News
MIDCITY'S CRE HUNT
November 16, 2010
| The last vestiges of Griffin Co. will be completed soon. And now the company's former top exec is trying to find something else to do. |
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| It's been a little over a year since Kirk Demetrops (right, with Roger White at his new offices at 7000 Central Park) shut down Griffin and started his own firm MidCity Real Estate Partners. He kept his half dozen key players and set out with the same business plan at Griffin, redeveloping older office and commercial properties. (Griffin dissolved in June '09 after the Griffin family declined to continue it following the death of founder Joel Griffin.) The firm is overseeing the completion of JAS Worldwide's HQ at the Cosmopolitan North Office Park redevelopment on Barfield Road in Sandy Springs. Once completed, Kirk says finding projects that make financial sense to buy for redevelopment has been tricky. With a host of capital sources he declines to name, Kirk says the company has been seeking value-added or ?stalled? office, retail or mixed-use projects and hopes to buy one or two projects next year. |
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| Which one's the deeper thinker? Kirk caught us up with the activities of the Sandy Springs Main Street Alliance, the year-old organization that's made up of some 30 landlords along Roswell Road from The Prado north to Abernathy Road in a district loosely called Downtown Sandy Springs. The group has been working on a unified vision of the corridor, including traffic improvements, signage and even new zoning categories to help create a urban, pedestrian-friendly corridor, Kirk says. The group also is considering forming a tax allocation district (TAD) to raise funds and possibly even a Sandy Springs Community Improvement District (CID). We sense the hunt for the right three letter acronym will continue. Or in Kirk's words: ?We're looking at all the mechanisms to create the redevelopment we want to see there.? |
