Historic building where OutKast filmed ‘So Fresh, So Clean’ video hits the market

Anyone with a sentimental soft spot for TRL-era music videos or the kings of Atlanta’s hip-hop pantheon might recognize this landmark building in Castleberry Hill, which is now being offered for sale.

Built in 1930, the American Laundry Building on Walker Street once served—as the name implies—as a location where local railroad workers would drop off and retrieve laundry in the neighborhood’s manufacturing and industrial boom times.

More importantly, Big Boi and André 3000 worked here together.

With its airy interiors and cool, postindustrial vibe, the building hosted the somewhat racy early morning scenes in the video for OutKast’s So Fresh, So Clean, the final single from 2000’s seminal album Stankonia.

Current photos courtesy of Stratus Property Group

Screen-captures via YouTube/Vevo

From many angles, the building appears almost frozen in time from its moment in the spotlight, prior to OutKast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below-era ubiquity and eventual, extended hiatuses.

As is, it offers 12,000 square feet of heated and cooled space, but the .42-acre site would allow for another 22,000 square feet to be built, as Nicole Sarmer, Stratus Property Group marketing coordinator, tells Curbed Atlanta.

Current zoning would allow for a variety of uses: 15,000 square feet of offices, a hotel with up to 50 rooms, a residential venture rising up to 44 feet, for instance. But historic district requirements will prevent any alternations to the exterior facade, says Sarmer.

“The seller didn’t want to limit individuals within the thriving Castleberry Hill music and entertainment industry, who might have interest in it as more of a residential/studio/event space,” Sarmer notes via email.

The asking price: a cool $4.5 million.

YouTube/Vevo

Sarmer said plans are available, dating to the early 1990s, for when owners contemplated redeveloping the building into a multifamily space. It’s eligible for tax breaks, given its location in a federal opportunity zone.

“It leaves a lot to the imagination,” notes Sarmer, “for a creative mixed-use developer.”

In terms of location, Sarmer pointed to Castleberry Hill’s status as an “up-and-coming area for Atlanta developments,” with Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the planned Gulch overhaul as Centennial Yards, the Smith & Porter flats, and TV host Ty Pennington’s Otis Building project all nearby.

YouTube/Vevo

Beyond the interiors, the building’s facade retains it charm, while exterior spaces could allow for improvisation or a general freshening up.

YouTube/Vevo

For a more thorough teleport to 2001, have a look at the official OutKast video below, which also features a church that hosted a who’s-who of the era’s ATL hip-hop royalty.