O4W Project Starts Construction Where Starbucks Bailed Out

A vacant, graffiti-covered corner of the Old Fourth Ward near the Ponce City Market is being transformed into a hip dog haven.

Atlanta dog boarding company Barking Hound Village is building a new adaptive reuse facility on a boulevard corner where Starbucks abandoned its plan for a drive-thru bistro a few years ago, records show building permits filed with the City of Atlanta.

Barking Hound currently operates a facility a few blocks east of the construction site, near the BeltLine’s Eastside Trail in Poncey-Highland, but it is not yet clear whether it will remain open. Inquiries made to business leaders this week for more information were unsuccessful.

The pet daycare and boarding facility is building a 5,500-square-foot addition to a vacant building on the northeast corner of two busy city corridors, Boulevard and North Avenue. This structure at 619 Boulevard was most recently used as a medical facility.

Plans call for a 9,000-square-foot modern-style structure under a butterfly roof, as drawn up by Decatur-based architecture firm Office of Design.

On parts of the steel and glass facade along both streets, designs call for green walls covered in fig ivy, while other walls would feature murals of dogs “to create a vitality and playfulness in “according to the nature of the building’s use,” according to documents filed with the Atlanta Zoning and Development Office in 2022.

Property records indicate the half-acre corner lot last traded in September 2022 for $2.25 million.

The site is less than three blocks from the Ponce City Market and the BeltLine’s dog haven, Eastside Trail, about a block north of the new 555 Boulevard luxury rental complex and several other high-rise buildings. newer affordable housing. Thousands of apartments have materialized in the neighborhood over the past decade, also exponentially increasing O4W’s dog population.

The Starbucks would have replaced the shuttered medical facility and an empty 1940s house next door. Plans for the boarding school do not include the residential structure, as the ongoing construction clearly shows.

Starbucks had been considering building a new bistro around the corner for more than a year. Plans revealed in October 2021 promised a 2,500 square foot building located close to the intersection’s sidewalks, with a dedicated, snaking drive-thru behind it.

But Boulevard Frappuccinos weren’t supposed to exist after all.

Get a closer look at what’s to come – and the Starbucks plans that never saw the light of day – in the gallery above.

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