Two Atlanta tech founders are running the largest active bet on downtown's oldest blocks. David Cummings and Jon Birdsong, the Atlanta Ventures partners who built Atlanta Tech Village in Buckhead, have now committed roughly $140 million to a South Downtown restoration that has grown to about 56 historic buildings across 16 acres. The commitment is being funded from prior startup exits — Pardot, Salesloft — rather than from commercial real-estate debt.
The project began, according to Foundry Commercial's Lawrence Gellerstedt, with a November 2023 phone call from Cummings after German firm Newport US RE stopped funding its own 53-building South Downtown portfolio. Newport had spent at least $155 million assembling the historic core — Hotel Row, 222 Mitchell, properties along Broad and Peachtree — before the 2023 interest-rate cycle cut off its backing and pushed key buildings toward foreclosure auction. Gellerstedt called the eventual deal "the most complicated thing that there is": eight lenders, multiple lawsuits, and multiple liens spread across the assets. Cummings and Birdsong, operating through SoDo Atlanta LLC, acquired the troubled loans rather than the buildings directly, taking title on roughly 60 percent of Newport's holdings by the December 19, 2023 public announcement, with the rest under contract. In 2024, the venture added the Friedman's Shoes building on Mitchell Street.
The strategy is a scale-up of the founder-density thesis that made Atlanta Tech Village work in Buckhead — this time applied to a whole neighborhood rather than a single office building. Atlanta Tech Village Sylvan, opened in January 2025 inside the historic Sylvan Hotel on Hotel Row, is the first proof point. Axios reported the campus had sold about 40 percent of its memberships at opening, with capacity for roughly 225 people at full occupancy.
But Birdsong has been direct that the district's success will turn on housing. Central Atlanta Progress lists Phase 1 as 140 residential units, 65,000 square feet of office, and 100,000 square feet of retail. The most visible early example is 85 Peachtree — the former Bass Dry Goods building — being converted into 26 apartments with ground-floor retail and a public courtyard. Leasing was scheduled to begin in early June, just ahead of Atlanta's first World Cup match on June 15. The 222 Mitchell tower, once the centerpiece of Newport's holdings, remains the most consequential unresolved building in the portfolio and would add roughly 220 residential units to the district if the legacy legal entanglements are unwound.
Food and retail are functioning as the real infrastructure. Hotel Row's current tenant list includes Atlanta Tech Village Sylvan, Ohio River South, Atlanta City Studio, Spiller Park Coffee, and Tyde Tate Kitchen, with Crates, Delilah's Everyday Soul, El Tesoro, Glide Pizza, Brewhouse Cafe, Bottle Rocket, Broad Street BBQ, Kitchen Counter, Mule Train, Village Books, and KMM & Co. among the tenants coming online. Subs & Salads Junction — a 30-year lunch counter on the corner — told the Atlanta Business Chronicle in March that business was up roughly 30 percent, largely on construction-worker traffic, and that the family is reconsidering opening on Saturdays for the first time in years.
The public-realm complement is the Broad Street conversion, a roughly $6 million public-private project widening sidewalks and adding ADA-compliant curb ramps between the Five Points and Garnett MARTA stations. SoDo Atlanta funded the design work; Invest Atlanta Eastside TAD bonds, MARTA station rehab funds, AURA bonds, and Trees Atlanta covered construction. The corridor is engineered to handle World Cup crowds and to close on Atlanta United and Atlanta Falcons game days.
The bet's stated horizon is 40 to 50 years. The World Cup is the first short-horizon test.
Original reporting: Atlanta Tech News (May 26, 2026)
