Decatur declares interest in purchasing Children’s Home land

During her annual State of the City address Tuesday night Decatur Mayor Patti Garrett announced that the city is “in conversation with” the United Methodist Children’s Home about buying its entire 77 acres. During a brief interview with the AJC prior to the speech, Garrett didn’t want to comment on whether the city’s made an offer or submitted a letter of intent.

Both the city and City Schools Decatur have had a longtime interest in the property, which was on an annexation map Decatur submitted to the legislature in 2015. But it wasn't until recently that the Home's board of trustees voted to sell the entire tract except for a yet undetermined small portion to honor the its history and legacy.

“We have been aware of the city’s interest in our property for a while now,” John Cerniglia, vice president of development said in a statement to the AJC. “Following the Board’s decision to sell, [Garrett] reached out to [the] Rev. Hal Jones, our CEO. She reaffirmed … that the city remains interested in the property.

Garrett added that Decatur plans to use the property to bolster its lack of green space.

“We’d like see fields, a pool, a gymnasium and a park,” she said. “Beyond that we haven’t discussed anything else.”

The city has in recent years also sought land for senior affordable housing and cottage court housing. But Garrett said a planning process would determine the type housing for the land. She also didn’t want to speculate on the school system’s involvement with this property if the city were to purchase it. She said that, too, would come out of a planning process.

The UMCH doesn’t have broker yet and hasn’t developed a timeline for selling the property, said Cerniglia. Since the trustees’ vote to sell he’s been contacted by a number of builders, developers, brokers and realtors, but the UMCH has no official relationship with anyone of them.

Last year the Home did hire a land planner who estimated that the property could hold some combination of 600 single-family homes, condos and/or apartments. Cerniglia emphasized, however, that to date no developer has submitted an actual plan.

The same land planner also emphasized the property’s worth at $35 million.

Except for a sliver, probably less than an acre on the northwest corner, the entire property is in unincorporated DeKalb County, though it is bordered by city limits on two sides. Land within Decatur borders goes for roughly $1 million per acre.

Currently the UMCH is zoned for office and industrial use. There are 31 buildings on the property of which Cerniglia estimates is 25 to 30 percent developed. The oldest buildings are a chapel built in 1906 and residence home in 1910.

The UMCH, founded in Norcross in 1871, moved on the Decatur campus in 1873 and at one time covered 226 acres, including the land east of Katie Kerr Drive. But the Home has been gradually selling property for decades. Bev Cochran, CEO from 1969-2012 sold 100 acres alone during his tenure.

In recent decades the state has emphasized a shifting of children from congregate care, once called orphanages, into foster homes Cerniglia estimates that of the 13,000 children now in the state’s care, 85 percent are in foster homes, 15 percent in congregate care.

“We simply don’t have the use for this much land, which is the equivalent of 59 football fields,” he said.

At its peak in the 1950s through 1970s the Home had 150 children. Today there are 80 people living on the property, and another 55 employees.