The owners of South Downtown have added a layer of technology infrastructure to their 10-block portfolio near Five Points MARTA, partnering with Atlanta-based Flock Safety to install more than a dozen AI-powered cameras and license plate readers across the district.
The rollout comes as Jon Birdsong and David Cummings work through the early phase of redeveloping 56 buildings and parking lots they acquired south of Five Points — a portfolio they have branded “Startup City,” with plans for shops, restaurants, offices, and residential conversions. Much of that building stock sat vacant for years, leaving long stretches of sidewalk with little of the everyday foot traffic that established districts rely on.
Flock Safety is itself an Atlanta company, making the deployment a local-vendor contract as well as a district-infrastructure investment. The camera network joins the other unglamorous groundwork the ownership group has been laying across the portfolio — building permits, structural assessments, and utility work — ahead of the adaptive-reuse projects that will define the district's next chapter.
Source: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, published September 2024.