The Biltmore at 817 W. Peachtree St. NW has stood at the northern edge of the city's densest walking district for a century, and for most of that time it has been closed off to the people passing it. That is the problem the building's development team says it is now setting out to fix. Renovation plans for the 1924 landmark, owned by the Georgia Tech Foundation for the past decade, call for tearing open the lobby, replacing the entrance and adding a restaurant along West Peachtree Street. Lobby work is expected to begin in September, with exterior work following in early 2027 and construction wrapping next summer.
David Tyndall, founder and CEO of Collaborative Real Estate, put the current situation bluntly: the 11-story building reads as a brick wall rather than a continuation of Tech Square's street life. Its courtyard faces east, away from the district, and the only way in is through three small doors under a modest awning on West Peachtree. Tyndall's firm led the first phase of Tech Square, which opened in 2003, and later built the Square on Fifth high-rise that houses more than 600 Georgia Tech students. He was an engineering student at Tech in the early 1980s, when the area around what is now the Barnes & Noble at Spring and 5th streets was, in his description, an urban wasteland known for drugs and prostitution. That corner is now one of the busiest pedestrian intersections in the Southeast.
The most visible changes for anyone walking by will come at sidewalk level. Plans include a 3,200-square-foot restaurant space and a long, tree-shaded patio near the building's northwest corner, with seating for a couple dozen people under the mature crepe myrtles that will stay. That space is currently occupied by a Switchyards coworking outpost, opened in early 2024 in the old hotel's laundry-sorting area, which plans to close soon. Atwoods Pizza Cafe operates next door and remains. The entrance itself gets large glass doors flanking a revolving door, a deliberate signal that the building is open to anyone and does not require campus credentials.
Inside, Collaborative Real Estate and Old Fourth Ward-based Wright Gardner Architect plan to cut large openings in the lobby floor and remove elevator lobbies, creating three wide-open central column bays with new stairs and a three-story volume visible from the street. A large video wall will serve daily users and guests at events in the grand ballrooms at either end of the floor. Tyndall wants to keep the lobby's midcentury feel while stripping columns back to bare concrete for an industrial edge, and to add more workspace seating throughout. Tenant amenities including ping-pong, a podcast studio, a makers space and a gym are planned away from the main entry, and a retail space opposite the restaurant could let companies working upstairs show and sell what they build.
The renovation is a piece of a larger effort. The Georgia Tech Foundation hired Collaborative Real Estate last year to convert the 300,000-square-foot former hotel and loft office building into the Biltmore Innovation Center, a startup and research hub that remains a work in progress. The building is 53 percent leased today, up from roughly 30 percent during the pandemic but still well short of the 96 percent occupancy it carried before. Plans have cleared historical review and are in permitting with the city. Once construction finishes, the team says it will follow with heavy programming aimed at drawing the surrounding neighborhood in. Tyndall called it the most important chapter for Tech Square since the first one.
Original reporting: Urbanize Atlanta (2026-08-19)