Brian McGowan expects 2024 to be a "really big year" for Centennial Yards, the $5 billion effort to fill the 50 acres of the Gulch in the middle of Downtown. McGowan, president of Centennial Yards Company, an affiliate of Los Angeles-based CIM Group, put it plainly: "We're full steam ahead, despite the current economic conditions, which we actually believe are improving." His update covered the first towers coming out of the ground, the next residential phase, and a shift away from office space on parts of the site.
Two towers climbing out of the Gulch
Two cranes now work the site, one rising 276 feet and the other 325 feet, high over the raised streets that ring the Gulch. They are building the project's first pair of ground-up 18-story towers. In January, the apartment building along Martin Luther King Jr. Drive reached street level. Rough Draft Atlanta's reporting puts it at about 300 units (the story's body says 300, while a photo caption says 304). Its companion, a 290-room hotel, has a finished foundation, and crews expect it to climb to street level in roughly three months.
The base of the two towers holds roughly 30,000 square feet of retail space meant for restaurants, coffee shops and other stores, and both are expected to be complete in 2025, the year before the FIFA World Cup arrives in Atlanta. downtownATL previously ran photos of the first tower rising above ground.
A public-private deal underneath it all
City leaders spent decades trying to do something with the Gulch. In 2018, the city approved a development deal with CIM Group that included $1.9 billion in public subsidies, and in 2021 CIM Group finalized a $42 million community investment agreement with the city, with the money directed to affordable housing, economic development and workforce training. McGowan credited that arrangement directly, saying the project "couldn't have happened without the public-private partnership."
Much of the work so far has happened below the surface. Infrastructure work to lay out street grids for about 12 to 15 new city blocks has been underway for four years, covering water, power, sewer and internet systems. The site is threaded with sewer and gas lines, a MARTA line and one of the busiest rail lines in the country. "We're actually building a city within a city," McGowan said.
What comes next
A 230-unit apartment building with 5,000 square feet of retail, part of the Spring Street phase, is expected to start construction in about six months. McGowan also pointed to interest in another boutique hotel on a narrow parcel across from the former Elliott Street Pub, with a possible groundbreaking next year. He said retail interest across the district tops 3 million square feet, and tenant announcements are expected later this year.
Office space is where the plan is bending. Financing for office construction has slowed as remote work continues, and that has affected some of Centennial Yards' plans. The Lofts at Centennial Yard South, 162 apartments at 125 Ted Turner Drive SW, has been open for a couple of years and remains fully leased. Its second section, known as the 99 building, was designed for offices, and negotiations are now underway to convert it to a boutique hotel instead.
One City Plaza, an office building planned to replace the former Atlanta Journal-Constitution printing press building between Fairlie Street and Centennial Olympic Park Drive, is on hold for at least two years, McGowan said. Until demolition, the company is marketing the old plant as a rental for events and for movie or TV production.
Over the next decade, the full buildout calls for 4 million square feet of retail, hotel and office space plus another 4 million square feet of apartments, with McGowan saying the district could hold up to 4,000 apartments along with plazas for sporting events and other live events.
Original reporting by Dyana Bagby for Rough Draft Atlanta.
