Westside Atlanta entrepreneur heads SPLC project to build office complex there
Before it can build the springboard for the community outreach it envisions for its offices in Atlanta, the Southern Poverty Law Center is taking a community first approach.
Who better than someone who has spent two decades doing just that?
To bring to reality its dream of a vibrant office campus that will help boost the fortunes of the city’s Westside, the SPLC has turned to Leonard Adams, a Black entrepreneur who has worked tirelessly to uplift the area rich in civil rights history and in Black educational achievement but marred for years by economic malaise.
The choice of Adams is the cornerstone of the SPLC project scheduled to break ground next year. He will be the “developer” or manager in charge of transforming a 2.5-acre parcel acquired in December of last year into the future home of the SPLC’s Atlanta office, the organization’s largest outpost outside its historic Montgomery, Alabama, headquarters. The two complexes will work in tandem, helping to connect people and organizations to communities in the Deep South. Atlanta will be the SPLC’s gateway to Georgia, and Montgomery will remain the organization’s headquarters, a location central to its mission.
“Leonard was the person who, frankly, sold me on the significance of basing our work on the Westside,” said Margaret Huang, president and CEO of the SPLC. “He is somebody who has worked for decades in the Westside. He’s somebody who has built his own house on the Westside. He believes in investing in the community. All of his work is very much grounded in enabling Westsiders to stay in the neighborhood.”
The SPLC envisions a campus of buildings and outdoor landscapes that will provide spaces to support community groups and Westside residents through programming, youth and adult educational opportunities, affordable commercial spaces for local entrepreneurs of color, free event space, arts installations and other community-minded resources. There will also be office space for SPLC employees.
Partnerships and relationships
The decision to move the Atlanta office from its current location in Decatur, an affluent, largely white suburb, to the Westside is viewed by the SPLC leadership as central to the civil rights organization’s new strategic direction, centered in — and in partnership with — the communities it serves. The Westside contains six of Georgia’s 10 historically Black colleges and universities — including Spelman College, Morehouse College and Clark Atlanta University — and was home to many prominent leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, including Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King Jr. and the SPLC’s first president, Julian Bond.
But despite the vibrancy the institutions of higher learning still bring to the area, the Westside today is scarred by scarcity. Almost 40% of residents in its English Avenue area — where the new SPLC campus will rise at 871 Wheeler St. — live in poverty, about double the citywide rate. In fact, among major cities, Atlanta has one of the largest racial wealth gaps.
For years, Adams has been an evangelist for revitalizing the Westside, not through the sort of gentrification that has damaged and displaced communities of color in city after city, but through a process of collaboration and partnership with people who live in an area that has been ignored, underserved and left behind — and who are eager to have their voices heard and their needs met.
Adams, 54, funded his initial foray into affordable housing on the Westside with an investment of $30,000 in 2001. Now, in addition to a profitable development company, he runs a community development organization that has $39 million in assets and provides housing and needed programs to underserved people.
“He is a model for what we’re trying to do,” Huang said. “We don’t just want to come in and build a building and go home at the end of the day. We want our work not just to take place in the South as a location but to stem from the partnerships, the relationships, the communities that we work alongside and to really reflect what’s important to them. We want to be good neighbors, we want to be invested, and we especially want to be trusted. We want to support the dreams and the goals of the community.”
The move by the SPLC is a radical departure for organizations like it in Atlanta. Understandably, many organizations choose office locations in places that are created for office space, which are often not near the communities they serve. But others have helped lead a different way of thinking and the SPLC took inspiration from Families First — an organization that helps families thrive — which moved from Midtown to the Westside about a decade ago. The SPLC move grew out of discussions at all levels of the organization and a consensus that the SPLC’s own capital investments should reflect its philosophical commitment to closing the racial wealth gap, bringing money back into the communities it cares about.
‘Found my voice’
Adams has been supporting the Westside with passionate commitment for years. Born in Detroit, he moved to Atlanta after he graduated college in 1993, joining his parents in the employment agency they founded to match people experiencing homelessness with jobs. When his parents sold the business in 2000, Adams opted to use his portion of the proceeds to buy real estate.
