By Eric Curl
Nov. 9, 2022 – The city intends to build a homeless transitional center with apartments on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, according to a plan going before the Historic Preservation Commission on Nov. 21. (Editor’s note: The city announced on Nov. 15 that consideration of the proposal has been moved to January to provide more time for staff to review and discuss the proposed concept.)
The proposed 3-story building at 916 MLK will feature administrative space for providing homeless support services, along with 16 apartments to transition single parent families, usually women with children, out of homelessness, according to the project description submitted by Savannah-based Gunn Meyerhoff Shay Architects. (Editor’s Note: This story has been corrected after first reporting an incorrect number of apartment units planned for the site.)
The city-owned sites being developed consist of a single lot that will be used for remote parking for residents, and lots that will be combined to create an L-shaped site that wraps around an existing building at the corner of MLK and West Waldburg Streets.
The proposed transitional center is the city’s latest plan for the site along MLK following the demolition in 2014 of the 1960s-era building that previously housed the city’s first-black owned pharmacy. Following the closure of the pharmacy in 2007, the city bought the property and an adjacent vacant lot for about $510,000 in 2009 with the intention of rehabilitating the building, which featured a unique honey-comb façade. The council initially wanted to renovate the structure and use it for the department of economic development and commercial space, but the plan was abandoned after engineering analysis determined the building was structurally unsound and could not be saved. At the time of the demolition, the city planned to build a replica of the demolished structure, but that plan too was subsequently abandoned.
In October 2016, a new plan to build a 3-story office building on the site was approved by the Metropolitan Planning Commission, but the city never moved forward with the project. The abandoned building design included a decorative concrete block course above the storefront in a honeycomb pattern, in recognition of the demolished pharmacy, according to a 2016 Savannah Morning News article about the project.
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