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Griffin Street Case Study: Why Zoning Matters When it Comes to Housing Choice

This post was written in collaboration with our friend Joel Dixon of Urban Oasis Development. Learn more about Joel and UOD’s work here....

Feb 18, 2021

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Griffin Street Case Study: Why Zoning Matters When it Comes to Housing Choice

Catalytic Redevelopment Part 4: Incremental Design

(This post is Part 4 of a series on evaluating catalytic development projects. Click here to read Part 3) In this series we have covered...

Sep 24, 2020

min

Catalytic Redevelopment Part 4: Incremental Design

Catalytic Redevelopment Part 2: Project Costs

(This post is Part 2 of KUA's guide to evaluating catalytic development projects. Click here to read Part 1: Setting Goals) In our last...

Sep 23, 2020

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Catalytic Redevelopment Part 2: Project Costs

Why ADUs Are So Hard To Build, and How Atlanta Could Make it Easier

Accessory dwelling units (ADUs) are a popular tool for addressing the nation’s affordable housing crisis. Every homeowner with an attic,...

Oct 29, 2020

min

Why ADUs Are So Hard To Build, and How Atlanta Could Make it Easier

Catalytic Redevelopment Part 3: Outside Subsidy

(This post is Part 3 of a series on evaluating catalytic development projects. Click here to read Part 2) So far in this series we’ve...

Sep 24, 2020

min

Catalytic Redevelopment Part 3: Outside Subsidy

Catalytic Redevelopment Part 1: Setting Goals

After over a year’s worth of engagement by respondents and community members, the Atlanta Beltline Inc. (ABI) recently announced that...

Sep 23, 2020

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Catalytic Redevelopment Part 1: Setting Goals

Feb 3, 20234 min read

Creative Single-Family Infill

Jan 30, 20231 min read

Attainable Housing Now

Digging into the details at South Downtown...
@southdowntownatl

The cuteness continues on the West Side with our mixed use, missing middle project for Westside Future Fund.
We’re thrilled to be wrapping up this project and see the finishing touches come into place.

As we step into 2026, the KUA team wishes you a Happy New Year. We’re energized to continue advancing equitable, attainable, and livable communities, and grateful to do this work alongside so many dedicated partners.

Part 3: Economic Impact
Small lots drive affordability, boost local business, and strengthen city budgets. By making room for more homes and more neighbors, compact lots generate higher tax revenue per acre—helping cities fund better services, infrastructure, and public spaces that benefit everyone.

Part 2: History
Before zoning codes and minimum lot sizes, America’s earliest towns grew on small, human-scaled lots. The result? Tight-knit neighborhoods, lively main streets, and affordability baked into the urban fabric.

Part 1: Small lots, big impact. When we design compact, we make room for affordability, walkability, and real neighborhood life.

Project update! 👀
We recently checked out our Trust at Oakland City project for @ALT and @CityScape, bringing three permanently affordable homes to the community of Oakland City. We’re happy to share that one of the units is already under contract!
Project update!
We recently checked out our Trust at Oakland City project for @atlanta.land.trust and @cityscapeatl, bringing three permanently affordable homes to the community of Oakland City. We’re happy to share that one of the units is already under contract!

Fresh site photos from our ongoing work in Chattanooga —bringing to life new construction homes that are truly attainable, no subsidies needed.

Our latest hardware has been added to the collection. Our Finley St Cottages projects was a finalists for the 2025 Healthy City Design Awards in the Healthy Homes and Neighborhoods category. 🏆🏡

The latest update from our Echo project for @westsidefuturefund with @oaks_atl.

Everything is coming along nicely thanks to the diligent supervision from the neighborhood cat (slide 2).

Great progress is being made on our project off Joseph E Boone Blvd for @westsidefuturefund. Landscaping is going in, concrete is being poured, and details are being finalized.
We're so excited to show the world the final site!

Some members of the KUA team joined @fcsministries for their annual Breakfast on the Block event. Congratulations to FCS on another year of impact, and we’re happy to continue to help further their mission.

