Church attendance of Americans has been declining for decades with recent findings from the Pew Research Center revealing that only a quarter of U.S. adults say they attend church weekly. I’ve been curious for some time now as to what will happen to church buildings as they close, particularly small, neighborhood churches.

In Atlanta’s College Park neighborhood, church buildings are being repurposed into a mix of affordable housing, live-work units, and an arts hub with a purposeful design centered around promoting creativity among residents. The development is being put forward by the church itself instead of handing it off to developers as they move to new quarters.

“The thesis of the project actually originated from the First United Methodist Church of College Park,” one official notes via email, “and they’ve been instrumental in getting the project moving forward … They’ve been in the community for 125 years, and though their membership is down, they chose to re-think their property for a mission-based project instead of selling it off to the highest bidder.”