Castleberry Hill’s famed Elliott Street Pub is officially for sale

A historic Castleberry Hill pub and inn that’s become a hub for tourists, laborers, federal attorneys, Hollywood film crews, and everyone else is officially up for sale.

Fifteen years after finding the formerly dilapidated, circa-1870s property on a midnight bike ride, brothers Peter and Mike Jakob are aiming to sell the Elliott Street Deli and Pub, along with a three-unit Airbnb property upstairs and ancillary components—and to capitalize on the area’s current building boom and planned, billion-dollar transformation.

In promotional materials provided to Curbed Atlanta today, the property is described as “turnkey,” and the owners’ intent for selling the business is “to leave their legacy to its next caretaker.”

The asking price: $3.3 million.

As selling points, listing agent Lucas Carter, of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Georgia Properties, points to nearby Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the under-construction Reverb by Hard Rock hotel, a revived State Farm Arena, and a “plethora of downtown development projects and events” in coming years.

The Jakob brothers, former owners of a contracting and building business, stumbled into the bar industry upon finding the nearly 150-year-old building and then opening the pub in 2006.

As reported last week, the owners have been irked recently by City of Atlanta plans to soon install parking meters along Elliott Street, a move Mike Jakob described to Curbed as “a direct attack on a small business.” But an eventual sale has been in the cards since the beginning.

The 51 Elliott Street building, now a dive-bar icon in the shadow of downtown, originally served as a carriage house for the central city and railroad industry.

Between the early 1950s and 1982, it housed jazz club Dee’s Birdcage—Isaac Hayes, Gladys Knight, and Curtis Mayfield all performed there—and one of the first black-owned real estate, loan, and insurance companies in Atlanta, according to marketing materials.

As with so many places around the city, blight and disinvestment took a toll on Castleberry Hill in the 1980s and ’90s, and the abandoned Elliott Street structure was boarded up and burned out for years.

The Jakob brothers bought the ailing property for $315,000 in 2004, according to city property records.

A gut renovation cost nearly 1 million initially and created the building’s nucleus: a cozy pub of just 600 square feet, with room for about 30 people total, as Vice reported last year in declaring the space “Atlanta Best Bar.”

The Jakobs told Vice they never intended to be bar owners for so long, but destruction of the Mitchell Street bridge next door—a crucial artery to downtown, since rebuilt—made the waiting game inevitable. (Indeed, the owners had listed the property for sale five years ago for $1.5 million.) The bridge redo ultimately paid off, however, as the pub became a social magnet for construction workers erecting The Benz and numerous other projects within shouting distance.

The sale, as Carter notes, includes the businesses, a 2,500-square-foot parking lot with carports used for events, and storage space.

TV and movie productions have been booking the property about eight times per year—the pub has recently appeared in Kate Hudson’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Kevin Hart’s Ride Along, as two examples—and shooting rates are established, said Carter.

The sale actually includes two addresses (51 and 49 Elliott Street), and the city has approved plans for a potential third-floor addition to the bar building, per listing materials.

A second building could also be erected on the concrete pad next door, allowing for another Castleberry storefront or additional space for pub patrons to belly up.