But not just any real estate.
Adams eschewed fast-gentrifying areas of Atlanta, instead buying properties on the Westside. Leveraging government affordable housing grants, he developed secure communities of both short-term and permanent housing for people experiencing homelessness and people with disabilities, mental illness or substance abuse issues. The housing includes essential services to meet their needs, such as one-on-one case management, daily living skills training, resources to support self-sufficiency, opportunities to develop healthy habits and employment assistance.
The nonprofit that is the centerpiece of his ventures, Quest Community Development Corp., has secured more than $100 million in government grants and subsidy support for affordable housing. A separate, for-profit venture develops housing for middle-income homeowners. Adams said he feeds some of the revenues from that company into the work of the nonprofit.
“I’ve never been completely happy with the way that Black communities look in every city and state that I’ve lived in,” Adams said. “It’s been half a century since the Civil Rights Movement and it feels, frankly, like old Martin Luther King Jr. Drive is messed up or downtrodden in every city in America. I’ve got to change that. I have decided that I need to take risks to work for the betterment of my people, and it is through this work that I have found my voice.”
‘Money where your mouth is’
As he was building his ventures, Adams lived in Marietta, a suburb of Atlanta, where he had lived with his parents. But several years ago, he and his wife decided they should move to the Westside themselves.
“My wife said, ‘You know, you talk your talk, you better put your money where your mouth is,’” Adams recalled.
Now, the couple lives with their 3-year-old son in a home he built a few blocks from the future SPLC site.
Adams said the move has not been entirely easy. Especially now that he is a father, he is aware that the neighborhood that is now his home is not always a safe place for his son to play.
“It was just going to be this fairy tale picture, right? Right. But I tell you, when I open my garage and my son runs out because he doesn’t know any better, I am on high alert every minute of the day,” Adams said. “And I don’t like feeling like that, because I put a lot into this community, and I wanted it to give back to me. I know that this area is not going to be able to give that to me at this period of time when I need it. But will it be better one day? I believe so.”
In 2021, Adams took his mission to strengthen the Westside one step further. He built a building to house the headquarters of Quest and made space in it available at reasonable cost to six other nonprofit organizations working to drive change in the area.
The building, the Quest Westside Impact Center, houses, among other organizations, the On the Rise Community Development Center. In an area short of banking services, the financial center, funded by the credit reporting agency Equifax, Invest Atlanta and the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, offers residents free one-on-one financial coaching, including preparation for buying a home or starting a new business.
Vibrancy and hope
The SPLC is not waiting until it moves into the neighborhood to join Adams in his mission to uplift the Westside. Last year it donated $2 million to Quest to help build affordable housing for older adults. It also supported the 2023 Festival of Lights in Vine City, which celebrates the legacy and vitality of the historic Westside community, and the Ride for the Westside, hosted by Westside Future Fund and Quest, which raises funds to support efforts to equitably revitalize the neighborhood.
The SPLC has also commissioned Montgomery-based artist Michelle Browder to create a decorative sculpture fence around an existing cell tower that will remain on the property.
Adams will be central to putting all the pieces together, said Seth Levi, the SPLC’s chief strategy officer.
“He is the singular person charged with making sure all our ideas are actualized into a physical building or space,” Levi said. “We’re going to rely on his expertise and experience to make all these dreams, all of these ideas, actually happen.”
Adams said he is convinced the SPLC campus will help bring vibrancy and hope to the Westside, and he said he prizes his partnership with the SPLC as a way to truly build something that lasts.
“I want to leave this earth with people saying that Leonard Adams tried to make Black communities better,” Adams said. “So, I want to change community. I want to be an advocate for community. And I just really want to be counted.”
Image at top: Leonard Adams, president and CEO of Quest Community Development Corp., will manage the development of the SPLC’s new Atlanta office, to be located in the city's Westside area. (Credit: David Naugle)
