn’s future: Big Bethel operates a high-rise housing project in the neighborhood, as well as special housing for recovering addicts. Now it is going after the long-lost business class.

“We do feel that the project will help recover the original spirit of Sweet Auburn Avenue, which, during its heyday, was really the center of African American business in the city of Atlanta,” he said.

To Atlanta City Councilman Kwanzaa Hall, such dense residential projects are essential to the revitalization of Auburn Avenue. In recent weeks, much of the talk about Sweet Auburn locally has centered on tourism -- particularly whether the avenue should be the site of a proposed civil rights museum.

The Coca-Cola Co. has donated land for such a facility near its soon-to-open Coke museum and the glitzy new Georgia Aquarium, about a mile and a half from King’s grave. King’s children and others have argued that the museum should be located on Auburn Avenue.

Hall says that wherever the museum goes, Auburn Avenue will need to attract not just tourists but locals to survive as a reinvigorated business district.

Auburn Avenue has waited too long for change, he said. “We can’t afford to waste another moment.”

Charles E. Johnson, the head of the Sweet Auburn Area Coalition, likes to point out that change is already here. Last week, he showed off a series of small businesses opened in the last two years or so -- a gourmet bakery, a designer clothing and marketing company, and a place called JustSlips, a bespoke lingerie shop. JustSlips owner Constance Anderson, 60, said she expected business to improve dramatically when Renaissance Walk was completed.

“There is already an excitement to the area,” Anderson said. “A lot of people are moving in.”

A few doors down, the owners of Paradise Paradise, a Caribbean-themed club and restaurant, were planning upgrades -- a more sophisticated menu, maybe even live bands -- for the new clientele it expected the Renaissance project to attract.

Apple Gabriel, a regular customer, said that since construction started on the Renaissance project, he had seen police crack down on the homeless and on drug dealers.

Gabriel, 51, is a Jamaican, a Rastafarian and a minor celebrity: In the 1970s, he co-founded the reggae group Israel Vibration. Like many conscientious souls on Auburn Avenue, he was pleased to see it was finally getting a face-lift -- but worried about the fate of the street people who called it home now.

“When they upscale Auburn Avenue,” he said, “where are these people going to go?”

richard.fausset@latimes.com