After years of false starts that have frustrated preservationists and downtown boosters alike, the Atlanta Constitution Building has a development team. Invest Atlanta intends to sign a deal with Wisconsin-based affordable housing developer Gorman & Company to turn the property at 143 Alabama St. into nearly 200 apartments with retail.
The plan is bigger than the landmark itself. Alongside the renovation, Gorman would build a new mid-rise apartment building on the parking lot along Ted Turner Drive, on the block between Five Points and the under-construction Centennial Yards megaproject. Invest Atlanta plans to enter a long-term lease and master development agreement covering the Alabama Street property and adjacent parcels.
This follows the request for proposals Invest Atlanta issued last summer with an Aug. 2 deadline, which stated repeatedly that any selected team had to be capable of making significant progress on the building's renovation before Atlanta's month of World Cup matches begins in June 2026. The city-owned Art Moderne landmark, across the street from MARTA's Five Points station, has stood mostly vacant since before Jimmy Carter was president.
Gorman is not new to Atlanta. The firm has been on a building run across the city, opening its first local project in Westview and another near MARTA's Hamilton E. Holmes station this year. It is also the developer behind Sweet Auburn Grande, the two-phase Auburn Avenue project that preserves the 1908 building which housed Georgia's first state-chartered Black bank — a track record of working around historic structures rather than through them that is directly relevant here.
Design work on the Constitution Building involves Gensler, with early materials showing new signage at the corner of Alabama and Forsyth streets. The building itself is a 1947, five-story, 95,000-square-foot structure built for the Atlanta Constitution newspaper, largely empty since Georgia Power moved out in the early 1970s and visibly decayed since, down to vegetation growing on the roof.
Whether the World Cup deadline holds is the open question. But for the first time since a 2017 agreement with Pope & Land collapsed, there is a named developer, a housing count, and a signed intent behind one of the most visible ruins in downtown Atlanta.
Original reporting by Josh Green for Urbanize Atlanta, published November 2024.
