1920s Atlanta factory prepares for rebirth in Adair Park

In the past couple of years, the neglected old Abrams Fixture Corporation manufacturing facility in Adair Park has been partially reborn as a hub for artists and tradespeople.

Now, the property’s owners want to finish the job. And they say there’s a waiting list of tenants eager to get in.

Spread across 3.7 acres, the four-building, 1920s complex stands next to Interstate 20 in the 500 block of Northside Drive, roughly a mile south of the Georgia Dome. Abrams Fixture used the buildings—totaling more than 100,000 square feet—to manufacture cabinetry for retail stores until the 1990s. For a decade, the property sat vacant, and vandals took a toll.

Proport LLC bought the property in the mid-aughts and has worked in the past couple of years to bring it back to life as an artist community. When Burnaway held its annual Art Crush auction there in 2015, executive director Susannah Darrow told Creative Loafing, “We walked in the building and everyone's jaws kind of dropped open ... It's one of those spaces where you're like, 'How has this not been used for the last 20 years?'"

Phase I wrapped last year and consists of two building totaling 60,000 square feet. Now, owner Greg Swartzberg is considering launching the larger undertaking—the redevelopment of a four-story building—later this year as Phase II. Or he might sell to another developer.

“Either way, it’s going to happen,” Ryan Swartzberg, the building’s leasing agent and Greg’s son, tells Curbed Atlanta in an email. “They have a waiting list of tenants ready for a space in the four-story building.”

Swartzberg said negations are also ongoing to possibly open a restaurant later this year in a smaller building at the nearby intersection of Northside Drive and Wells Street.

Owners tout the property’s location—a mile from the Westside Trail, and half a mile from Adair Park—and how it’s recently hosted the Burnaway event and a crawfish boiling competition.

“The property has also been used for movie shoots and base camp for movies as well,” writes Swartzberg. “Abrams has been fought over for by multiple local investors since construction started on Phase I.”

• Beltline’s Westside Trail, Eastside extension to open this summer [Curbed]
• Burnaway's Crush hits Adair Park [Creative Loafing]