Tall & Urban News

Midtown planning leaders reviewed revised plans the week of 13 January 2020 for major construction projects that could make the subdistrict taller, denser, and more pedestrian-friendly.

Most notably, developer Trillist presented updated plans, including a couple of new renderings, for the long-anticipated 1138 Peachtree Street project.

The venture promises a 46-story, residential-heavy mixed-use tower at a nearly one-acre site where a handful of high-rise projects, such as a Mandarin Oriental hotel pitched before the recession, have fizzled over the years, as outlined at the Midtown Development Review Committee (DRC) meeting on 14 January 2020.

Midtown Alliance officials noted on Twitter the tower could ascend more than 550 feet (168 meters), potentially ranking it among the city’s tallest, and the highest built in more than a decade.

In the works since 2013, the Trillist development, if realized, would feature 317 luxury apartments and about 10,000 square feet (3,000 square meters) of ground-level retail space fronting Peachtree Street and Crescent Avenue, per DRC materials. It would also include a nine-floor parking deck with 450 spaces.

The committee’s board members raised concerns about how the parking deck’s façades would fit against the community’s urban backdrop, and about how the retail space would engage passersby.

“The retail space within the ground floor of the Crescent frontage does not meet minimum depth requirements, nor does the elevation meet requirements which specify the appearance of a horizontally storied building for the first three floors,” reads a DRC recap.

Officials also said Trillist and architects at Smallwood need to further assess the pedestrian connectivity between Peachtree Street and Crescent Avenue.

“The DRC indicated a willingness to entertain creative options for the important element of the pedestrian walkway [between the two streets], and it anticipates that the applicant will return with a more concrete proposal for review and comment,” the DRC post reads.

DRC officials also reviewed revised plans for the Campanile building expansion, which is underway just across the street from Trillist’s project, at 1155 Peachtree.

The base of the late-1980s office building owned by the Dewberry Group is now being wrapped in a six-floor, 125,000-square-foot (11,600-square-meter) retail podium.

“In the podium, new floors will align with the existing floors of the office tower to create office floor plates of approximately 45,000 square feet,” according to the DRC.

Also, expect new terraces on the fourth and sixth floors, which promise “sweeping views of outdoor amenity spaces for office tenants.”

DRC officials’ assessment of the updated plans focused on designs for the “generous public space” near the tower’s front entrance, along with elements related to the streetscape on all four sides of the block.

They suggested revising plans for the 13th Street frontage to include on-street parking and a wider sidewalk. Dewberry is expected to come before the DRC at a later date with updated plans, too.

Selig’s chief development officer Steve Baile said the week of 13 January 2020 that construction of the 3.5-acre (1.4-hectare), multi-tower project is on track to wrap in the third quarter of 2021. At the end of January 2020, though, the ninth-floor amenity deck, dubbed the “Sky Plaza,” is set to top out, Baile added.

Selig also confirmed that Google is set to make 1105 West Peachtree its Southeast headquarters, claiming five floors of the planned 32-story office tower. The Smith, Gambrell & Russell law firm is also taking five floors for its new offices.

Also on the docket is a 178-key Marriott Autograph Collection Epicurean Hotel that Selig representatives announced in October 2019.

The development, located between MARTA’s Midtown and Arts Center subway stations, will also include a 64-unit luxury condo tower called 40 West 12th.

Baile said the developer has been having some luck with condo pre-sales, although he did not provide specifics.

“We are pleased with the condo sales we have had thus far,” he said. “We believe 40 West 12th is hitting on the pulse of what Intown Atlanta condo buyers are looking for, and that’s a high-end product that’s understated yet refined and has access to all the great amenities the project, and Midtown as a whole, have to offer.”

Lastly, on the ground floor, expect some 25,000 square feet (2,300 square meters) of retail space. Selig has tapped Rule Joy Trammell + Rubio as the design architect and architect of record and Brasfield & Gorrie as the general contractor.

Meanwhile, in downtown, a glassy high-rise hotel serving one of the busiest convention centers in the world could soon begin construction. The proposed Signia Hilton Hotel is the most visible part of the Georgia World Congress Center Authority’s 2020 Vision master plan, a road map for the GWCC campus’s future.

Beginning in late April or early May 2020, soon after the NCAA Final Four basketball tournament ends, the more than 30-story hotel is projected to kick off construction, a GWCCA spokesperson confirmed the week of 13 January 2020.

The Gensler-designed project is expected to feature 1,000 hotel rooms and about 75,000 square feet (7,000 square meters) of meeting space for convention-goers, sports fans, and other visitors.

Flanked by Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the Home Depot Backyard, the Orange Deck, Northside Drive, and the convention center’s Building C, the planned hotel would link to the GWCC by way of Building C at the Georgia Ballroom level.

Renderings of Gensler’s vision for the hotel from Spring 2019 show a sleek, posh aesthetic for the building, an approach that seems to complement the still relatively new Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

For more on these stories, go to Curbed Atlanta.