The dead zone on downtown's northeastern edge is finally producing a building. Nine months after groundbreaking, the first new structure on the Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center property has topped out at 251 Pine St. in Old Fourth Ward, and crews have moved on to window installation and facade work. For anyone who walks or drives past the 19-acre site — long a fenced-off blank in the shadow of both downtown and Midtown — this is the first physical evidence that the redevelopment is real.
The building is a 148-unit apartment project reserved for low-income seniors, developed by property owner Atlanta Housing at a cost of roughly $60 million. It sits on the northeast section of the property, across the street from Renaissance Park, and includes a 1,642-square-foot retail cafe space and a parking deck. The one-bedroom rentals will each run about 600 square feet. Of the 148 units, 118 are set aside for renters earning 60 percent of Area Median Income or less, with the remainder capped at 50 percent AMI.
Atlanta Housing, which bought the Civic Center property in 2017, says the first apartments should be available onsite in the third quarter of 2027. It is partnering on the job with The Michaels Organization, Sophy Capital and Republic Properties Corporation. No timeline has been announced for anything beyond this first building.
Getting to this point took more than a decade of false starts. In 2016, Texas-based Weingarten Realty walked away from a plan to convert the site into a mixed-use hub with about 650 housing units and a Publix. In summer 2022, New York's Tishman Speyer backed out of a partnership with Atlanta's H.J. Russell & Co. to take on the property. A planned 2024 groundbreaking on the current project also slipped. In 2018, preservation group Historic Atlanta pushed to keep the site's significant structures from being razed.
The Civic Center itself — a New Formalist landmark designed by Harold Montague of Robert & Co. and opened in 1965 — has been essentially idle since 2014, apart from scattered concerts and events. Over the years it hosted the Metropolitan Opera, Theater of the Stars, the Atlanta Opera and, more recently, television tapings including Steve Harvey's "Family Feud." Its 4,600-seat auditorium is believed to hold the largest stage in Georgia. The Performing Arts Center building will be preserved in the redevelopment, though its exact future use has not been determined.
Long term, the full 19-acre plan calls for 1,500 mixed-income apartments alongside a grocery store, hotel, retail, offices and communal space, with walkable connections to transit and parks. The site has also served as festival grounds, including Shaky Knees. For about two years the construction fencing has carried banners reading "The Excitement is Building" — a claim that now has a topped-out frame behind it.
Original reporting: Urbanize Atlanta (2026-08-12)