Another piece of Centennial Yards is moving forward downtown, but not as the piece it started out as. Centennial Yards Company is assembling plans for a third new hotel at the former Gulch site, adding to a pipeline that already has two hotels under construction and thousands more rooms planned in coming years.
The site is 88 Elliott St., a long, slender parcel wedged between active rail lines and the historic Castleberry Hill neighborhood. It is empty today, across the street from the former Elliott Street Pub and Atlanta Fire Station No. 1, near the western end of the pedestrians-only Steele Bridge.
The change is what makes the filing notable. Centennial Yards originally submitted the parcel to the city as a multifamily residential building topping out around five stories with rooftop decks. Developers are now seeking a Special Use Permit for a 127-room hotel instead, with an unspecified amount of ground-floor retail.
Asked about the swap, Centennial Yards representatives told Urbanize Atlanta by email that “the commitment to affordable housing within the district remains a priority” despite the change in planned use. The district-wide target has been 20 percent of its residential units set aside as affordable, across a program that calls for more than 2,600 homes in total.
No construction timeline is available until the Special Use Permit and Site Approval Process clear city authorities, and project leaders say no renderings or images for the hotel exist yet. The previously filed residential design gives some sense of massing, though officials note the hotel will differ.
Just north of the site, The Mitchell, the project's first ground-up residential tower at 304 units, topped out in August. The hotel count in the Gulch keeps climbing: the 292-key Anthem is under construction, a 230-room hotel is planned within the Sports and Entertainment District, and the district's long-term plans call for nearly 3,000 rooms in all. Converting one residential parcel to a third hotel is a small move against those totals, but it points at which side of the ledger is currently easier to finance.
Original reporting by Josh Green for Urbanize Atlanta, published October 2024.
