Exclusive: Meet the Future Home of The Masquerade

"Westward ho!" cries the Masquerade.

Curbed has learned that the beloved, soon-to-be displaced Atlanta music complex plans to relocate from its longtime Old Fourth Ward home to a retrofitted, tucked-away warehouse building on the city’s industrial western flank.

The site in question is a large low-rise building in the 1400 block of Fairmont Avenue, just north of Huff Road, not far from burgeoning Howell Mill Road and loads of investment activity that includes the new Topgolf Atlanta Midtown facility.

Randy E. Pimsler, a Pimsler Hoss Architects principal, said his firm is designing a renovation of the warehouse space and that the Masquerade now plans to join other tenants there.

Earlier this year, Pimsler’s initial application for permits indicated the warehouse would be occupied by just one tenant and that renovations would cost $200,000. New drawings that will incorporate the Masquerade are being finalized for permit submittal, Pimsler said.

Other Pimsler Hoss adaptive-reuse projects around Atlanta include the Ten Forty Boulevard commercial lofts and Grant Park’s The Jane.

Masquerade officials are expected to present their plans at an NPU-D meeting later this month.

Records indicate the warehouse property used to be occupied by ABI Distribution and may have been vacant for years. According to a LoopNet listing from 2012, the building has eight docks, ceilings that reach 19-feet tall, and roughly 80,000 square feet, which is about the size of an average urban Target store.

A fenced storage area on the property can be converted to allow for more than 130 additional parking spaces, the listing noted.

It’s worth noting that a community of single-family houses is being built within a drumstick’s toss of the Masquerade’s planned future home.

Next door, Brock Built is calling their 36-home project "West Town," with prices starting in the $550,000s. Buyers will earn entry into a Buckhead school cluster and effortless walkability to really rad live shows.

Meanwhile, back in the Old Fourth Ward, the Masquerade’s current digs — a 19th-Century former Excelsior Mill on North Avenue that’s been hosting shows and festivals since 1989 — are being transformed into a $60-million project called "North + Line."

The medieval-looking mill portion will be rechristened "Mill Marketplace" (see below) and will house restaurants and retail; on the opposite end of the site, a planned eight-story building (including three stories of parking) will house about 230 apartments and a tavern.

The goal is to finish the site’s overhaul by the spring of 2018.

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