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Get the story behind the places, faces, and current events shaping the downtownATL district.
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Construction, openings, investment, and physical transformation of Atlanta's city center.
On December 19, 2023, David Cummings and Jon Birdsong announced Atlanta Ventures would take over South Downtown's stalled 53-parcel redevelopment — the deal that became downtownATL.com's origin story.
An investment group led by David Cummings and Jon Birdsong is acquiring Newport's South Downtown portfolio — 10 blocks of historic buildings and parking lots — to prevent foreclosure and build an entrepreneurial hub targeting 2026 World Cup milestones.
MARTA's $206 million Five Points redevelopment cleared a key federal review in December 2023 — and early estimates already showed the station would need to close for over a year, the first hints of a closure that later made headlines.
A $2.9 million trail project will create a three-quarter-mile pedestrian and bicycle connection between the Upper Westside and the BeltLine's Westside Connector — feeding directly into the network that reaches downtown Atlanta.
A 10-acre site in Castleberry Hill and downtown Atlanta pitched as a multi-high-rise life sciences campus was foreclosed upon by its lender after developer Urbantec Development Partners failed to break ground. The previous owner, McCall Railroad LLC, reacquired the property at auction for $20 million.
Atlanta's selection as a 2026 World Cup host city has accelerated major downtown development projects, pushing Centennial Yards, South Downtown, and Underground Atlanta to compress timelines. Developers say the tournament deadline is turning aspirational 2027-2028 targets into firm 2025-2026 deliverables.
Newport, the German real estate firm redeveloping Historic Hotel Row, announced plans for two new residential high-rises totaling 650 apartments on South Broad Street in South Downtown. The 18- and 21-story towers will also include about 70,000 square feet of retail space.
Six office towers and the shopping mall at Peachtree Center were taken back by their lender Tuesday in one of the largest foreclosures in Atlanta since the Great Recession. The future of the landmark downtown complex remains in flux as new ownership reverts to investors.
The redevelopment of the Gulch in downtown Atlanta is officially underway, with the $5 billion Centennial Yards project kicking off its first phase covering six acres of mixed-use development. The ribbon-cutting marks the start of a sweeping effort to transform 50 acres of parking lots and rail lines into a mini-city near CNN Center, State Farm Arena, and Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Atlanta's Department of City Planning is proposing a complete redesign of a 1.2-mile stretch of Peachtree Street as a "shared space" for walkers, bicyclists and cars. The initiative draws inspiration from pedestrian-friendly corridors in London and Seattle, aiming to bring more street life to a corridor that city officials say is not currently a lively urban place.
Central Atlanta Progress proposed capping three-quarters of a mile of Interstate 75/85 with parks, walkways, and green space — an idea modeled on Dallas's Klyde Warren Park that could stitch downtown Atlanta's east and west sides back together.
The Atlanta Hawks announced a 20-year naming rights deal with State Farm, renaming Philips Arena as State Farm Arena. The change accompanied a $192.5 million renovation that transformed the venue into one of the most modern arenas in the NBA.
In August 2016, Central Atlanta Progress publicly floated a $300 million idea: build a platform over three-quarters of a mile of I-75/85 and turn the highway trench that divides downtown from Midtown into usable urban space.
By 2016, Atlanta was simultaneously building a $1.5 billion football stadium downtown and a $672 million baseball stadium in Cobb County. The scale of the investment — and the public money involved — forced a citywide reckoning with what stadiums actually do for the communities around them.
After its first year of free rides along Auburn Avenue, the Atlanta Streetcar had carried nearly one million riders, generated $671 million in nearby investment, and earned a grade of B or C from the people who rode it most.
