ATLANTA--(ATLANTA BUSINESS CHRONICLE) – Atlanta's housing construction boom, which came with the city's population surge during the Covid-19 pandemic years, has cooled.

The time it takes to inch a housing project through Atlanta's slow, multilayered zoning and permitting maze presents a significant cost challenge, according to experts in the development industry. Each neighborhood meeting, zoning variance request, and plan revision that stretches the calendar adds expense.

"As a developer, your holding costs, your financing costs, [and] all the fees really endanger projects that would otherwise be able to be done," said Patrick Chopson, co-founder and principal architect at Cove, an Atlanta-based architecture firm.

Chopson told Atlanta Business Chronicle the city's regulatory cost burden runs as high as 32% of project construction costs.

"New York City isn't as expensive as Atlanta on a per-square-foot percentage of the total construction cost," he said, noting the Big Apple is at about 25%.

In Atlanta, developers face more than just the regulatory gauntlet. Chopson's firm also encountered a problem outside the standard process — faulty property maps stemming from the 2018 ransomware attack that still have not been fully fixed.

Seven years ago, the SamSam ransomware attack crippled Atlanta’s computer systems, disrupting many municipal services for months and ultimately costing the city millions of dollars in recovery expenses.

cove has been working on a 100-unit affordable apartment project along Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard in the West End neighborhood, but a recent streetscape project complicated the land assembly. The city had to update its records before the development could proceed.