A 9.86 acre site at the intersection of Ted Turner Drive and Whitehall Street dubbed Artisan Yards is being touted as the next big development in the “ring of fire” as projects in South Downtown continue to heat up.
Since the late 1970s, the Artisan Yards property has housed the corporate headquarters and regional distribution facilities for Gourmet Foods International (GFI), which the company has outgrown and is in the process of relocating. The property is within 200 yards of the Garnett MARTA Station and overlooks I-20 at the Downtown Connector.
SSG Realty Partners is marketing the site, which already has a high density, SPI-I sub area one zoning classification that allows for over 10 million square feet of office, hotel, multi-family, retail and entertainment development, including multiple buildings that could potentially exceed 50 to 60 stories in height.
Buildings on the site offer adaptive re-use potential, including a four-story, 21,500-square-foot brick apartment building believed to date back to the 1930’s. There is also a three-story, 100,085-square-foot office/warehouse, a two-story 54,000-square-foot office/warehouse building and a large parking lot used for GFI’s fleet of refrigerated trucks.
Developers have dubbed the red-hot South Downtown market, which already includes Mercedes-Benz Stadium, State Farm Arena and the historic Castleberry Hill neighborhood, as the “ring of fire.”
By far the biggest component in the “ring of fire” is The Gulch, the proposed redevelopment of the 40-acre warren of parking lots and railroad tracks by CIM Group. The project would have more than 9 million square feet of office space, 1,500 hotel rooms and 1,000 apartment units. CIM Group is also leading the nearby redevelopment/conversion of the former Norfolk Southern offices into 246 residential units above 50,000 square feet of street-level retail called the Freight House.
A topping out ceremony was recently held for Reverb by Hard Rock Hotel in Castleberry Hill, a $90 million, 200-room boutique hotel adjacent to Mercedes-Benz Stadium. The hotel will be part of the larger Castleberry Park development, which will include new retail and multifamily apartment units.
In late February, Hilton Hotels announced that it will be developing Downtown’s first new convention hotel in nearly 20 years on a site connected to the Georgia World Congress Center and overlooking Mercedes-Benz Stadium. The 1,000 room Hilton Signia Hotel is scheduled to break ground later this year.
Also in South Downtown, Newport US RE is investing $500 million to renovate a number of historic buildings between Underground Atlanta and the Artisan Yards site.
