Brookhaven city officials have asked the owner of Northeast Plaza to make the Buford Highway shopping center’s land part of a bid to bring the new Amazon headquarters to the city. But the owner says it has different redevelopment plans.
Kristen Moore, senior vice president of marketing for Brixmor, the company that owns Northeast Plaza at 3307 Buford Highway, confirmed that city officials recently approached the company to consider the site be part of a pitch for Amazon’s second headquarters.
“We are supportive of the city of Brookhaven’s plans to attract a great company like Amazon to the area. However, we have long-term leases with our tenants and plan to redevelop the center at a future date,” she said.
“We are not interested,” she said of the property being part of an Amazon headquarters pitch.
Brookhaven officials declined comment.
Moore said Brixmor understands the strength and value of the “well-located” property and the company has long-term plans for redevelopment of the shopping center, but no plans have been vetted and could be revealed at this time. The property is located on roughly 41.5 acres with slightly more than 442,000 square feet of office space.
Recently, Northeast Plaza was the location for the Living Walls/We Love BuHi block party and night market as part of their public art campaign to bring awareness to the immigrant communities living and working on Buford Highway.
Northeast Plaza is located within a multicultural community and Brixmor notes on its website the shopping center has a 24 percent Hispanic population living within three miles. One of shopping center’s anchors stores is a Spanish supermarket.
The Brookhaven Police Department has also complained to city officials about high crime rates at Northeast Plaza where several nightclubs are located.
Amazon posted Sept. 7 a press release to its website stating it was seeking to open “Amazon HQ2,” leading states across the country, including Georgia, to vie for the bids by the Oct. 19 deadline. Amazon states it would invest over $5 billion in construction employ up to 50,000 people.
Phase one of Amazon’s request for proposal calls for enough room for buildings of more than 500,000 square feet by 2019 and up to 8 million square feet beyond 2027, according to Amazon.