More than five years after the family that owns The Varsity announced it would sell the property for redevelopment, and almost three years after the landmark restaurant closed, plans have been filed with Athens-Clarke County. And yes, the magnolias will be saved.
The plans call for two buildings—one at the corner of West Broad and Chase streets featuring a grocery store on the second floor with parking on the main level underneath, and a second on the Milledge Avenue side with retail and restaurant space on the ground floor and residential units above, wrapped around a second parking structure. Bruce Lonnee, assistant director of the ACC Planning Department, was quick to note that the plans include a protective fence around the 100-plus-year-old magnolia trees along Milledge Avenue.
The plans are unique for Athens, Lonnee told Flagpole, comparing them to the Atlantic Station Target in Midtown Atlanta. “It’s very urban. There’s no other way to describe it,” he said. “But it’s a very urban location. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
Prior to The Varsity selling the property, ACC Commissioner Melissa Link pushed through an overlay district to preemptively address neighborhood concerns about future development. The legislation mandates setbacks and limits building heights, stepping down from the commercial corridor along Broad to the residential neighborhood behind it, and limiting access via narrow Reese Street. The overlay district also limits bathrooms per apartment unit to two, an attempt to ensure housing isn’t aimed solely at college students. Newer student-oriented apartments often have four bedrooms with a bathroom for each bedroom.
The overlay district, combined with the underlying commercial-general zoning and the involvement of other local agencies, plus the Georgia Department of Transportation, complicates review of the project, Lonnee said. Although planners want more information, such as architectural elevations, right now the project appears to meet the zoning code, and the developer is not seeking any variances, he said. Unless something changes, that means it won’t have to go through the planning commission and county commission for approval.
The overlay district also preserved four historic houses along Reese Street, which were turned over to the Athens Land Trust, renovated and are now used as affordable housing. Those houses include a historic landmark in the Mack-Burney House, home to Athens’ second Black dentist, Isadore Burney, and his wife Annie, an educator and namesake of Burney-Harris-Lyons Middle School.
The Varsity itself was also a landmark of Athens history as the site of sit-ins during the civil rights era. Inspired by the famous sit-ins at the Greensboro, N.C., Woolworth’s, Black young people based out of nearby Ebenezer Baptist Church West occupied The Varsity and marched against the Klan because they weren’t allowed to eat inside in the early 1960s. Atlanta-based Fuqua Development bought the property in 2021, but the developer listed on documents submitted to ACC is NRF Athens Property Owner LLC. Records show that company shares a Charlotte address with a construction and property management company called Northwood Ravin, which now lists 1000 W. Broad St. in its portfolio.
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This story comes to GPB through a reporting partnership with Flagpole.
