Half a year into demolition, there is almost nothing left of Sparks Hall. The circa-1955 building was the first structure Georgia State ever put up specifically for its own growing student body, and its removal, paired with the closure of Gilmer Street along the south edge of the renovated Hurt Park, is the centerpiece of what university leadership calls the most ambitious physical project in its history.
The work belongs to College Town Downtown, a set of nine initiatives budgeted at $107 million and aimed at giving GSU a legible campus identity across some of Atlanta's oldest blocks. The bulk of it rides on an $80 million Woodruff Foundation grant announced in 2024, the largest gift in the university's 111-year history and the most the foundation has ever given a Georgia university. Renovations at Woodruff Park are part of the same package.
Where Sparks Hall stood, GSU will knit its existing Campus Greenway into Hurt Park to form the Panther Quad, the anchor of a larger Central Academic Quad. Plans call for an elevated plaza, a landscaped green buffer along Courtland Street and rebuilt walkways, with Gilmer Street converted to a pedestrian-only zone. For a campus that has spent decades apologizing for being stitched into a street grid, closing a street to make a quad is the most direct statement available.
The adjacent Arts & Humanities Building is next, slated for a 20,000-square-foot addition and a modernized facade overlooking the new park, with construction scheduled to begin in June of next year. Across Edgewood Avenue, the 18-story 100 Edgewood tower from the 1960s is getting a dining and gathering space at its base and four floors of new classrooms above, which GSU has described as confirming the building's role as a cornerstone of the campus core.
At Woodruff Park, on the side opposite Peachtree Street, an Atlanta Streetcar platform is moving to line up with a park entrance, alongside new sidewalks and plaza and facade work at 25 Park Place. The block of Park Place between Edgewood and Auburn avenues will close to everything except the streetcar.
The original schedule had all of this wrapped before the World Cup arrived. It did not happen, and anyone walking Gilmer Street this month can see why. What the delay buys downtown is a longer construction season on its most-used pedestrian blocks, and eventually a stretch of green running from Hurt Park to Woodruff Park that does not require crossing traffic to enjoy.
Original reporting: Urbanize Atlanta (July 9, 2026)
