Key points:
• Fulton County commissioners offered to buy the Atlanta City Detention Center from the city for $56.5 million in an Aug. 10 letter to Atlanta officials.
• In July, Mayor Andre Dickens said the sale of the jail (for $80 million) is contingent on support for an extension of tax allocation districts (TADs).
• The sale of the Atlanta jail appears to be deadlocked as county and city officials do not agree on its value and the merits of extending tax allocation districts.
Five members of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners offered to buy the Atlanta City Detention Center in an Aug. 10 letter to Mayor Andre Dickens and the Atlanta City Council.
County officials offered to pay $56.5 million for the jail, which they say accounts for $75 million in necessary renovations at the facility.
The detention center’s lease between Atlanta and Fulton County expires at the end of the year, and the county’s offer expires at the end of August, according to the letter.
Ongoing jail negotiations
Fulton County officials’ offer is a response to Dickens’ letter in late July, in which he made the sale of ACDC contingent on the county’s participation in Atlanta’s Opportunity for All: Neighborhood Reinvestment Initiative (NRI).
In that letter, Dickens rescinded an offer to sell the jail for $80 million, contingent on the county’s participation in an extension of tax allocation districts.
The board’s letter says they have been trying to purchase the detention center for the last 17 years “to improve public safety and to address the need for adequate detention space,” but the city has resisted.
“We agree that ACDC should be fully available for utilization by the County, but Atlanta has consistently resisted finalizing a deal to make that happen,” the letter reads.
Commissioners say transferring the detention center to Fulton County will save the city $27 million per year, “which will sit largely unused if the County vacates the facility at the end of this year.”
County’s response to Atlanta
In the past few weeks, county and city officials have claimed the ACDC has vastly different appraisals and renovation costs. The county’s letter cites CBRE’s estimated price of $56.5 million, but the city’s letter says it was appraised at $144 million in 2025 by a third party.
The city’s jail is downtown at the corner of Peachtree Street and Memorial Drive. It has 17 stories and a capacity of about 1,300 beds.
The county is currently allowed to house about 700 inmates there, with around 1,900 at its main Rice Street jail. The county’s total jail population sits around 3,000.
Fulton County Chair Robb Pitts signed the letter, along with commissioners Khadijah Abdur-Rahman, Dana Barrett, Bob Ellis, and Bridget Thorne. Commissioner Marvin Arrington Jr. did not.
“Over the past 25 years, the county has contributed more than $550 million to support Atlanta’s redevelopment initiatives, including $53 million of property tax revenue to Atlanta TADs in the last year alone that would otherwise have been available to fund essential county services,” the letter said. “Now is the time for Atlanta to be a good partner in return by transferring ACDC to the county to serve our joint public safety needs and by removing the extraneous conditions that were included in your most recent offer, which would inflate the real cost of purchasing ACDC to $1.4 billion.”
Ongoing TAD debate
Dickens has criticized the Fulton County Board of Commissioners for denying support for an extension of six tax allocation districts, while investing in an overhaul of its inmate detention facilities. He calls the county’s management of its jail a “self-inflicted crisis.”
“The choice is yours,” Dickens wrote. “Fulton County still can join us, choose a path other than constructing a new $1.3 billion jail, and lean into comprehensive solutions for public safety. Real, impactful change begins long before someone enters the criminal justice system.”
Ellis has argued that the proposed 30-year TAD extensions violate state law and divert essential property tax revenue for a Grady Health hospital in South Fulton, among other priorities. Like Dickens, Ellis said the opposition’s plan would increase taxpayers’ burden.
“It results in diversion of $1 billion of Fulton County tax money that we otherwise need to fund projects that we are doing right now that we have committed to,” Ellis said. “The offers that have been made around the Atlanta Civic Detention Center are not valid offers because they have had material, financial contingencies that harm Fulton County taxpayers.”
This story will be updated with new information and/or a response from City of Atlanta officials when available.
