The date came and went. Teachers Village, the downtown high-rise built around housing educators, did not break ground on October 20 as its developer had said it would.
No heavy equipment appeared on the Cone Street site and no ceremony was held, which registered with people living nearby. One reader wrote to Urbanize Atlanta that their condo building is a block away and they were watching closely, adding that it is always good to see more residents downtown.
The new target
RBH Group spokesperson Lonnie Soury said details of the project are still being finalized, and that the New Jersey-based developer now expects to break ground later in the first quarter of 2026.
That is the latest in a sequence. Initial designs emerged in 2021. An earlier timeline called for a 2024 groundbreaking that did not happen. In August the team named October 20 specifically, which is the date that has now passed.
What is still on the table
The project itself has not changed. Plans call for a 457,500-square-foot tower rising more than 30 stories near Centennial Olympic Park, with 424 apartments and no units rented at market rate. RBH has described it as a first for Georgia, an entire building marketed to teachers, other school employees and seniors as attainable housing.
The financing is not the obstacle. The project secured up to $370 million in bonds last year, which normally removes the usual explanation for a stalled tower.
Why the delay registers
Downtown has absorbed a great deal of announced housing over the past two years, and the district's central constraint has always been the gap between announcements and occupancy. Teachers Village is one of the few proposals that would add hundreds of homes at rents set below the market, on a site inside the blocks seeing the most construction ahead of the 2026 World Cup.
Nearly five years after the concept was unveiled, the site remains a parking area at the southeast corner of Cone Street. A first-quarter start would put the first residents years out still.
Original reporting by Josh Green for Urbanize Atlanta, published October 2025.
