Chamblee's Old City Hall Sat Empty for Four Years. Now It's Full of Working Artists.

On the morning of June 13, when Spruill Studios held its ribbon-cutting, an artist named Reinilda Blair stood in what used to be Chamblee's council chambers, talking through her process with a visitor from Sandy Springs who'd wandered in during the ceremony. Blair wasn't there to file a permit or contest a zoning notice. She was there because the building had become her studio.

That's the short version of what happened to 5468 Peachtree Road. The longer version is worth fifteen minutes of your Saturday, and it tells you something about how this city is choosing to grow that no restaurant opening ever could.

A building the city didn't know what to do with

Chamblee's old City Hall went up in 2002 and sat mostly dark starting in 2022, when staff moved to a newer building. For roughly four years it was the kind of civic leftover every city has: too expensive to demolish, too specific in layout to lease to just anyone, too visible on Peachtree Road to ignore. Rather than sell it or let it keep collecting dust, the city partnered with the Spruill Center for the Arts, the Dunwoody nonprofit that's been running galleries and classes in the Perimeter area since 1993, to turn the 6,796-square-foot building into working studio space.

Renovations started in March 2026. Applications from artists opened March 9. By June 13, the building had a new name: Spruill Studios.

What actually moved in

Fifteen studios, ranging from about 104 to 198 square feet, now fill the old offices and meeting rooms. Spruill rents them at what the organization itself calls below-market cost, from $158 to $255 a month depending on size. Thirty-nine artists applied for the first cohort. Sixteen were selected, including two Chamblee residents, a mix of painters, sculptors, and other visual artists who now have keys to a building that used to require an appointment to enter.

Spruill CEO Alan Mothner put it plainly when the project was announced:

"It's a win for Chamblee, it's a win for Spruill, and it's a win for the artists."

Mayor Brian Mock framed the handoff as a shift in what the building is for, calling it a move from a place of civic leadership to one where creativity and community can grow together. The gallery attached to the studios is open to the public five days a week, and Spruill plans quarterly meet-the-artists open houses on top of that.

Chamblee wasn't waiting on one building

What makes this more than a nice adaptive reuse story is that Spruill Studios landed in a city that already had three other creative anchors within a short drive of each other.

None of these opened because a developer decided art would be a good amenity to advertise. Little Thistle Studio started running classes this spring on its own. The Distillery of Modern Art has been pairing cocktails with a working gallery for a couple of years now. Blooms Emporium has been teaching Asian art classes in Chamblee's Chinatown for longer than the current wave of downtown development has existed. Spruill Studios is the newest and largest piece, but it's joining something that was already there, not starting it.

The rule that tells you what kind of city this is

If you're planning to check out the studios, time it around September 12. That's when Chamblee holds its fifth annual Chalk Walk and Artist Market, running 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. outside the current City Hall at 3518 Broad Street. More than 50 handmade vendors set up alongside professional chalk artists who spend the day turning sidewalk into temporary murals.

The detail worth knowing before you go: this year's vendor rules explicitly ban AI-generated art from any part of the production process. Every piece, whether it's chalk on concrete or a booth full of pottery, has to be made by hand. For a city actively building an identity around working artists rather than decorative amenities, that's not a small technicality. It's the same instinct that put sixteen working artists in a former City Hall instead of leasing the building to whichever tenant paid the most.

One Saturday, two blocks

Because Spruill Studios sits on Peachtree Road and the Chalk Walk happens a few blocks over on Broad Street, near Chamblee's downtown core and an easy walk from the Chamblee MARTA station, you can turn this into a single afternoon without moving your car:

• Start at Spruill Studios for the open gallery hours and a look at who's working in which room
• Walk over to the Chalk Walk on Broad Street for the vendor market and live chalk art
• Chamblee's downtown open container district means a drink from Chamblee Tap & Market or a nearby bar can travel with you between stops
• End at the Distillery of Modern Art on Irvindale Way, where the gallery walls change with the season and the peach vodka is distilled on site

None of these stops require a reservation or a plan more detailed than showing up.

Why this is different from another restaurant announcement

Downtown Chamblee has spent the last few years adding restaurants at a steady pace, and that coverage tends to dominate the local news cycle. What's easy to miss underneath it is a separate, quieter decision the city made: when it had a vacant building on its hands, it chose to keep it affordable and creative instead of putting it back on the commercial market. A few blocks away, the new Lumen Chamblee development added 318 luxury residential units downtown. Sixteen working artists, meanwhile, are paying below-market rent in the old City Hall. That's not an accident, and it's not something every growing suburb chooses to do.

If you live in Chamblee, that choice is now part of your Saturday options. If you're weighing whether this city's growth has more to it than new restaurant signage, this is the piece of evidence worth knowing about. We've written before about how Chamblee's broader development is reshaping its housing market, and the arts cluster forming around the old City Hall is one more thread in that same story, just told from a gallery wall instead of a listing sheet.

For now, the building at 5468 Peachtree Road that used to require a council agenda to get anything done now just requires you to walk in during gallery hours.

If you're curious what else is changing in Chamblee, or you're thinking about what a home in this neighborhood could mean for your own next chapter, Heather Cummings knows this market from the ground up. Let's Connect.