A SPARK ON SWEET AUBURN
Inside the Innovation Lab Helping Black Businesses Take Root on Auburn Avenue
By Noah Sanders, The BeltLine News — October 22, 2026
Auburn Avenue has always been a street that builds. Fortune magazine called it "the richest Negro street in the world" in 1956, when its blocks held a dense concentration of Black-owned businesses and financial institutions. It is the birthplace of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., home to Ebenezer Baptist Church, and the street where WERD — the first Black-owned radio station in America — and the Atlanta Daily World, the first Black-owned daily newspaper, both set up shop.
Then, in the early 1960s, the Downtown Connector was driven straight through the neighborhood's heart. The highway construction and the "urban renewal" that came with it displaced thousands of residents, business owners, and institutions in less than a decade. Sweet Auburn has been fighting its way back ever since — against rising rents, gentrification pressure, and the long shadow of that cut.
The SPARK Innovation Lab is one of the sharpest tools in that fight.
What SPARK Is
SPARK is a free, shared retail incubator run by Sweet Auburn Works, one of Atlanta's six Main Street programs, based in the historic Odd Fellows Building at 228 Auburn Avenue. It exists for small business owners already in the Sweet Auburn district — and for entrepreneurs who want to establish a business there — offering targeted technical assistance, funding, and community support. Vendors and brick-and-mortar businesses alike are encouraged to apply.
The Lab was born out of Sweet Auburn Works' vision, funded by a commitment from Bank of America, and designed with help from SCAD — its students, through the university's SCAD SERVE community design studio, pair directly with business owners on branding and design work.
Sweet Auburn Works Executive Director LeJuano Varnell, a former private equity executive who took the job in 2016, built the concept by listening first. "I spent the first 18 to 36 months just understanding what I was doing," he told Main Street America in a recent spotlight. "Why is there no infrastructure investment? Why is the operating environment so poor for these small businesses? I just spent a lot of time figuring out what the actual challenges were."
How It Works
SPARK started in December 2021 with vendor kiosks built inside Sweet Auburn Works' own office on Auburn Avenue — 25 to 30 square feet of retail space per vendor, at no cost.
Today it works with nine small business owners — all Black, African American, or Hispanic, and most of them women — selling handmade products from skincare to coffee to clothing. A shared point-of-sale system covers all the vendors, a part-time coordinator checks in with each business monthly, and the SCAD partnership matches owners with student designers for branding help.
The model keeps evolving. In 2025, support from The Hartford Small Business Accelerator Grant Program let SPARK run targeted marketing campaigns, retool vendors toward grab-and-go items, and aim harder at the district's tourism traffic. The result, Varnell says: sales grew roughly 4.4 times over a six-month period — and not one formal SPARK participant has been lost since the program launched.
The People In the Lab
Syreeta Davis, owner of the natural beauty brand Zaniyah Naturals, came to SPARK after hosting a pop-up nearby and worked with SCAD designers on a complete rebrand. "It's been amazing," she told Main Street America. "When I started, I just had raw material. I knew it was a great product, but I didn't know how to convey its value." Her goal now: a permanent retail space in the neighborhood.
Charmica Sneed founded Charmica Bernette Skincare in 2022 to help manage her son's eczema. She's used the Lab as a true test kitchen for her business — even organizing a Spring Bling Expo there for fellow small businesses — while being honest that daytime foot traffic on the Avenue is "hit or miss," and building her sales through expos and wholesale alongside it. That's the SPARK idea working as designed: a low-cost place to learn what your business actually is.
And Sweet Auburn Works pairs the Lab with direct work in the district — like the rebrand and storefront buildout SCAD students produced for Sweet Auburn Bread Company and Chef Sonya Jones, an Auburn Avenue institution.
The Hard Part
None of this is easy, and SPARK doesn't pretend otherwise. Rents keep climbing. This summer, the popular bar Joystick announced it was leaving Sweet Auburn after more than 14 years. Varnell is blunt about the process: "You have to listen, you have to pivot, you have to fail. You have to be comfortable failing."
Sweet Auburn Works' next idea, still in its early stages, is a neighborhood trust that could acquire commercial property and hold some storefronts at below-market rates — so the businesses SPARK helps launch can afford to stay on the street that raised them.
That's the whole mission in one sentence, the same one printed over Sweet Auburn Works' door: Preserve. Promote. Revitalize. On a street the highway tried to erase, SPARK is making sure the next generation of Black business owners gets to open its doors on Auburn Avenue — and keep them open.
QUICK FACTS — SPARK INNOVATION LAB
• Run by: Sweet Auburn Works (Executive Director: LeJuano Varnell)
• Where: Historic Odd Fellows Building, 228 Auburn Avenue, Atlanta
• What: Free shared retail incubator — technical assistance, funding help, community support
• Who can apply: Small business owners in the Sweet Auburn district, and entrepreneurs who want to open there — vendors and brick-and-mortar
• Partners: Bank of America (funding), SCAD / SCAD SERVE (design & branding)
• Track record: 9 current business owners; sales up ~4.4X in six months after the 2025 Hartford grant push; no formal participant lost since launch