The building that anchors the Centennial Park District could be headed for public ownership. The Atlanta Fulton County Recreation Authority is exploring a purchase of The CTR, the redevelopment of the former CNN Center, for $200 million, according to a Bisnow Atlanta report that cites a memo Atlanta News First obtained through an open records request.
Bisnow described the move as a path for the city of Atlanta and Fulton County to jointly buy the property from CP Group. The authority is no stranger to big venues: it already owns State Farm Arena and Zoo Atlanta. According to the memo, buying the complex would give the authority control of a key downtown parcel.
How the deal would work
The proposal calls for the authority to issue tax-exempt senior revenue bonds to buy the roughly 1.2 million-square-foot property. Those bonds would be secured by the project's future revenues. In return, the authority would receive a guaranteed annual revenue stream plus a portion of back-end profits.
CP Group, the Boca Raton-based developer behind the redevelopment, would contribute $200 million to $300 million in equity to renovate and repurpose the space, and it would continue to operate the property. The memo, written by authority executive director Kerry Stewart, also describes seeking an agreement with the Westside Tax Allocation District board to earmark all new tax revenue generated by the project to help cover debt service on the bonds.
Neither CP Group nor the authority responded to Bisnow's request for comment. Fulton County Board of Commissioners Chairman Robb Pitts expressed surprise about the project when Atlanta News First reached him.
A building in the middle of a reinvention
CP Group, in a joint venture with Rialto Capital, bought the then-CNN Center from AT&T for more than $144 million in 2021. Three years later, CNN moved its broadcasting operations to Midtown, and since then CP Group has been working to reinvent the space as a mixed-use hub. At the time of the report, the developer had plans to open a food hall in May, and it had told Rough Draft Atlanta that future phases could include apartments and hotel rooms.
What the authority would do with the property if it acquired it was not clear from the report. For now, the proposal is one to watch: a public-private arrangement in which the public owner of the arena and the zoo would hold title to one of downtown's best-known buildings while the developer keeps running it and puts hundreds of millions of dollars into its next chapter.
For downtown, the stakes are easy to see. The CTR is a major mixed-use complex in the Centennial Park District, and what happens inside it shapes how that part of downtown feels for visitors and neighbors alike.
Source: Bisnow Atlanta, April 28, 2026.