KUA has been swamped with deadlines, so we postponed our Halloween celebrations a week- better late than never! Checkout the awesome pumpkins we carved, including an incredibly lifelike replica of Eric which won “Spookiest Pumpkin”, and a little mini ADU pumpkin.

🎃 Trick-or-treating is a lot more fun when the houses aren’t half a mile apart.

At Kronberg Urbanists + Architects, we believe good housing policy makes great neighborhoods for candy-seekers and everyone else. 🍬🏡

Progress is coming along at the next phase of our project, The Trust at East Lake! This will bring 6 more duplexes to the site for our client @atlanta.land.trust.

How does this project keep getting cuter?
Here is this month's update from our Boone project with @westsidefuturefund.

KUA is proud to announce that our Finley Street Cottages are finalists for the Healthy City Design Awards in the Healthy Homes and Cities category.

Although improving health outcomes was not a specific goal of this project, there is no doubt that this project, in addition to being a model for pushing zoning regulations to their limits, is also a model for the impact of zoning on community health.

In 2014 @vantageatlanta and Fabric Developers hired KUA as architects for Parson’s Alley to re-imagine the block in their downtown Duluth redevelopment in partnership with the @city_of_duluth

Parsons Alley has a long history as a hub of community life, once home to family-run shops, a general store, and local gathering places. Over time, many of these historic buildings sat vacant, but their character and stories remained.
At KUA, we saw an opportunity to honor that history while bringing new life to the district. By carefully preserving and adapting these buildings, this project created a lively mix of small-scale retail, dining, and public space that reconnects people to Duluth’s past while supporting its future.

When we preserve historic places and make room for small businesses, we don’t just restore buildings, we restore community.

As we recently highlighted with our Boone project, at KUA, we believe that the strength of a neighborhood is built not just on housing, but on the local places that bring people together.

As another example of this, lets take a look into our project archives from 2014: Our @folkart_inmanpark project is a celebration of KUA’s vision. The project revitalized a corner of the Inman Park community with small-scale retail that supports walkability, local entrepreneurship, a sense of place, and not to forget, some delicious chicken and waffles.

This project was only made possible through parking requirements reductions; the original space sat vacant for years prior to becoming Folk Art because there was no way to provide the legally required parking minimums.

Projects like Folk Art show how intentional zoning can nurture both livability and economic opportunity. Small businesses are the heartbeat of communities, and integrating them at the neighborhood scale creates spaces that feel authentic, connected, and enduring.

KUA is continuing to design communities where people can live, work, and thrive, right outside their front doors.

Check our latest project that has reached the finish line - The Trust At East Lake. In collaboration with the @atlanta.land.trust, this project created 8 permanently affordable townhomes, offering affordability in a resource-dense community.

The next phase is under way bringing 6 more duplexes to the site.

For more details, and to see @jonjon.jpeg's video highlighting the project, check out our website!

At KUA, our focus is on making neighborhoods better. While attainable housing is central to this mission, thriving, walkable, and inclusive communities are built on more than housing alone. That’s why we’re big proponents of pairing attainable housing with small-scale neighborhood retail through mixed-use development.

Our latest project with Westside Future Fund on Atlanta’s Westside illustrates this perfectly. The site will bring 33 new homes across 4 residential buildings, affordable to households earning a range of AMI percentages, alongside 1 commercial building with 3 retail spaces (each ~ 400 sqft) designed to adapt to a range of neighborhood-serving uses.

This retail not only creates job opportunities and fosters economic mobility in a historically underserved community, but also strengthens walkability by reducing car dependency and bringing essential goods and services closer to home.

Mixed-use development isn’t just about buildings, it’s about creating neighborhoods where people can truly live, work, and thrive.

Our latest team site visit to our project for @westsidefuturefund on Echo! The work is coming along beautifully, and we’re excited to show off this project some more in the coming months!

This week KUA took a team trip to visit our project with @westsidefuturefund on Joseph E Boone on the West Side.

Nothing goes better together than missing middle and a small scale retail corridor!

We are happy too announce that two KUA staffers have received their RA license this year.
Congratulations to Anne Davis and Gillian Gingher on a huge accomplishment!

