Brian McGowan said he believes 2024 will be a “really big year” for Centennial Yards, the $5 billion development that promises to transform the gaping hole in the heart of Downtown Atlanta into a vibrant entertainment district and regional attraction.
“We’re full steam ahead, despite the current economic conditions, which we actually believe are improving,” said McGowan, president of Centennial Yards Company, an affiliate of Los Angeles-based CIM Group.
“The big takeaway is that things are going very well. We’re on track. As far as the timeline, this is going to be a really big year for us.”
For decades, city leaders tried to redevelop The Gulch, considered an eyesore. CIM Group proposed to redevelop the 50 acres and negotiated a deal in 2018 with the city that included $1.9 billion in public subsidies.
As part of the deal, CIM Group finalized in 2021 a $42 million community investment agreement with the city to go toward affordable housing, economic development and workforce training.
When the project is complete over the next decade, it will include 4 million square feet of retail, hotels, and office space and another 4 million square feet of apartments.
For four years, massive amounts of infrastructure work to create street grids to develop about 12 to 15 new city blocks have been taking place.
“We’re actually building a city within a city,” McGowan said. “Everything from water, power, sewer, IT infrastructure for Wi-Fi and internet access – all of those things.
“And it is a very complicated site because there are sewer lines running through it, there are gas lines running through it, there’s a MARTA line running through it, one of the busiest rail lines in America runs through it,” he said.
“I think it’s important to point out that this couldn’t have happened without the public-private partnership that was brought together, meaning the incentives that were layered upon the site.”
Now, two massive cranes, one standing 276 feet tall and the other standing 325 feet high, stretch up high into the sky from The Gulch, far above the elevated streets surrounding it. They are constructing the first two ground-up 18-story buildings at Centennial Yards.
In January, construction of the 300-unit apartment building reached street level along Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, marking a milestone for the project. The foundation of the 290-room hotel is finished, and its construction is expected to rise to street level in about three months. There is also roughly 30,000 square feet of retail space at the base of the buildings for coffee shops, restaurants, and other stores.
Both towers are expected to be completed by 2025, a year before the FIFA World Cup comes to Atlanta.
McGowan said there is more than 3 million square feet of retail interest in Centennial Yards. Negotiations continue and announcements on tenants are expected to be announced later this year.
A 230-unit apartment building with 5,000 square feet of retail as part of the Spring Street phase of the project is expected to break ground in six months, he added. There is interest for another boutique hotel on a sliver of land across the street from the former Elliott Street Pub, he said, and a groundbreaking for that project could happen next year.
But financing construction of office buildings has slowed as the work-from-home trend continues, impacting some plans for Centennial Yards.
The Lofts at Centennial Yard South with 162 apartments at 125 Ted Turner Drive SW has been open for a couple of years and remains fully leased, McGowan said. The second part of the building, called the 99 building, was planned for office space. But now negotiations are underway to turn the space into a boutique hotel, McGowan said.
Original plans for Centennial Yards also included tearing down the old Atlanta Journal-Constitution printing press building between Fairlie Street and Centennial Olympic Park Drive to build a 520-square-foot office building named One City Plaza. But this plan is now on hold for at least two years, McGowan said.
“We think that this building is a great place to film for movies, so we’re marketing that we can rent the building out for events, or movie or TV production in the meantime before we tear the AJC building down,” he said.
McGowan said Centennial Yards would include up to 4,000 apartments as well as all the retail and hotels and plazas for sporting events and other live events.
“We’re creating Atlanta’s newest, coolest, most visible neighborhood, and it will have a very unique feel to it,” he said.
“It’s going to be big and flashy and fancy and visible. This is going to be a place where you can experience Atlanta culture,” he said.
“We want to make sure that the mix of retail and art and music and things that you are sensing when you’re in the district really leave you with a sense of who we are as a people.”
This story has been updated to correct that the city did not select CIM Group to redevelop the Gulch in 2018 but actually the city approved a development deal with CIM Group.