Georgia State University opened the fall 2026 semester with three big pieces of its downtown footprint moving at once: a new science building, a reworked public quad next to Hurt Park and a baseball stadium on hallowed ground in Summerhill.
The Research Tower
The largest addition is the Research Tower, a nine-story, 155,000-square-foot building at Piedmont Avenue and Decatur Street that the university says is coming online this fall. The $100 million project fills out a science park on a single parcel, sharing an interior courtyard with the existing Petit Science Center and Research Science Center. It adds teaching space, flexible research areas and new laboratories.
Georgia State President M. Brian Blake described the building as a critical step toward new discoveries in the hard sciences, and said concentrating research facilities in the middle of Atlanta should help the university's work on disease, community health and the natural world reach well beyond campus.
Panther Quad at Hurt Park
A few blocks away, work continues on the Panther Quad. Earlier this year, the university took down Sparks Hall, its first purpose-built building, to open a direct connection between the Campus Greenway and Hurt Park across Gilmer Street, which is being reworked as a more walkable streetscape.
The quad will add improved walkways and open lawn, a planted buffer along Courtland Street and a tribute to the old hall and its namesake, founding president George M. Sparks. That tribute, the Sparks Column, will be built from original marble panels salvaged from the building's facade and will overlook the plaza. Similar quads are planned for each of Georgia State's five Perimeter College campuses; Clarkston's was finished in April.
The quad is part of the $107 million College Town Downtown program, supported by an $80 million gift from the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation, which aims to give the campus a consistent look and feel along the corridor from Hurt Park to Woodruff Park. Executive Vice President and COO L. Jared Abramson said the quads are meant to connect campus communities in a way no other infrastructure can.
Baseball returns to Summerhill
Just south of downtown, Georgia State is finishing Chastain Childers Field at Bill and Susan Reeves Stadium ahead of the spring 2027 season. The roughly 1,000-seat park, with an artificial turf field, concessions and a press box, sits on the footprint of Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, where Hank Aaron hit his 715th home run on April 8, 1974. It brings baseball back to the neighborhood for the first time in a decade.
The new field joins Center Parc Credit Union Stadium, the former Turner Field that Georgia State converted for football after acquiring it in 2017, and the Convocation Center that opened in 2022. Athletics director Charlie Cobb said clustering the three venues lets the university keep the neighborhood busy nearly year-round, with baseball in spring, football in fall and basketball in winter.
Together, the projects push further on a long-running shift: a university of more than 53,000 students that increasingly treats downtown's parks, streets and historic sites as part of its campus.
Based on sponsored content from Georgia State University published by Atlanta Business Chronicle.
