One of downtown Atlanta's most conspicuous ruins is back on the clock. Invest Atlanta has given developers until Aug. 2 to submit proposals for reviving the Atlanta Constitution Building, the boarded-up Art Moderne landmark that sits directly across from MARTA's Five Points station, and the agency has attached an unusually specific deadline to the work: it wants the structure stabilized and looking presentable before the first 2026 FIFA World Cup match kicks off in June of that year.
The request for proposals calls for the building to be “stabilized, with its overall appearance improved, facade fixed, and first and second floors activated” ahead of the tournament. In practice that means facade restoration, digital signage, some form of activation for the adjacent parking lot, and the return of two historic elements that have been missing from the building for years: a 72-foot bas-relief sculpture and the original Constitution medallion.
The five-story, 95,000-square-foot building went up in 1947 for the Atlanta Constitution newspaper and has been largely empty since the early 1970s, when Georgia Power moved out. Decades of vacancy have taken the obvious toll. Windows are boarded, and vegetation has taken root on the roof of a building that anchors one of the busiest pedestrian corners in the city.
Longer-term plans described in the RFP extend past the World Cup: finishing the upper floors, adding rooftop amenities, and carving out retail space. Any housing built on the surrounding parcels would carry an affordability requirement, with developers asked to set aside either 30 percent of units at 80 percent of area median income or 20 percent at 60 percent AMI.
Invest Atlanta expects to name a redevelopment partner by late August under a three-year contract subject to annual performance reviews. That structure reads as a direct response to the last attempt: a 2017 agreement with Pope & Land was signed and then quietly went nowhere, leaving the building to deteriorate through another development cycle.
For downtown, the stakes are less about square footage than about sightlines. Anyone arriving at Five Points, the busiest station in the MARTA system and the transfer point that will move a large share of World Cup visitors, looks directly at this building. Fixing the facade in time would change the first impression of downtown for several million people. Missing the deadline would leave the city's most-photographed vacant building exactly as it is for the biggest sporting event in its history.
Original reporting by Josh Green for Urbanize Atlanta, published July 2024.