This week we celebrated two of our MVPs, Sanaa and Elizabeth, who have now been with KUA for 10 years. Both of these women have had incredible impacts on our work and communities around the country throughout these years. Join us in congratulating and celebrating them on 10 years!

Ever wonder why our suburbs look so different from our urban cores? KUA’s newest 3 part GIF series focuses on urban vs suburban development patterns.
2. History

This week’s update from our Boone project in collaboration with @westsidefuturefund!

By investing in what’s already stood the test of time, we’re not only preserving Atlanta’s story, we’re writing its next chapter.

@thehappyurbanist checked out our project on Historic Broad and has shared his thoughts on Broad Street and the work KUA, @southdowntownatl @winterconstruct

#SouthDowntown #AdaptiveReuse #LindyEffect #AtlantaArchitecture #PreservationIsProgress #UrbanRevitalization

The Lindy Effect tells us that the longer something has lasted, the longer it’s likely to last. In South Downtown Atlanta, we’re seeing this play out in real time.

Check out the future of Historic Broad, complete with walkability, public space, third spots, and history.
@southdowntownatl , @atlventures , @winterconstruct

Our SoDo team was squad deep at @winterconstruct's Topping Out celebration at @southdowntownatl yesterday.

Congrats on a monumental moment, team!

What’s a Community Land Trust, and why are they one of the keys to attainable homeownership?
A Community Land Trust (CLT) is a nonprofit that keeps housing affordable by owning the land and selling or renting homes at below-market rates. This model helps families stay rooted, avoid displacement, and build wealth over time.

Homeownership is one of the biggest drivers of financial mobility. Homeowners in the U.S. have 38x more wealth than renters (Fed, 2022). In a city like Atlanta, where the racial wealth gap is vast, CLTs offer a way to build equity and stability for future generations.
The @atlanta.land.trust is leading the way with permanently affordable homes in neighborhoods throughout Metro Atlanta. KUA has partnered with Atlanta Land Trust to implement housing with The Trust at East Lake and we’re happy to continue the fight for attainable housing in collaboration with the Atlanta Land Trust.

“PUDs are magic, but they shouldn’t always be necessary.”

La France Walk, in the Edgewood neighborhood of Atlanta, is a model for what livable, realistic, infill communities can look like if proper zoning allows. @jonjon.jpeg took a visit to our Finley Street project and highlighted how the project achieved both financial success of a development as well as livability for residents.

Zoning gotcha down? Have you tried a PUD (Planned Unit Development)? PUDs allow for individualized zoning concessions based on the parcel, in exchange for community benefits.

KUA’s project, La France Walk, utilized this strategy to create a range of units on just 2 acres of land. This project was so well designed, the ADU’s and carriage houses blend right into the other homes on the lot. No NIMBY’s here!

KUA took a deep dive into the existing zoning code of these Edgewood properties with a goal of developing the Finley Street Cottages to illustrate how to get more workforce housing with the existing zoning code.

In doing so, we also took one step towards making developments like this less exceptional and more normal.

Our Founder, Eric, often refers to himself as “The Zoning Whisperer”, and Finley Street Cottages are proof of why. Deep analysis of existing zoning regulations and thinking outside the box have allowed for the creation of multiple additional units on two lots, all without rezoning.

In the words of @jonjon.jpeg “expand your imagination”, and get creative with how to implement more housing in your neighborhoods.

“Theres hope that the best days of Summerhill are still ahead of it”
Explore @jonjon.jpeg take on how this once-overlooked area has blossomed into a vibrant community.

We’re proud to have helped lead the vision, planning, and architecture behind this transformation—proving that walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods rooted in place aren’t just possible, they’re thriving.

#KronbergUrbanists #SummerhillATL #UrbanDesign #AdaptiveReuse #MixedUseDevelopment #ArchitectsWhoPlan #DesignForPeople #AtlantaUrbanism

Did you know? Summerhill is one of Atlanta’s oldest neighborhoods, with roots dating back to 1865.

