Grant Park Lodge Building Turns a Century Old 

By Bill Adams, President of Adams Realtors 

The Historic Grant Park Lodge Building on Cherokee Avenue between Sydney Street and Glenwood Avenue in Atlanta’s Grant Park neighborhood turns 100 years old this year. Construction of the building began in 1910 with two one-story storefronts. After a pause in construction during World War I additional storefronts and a second story were added. The building was finally completed in 1924.

The two-story structure was owned by the Grant Park Masonic Temple Association and the Masons occupied the second floor of the building. The ground floor of the building had many uses including a grocery store, a drug store with a soda fountain, TV repair shop, and a movie theater known as the Temple Theater. The movie theater was retrofitted into the building during the 1930s to generate revenue during the Depression. For years, the building was a center of retail activity in the Grant Park neighborhood. 

As the neighborhood declined in the 1960s and 1970s the first-floor retail space became difficult to lease, and the empty space was an easy target for vandalism. The Masons eventually boarded up the storefronts and in an era before graffiti in Atlanta, the front of the building was covered with posters advocating the latest political causes. To add further insult to the building, a telephone booth outside the building attracted a steady stream of unsavory characters to the site. 

Several Grant Park neighbors met informally regarding the building, concerned that the landmark property was becoming an eyesore and that it was in danger of further deterioration or worse. Being a real estate broker, I was asked to approach the Masons to see if there was any interest in selling the building. At first, they were not interested in selling the property. However, within a few weeks, a For Sale sign appeared on the building and I began negotiating for a sale. None of us had much money so we assembled a group of ten neighbors to pool our resources and buy the property.

It was impossible to get a bank loan on a commercial building in Intown Atlanta in the late 1970s, so the Masons agreed to provide Seller Financing. They also agreed to lease the second floor until they could build a new home in the suburbs. We closed on the sale of the building in mid-May 1979. Our goal was to renovate the building and return it to its original role as a vibrant neighborhood commercial center.

The building had a lot of deferred maintenance. The roof leaked, heating systems were either missing or obsolete, and the electrical systems were substandard. The storefronts suffered from neglect, vandalism, broken windows, and collapsed ceilings. A typical Saturday morning meeting of the new owners often included being on the roof with buckets of roofing cement trying, mostly in vain, to patch all the leaks.

We eventually received a loan from the predecessor of Invest Atlanta to replace the roof and repair the storefronts. We also planted trees along the street in front of the building. The first tenants were the Grant Park SAND Federal Credit Union, a market called Kudzu Co-Op, an antique lighting company named 1890 Lighting, and my company, Adams Realtors. The Federal Historic Tax Credit was also used as part of the renovation.

In the 1980s, an arts related neighborhood group approached us about renovating the movie theater for both live and film performances. The City of Atlanta rejected the proposed theater restoration because the building had no off-street parking. In the early part of the 20th century, automobiles were an afterthought, and most buildings were built without off-street parking.

Since 1979, the building has housed a cabinet shop, a florist, a sandwich shop, several restaurants, an architect’s office, a women’s advocacy nonprofit, a hair salon, law offices, a medical records transcription business, and a stained-glass manufacturer. In 1999, the ownership group decided to sell the building, and I bought the building from my fellow shareholders. 25 years later, the building is 100% leased. The second floor of the building has three women owned businesses: Challenge Aerial, Intown Family Therapy, and Superhuman Therapy, a physical therapist. Challenge Aerial occupies the former Masonic Temple with its 21-foot ceiling height. They also occupy most of the old dining hall space for their aerial yoga studio. The remaining part of the dining hall is part of the Intown Family Therapy space. Both the Intown Family Therapy and Superhuman Therapy offices include some of the original business offices used by the Masons and part of what was a wide hallway. The ground floor of the building has Loose Nuts Bike shop, Dakota Blue Restaurant, and Adams Realtors. The old movie theater space has been incorporated into the Loose Nuts space (the theater entrance and the projection booth), Dakota Blue (the ticket booth and concessions stand) and the Adams Realtors office, (the stage and most of the seating area). Dakota Blue occupies the old drugstore space. The front of the Adams Realtors office was the old TV repair space. All the businesses in the Grant Park Lodge Building are locally owned, independent, small businesses. I like to think that over these last 45 years, we have returned this old, historic landmark building to its proper role as a center of commercial activity in Grant Park.