A year and change after breaking ground, the first new building at the Gulch's multibillion-dollar overhaul finally crested above nearby streets in January 2024 — a milestone for a stretch of downtown that had sat undeveloped for generations.
Centennial Yards Company marked the moment on social media as its first ground-up tower — a 304-unit apartment building — reached above viaduct level. "History is being made," project officials wrote. "For over a century, there has been a hole in the heart of the city. A hole that Centennial Yards is filling." A second building under construction nearby, the 292-key Anthem hotel, had not yet gone vertical at the time but was active with weekend crews. Both towers, rising where Centennial Olympic Park Drive meets Martin Luther King Jr. Drive across from Mercedes-Benz Stadium, are designed to stand 18 stories and were slated to deliver in 2025. Twenty percent of Centennial Yards' apartments across the full megaproject are reserved as affordable housing.
Los Angeles-based CIM Group christened the $5 billion Gulch transformation as Centennial Yards roughly six years before this milestone, but the first construction crane didn't go up until spring 2023 — meaning the January 2024 topping-out represented the site's first real visible progress after years of planning. A dignitary-studded groundbreaking for the apartment tower and hotel was held in November 2022.
The full build-out is expected to eventually span a dozen city blocks across 50 acres, with roughly 750,000 square feet of retail, backed by a nearly $2 billion tax-incentive package — a record for Atlanta. Developers have said the complete project is likely to take at least a decade.
Original reporting by Josh Green for Urbanize Atlanta, published January 2024.