Founded by formerly enslaved people after the Civil War, Summerhill became a thriving, self-sustained Black community, home to businesses, churches, and a proud legacy of resilience. Throughout the latter half of the 1900’s, Urban Renewal and eminent domain divided the community causing local businesses and housing to fall into disarray.

Today, it stands at the intersection of history and transformation, where legacy meets revitalization. KUA has had the immense honor of helping to preserve its past while simultaneously shaping its future.

@jonjon.jpeg recently spent an afternoon in Summerhill and documented his experience. Keep an eye out for his thoughts!

#SummerhillATL #AtlantaHistory #CommunityLegacy #UrbanRevitalization #EquitableDevelopment

Walkability is about more than just nice sidewalks. What goes into making a community livable? @jonjon.jpeg took a look at our Echo Street project for @westsidefuturefund and dove into this question.

🏘️✨ Have you seen our 2025 Housing Choice Catalog? a bold step toward more equitable, attainable housing options in every neighborhood.

From ADUs to multiplexes, we’re reimagining what home can look like - adaptable, cute, and rooted in community. This year’s catalog expands design possibilities while helping cities meet real housing needs.

Some of the dwellings illustrated in this catalog have been implemented already and are being loved and used in communities around the region, and even more are currently under construction.

Keep an eye out for some more information highlighting a project in partnership with @westsidefuturefund that utilizes some of these dwellings, created by The Happy Urbanist, @jonjon.jpeg

#HousingChoice #MissingMiddle #DesignForAll #ZoningReform #KUA #HousingJustice #ArchitectureWithImpact #AtlantaDesign

We enjoyed a Friday Lunch at El Tesoro with Bella, another @tulanearch student currently interning with @mondaynight.
6 of KUA’s staffers attended @tulaneu and we have a special place in our hearts for Tulanians. Roll Wave!

Throwback Thursday to a recent site visit to our project on the West Side in partnership with @westsidefuturefund.

➡ Swipe for a preview of what it will look like when finished!

More snapshots from the @cnu_newurbanism conference – “kissing” eaves, live-work spaces, checking out Brown University’s studio spaces, and more fun around Providence.

Some snapshots from around Providence, RI from last week’s CNU conference!
@cnu_newurbanism

Catalyzing new life in Summerhill ✨ Kronberg Urbanists + Architects is proud to have been a part of the team that reimagined this historic, yet dormant, Summerhill corridor, creating a community where residents, culture, and local businesses come together.
In a recent morning spent in Summerhill at @sacredatlanta, a KUA staffer was inspired to document what this lively community center, even on a sleepy morning.
KUA provided master planning, design and renovation of 8 existing buildings, and the design and construction of 2 new buildings along Georgia Ave. We focused on preserving the unique character of the spaces, while designing their next life to be one that thrives for decades to come and celebrates the site’s history.

And of course, whenever we can, a trip to @littletartbakeshop is always a good idea. 😉
#GeorgiaAveATL #UrbanDesign #KUA #Placemaking #AtlantaArchitecture

A meeting of minds in a lightwell at @southdowntownatl.
Thankful to be a part of this amazing team working to revive some pretty complicated old buildings.
Stay tuned for more exciting project updates...

Project partners @winterconstruct, @stability_engineering , Flippo Civil Design, @proficient_engineering

Earlier this month, Elizabeth and Eric joined other @town_builders members at the Spring Roundtable in Poughkeepsie, NY to gather, learn from each other’s work, and get to know the new town center of @eastdalevillage, located on the outskirts of Poughkeepsie in the Hudson Valley.
Eastdale Village prioritizes human-scale design, walkability, public spaces, and mixed-use development balancing use, function, and a decent amount of cute.
Key lessons learned:
1. This project was a good example of residential being a bigger priority as a long term hold.
2. Project partners developed really creative strategies to build the commercial spaces incrementally for small business owner occupants.
3. A key success of the project is due to the significant amount of time project partners spent discovering and building relationships with small businesses that would make for a great community. The partnerships were established from the start of the project and continue to present day.
4. The commercial buildings typically have three units of rental housing upstairs, owned by the small business owner, managed by the residential property managers.
Project partners include @kirchhoff_companies @unionstudioarch

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