Russell McCall Seeking Another Developer After Taking Back Forge Atlanta Site In Foreclosure

After one developer's dreams of building a massive life sciences campus in Downtown Atlanta were dashed, the 10-acre site's owner-turned-lender-turned-owner is going back to the market, looking for another builder with vision.

Russell McCall, the founder of Gourmet Foods International, has tapped SSG Realty Partners to market the site that was envisioned as Forge Atlanta by its previous owner, SSG CEO David Branch told Bisnow.

The site, which straddles Castleberry Hill and Downtown Atlanta along Whitehall Street and is once again being branded as Artisan Yards, was the home of GFI's headquarters before McCall moved the company to Decatur and sold the land to Jae Kim's Urbantec Development Partners for $26.1M in 2021. 

McCall lent Kim more than $25M for the purchase and to start work on Forge Atlanta, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Kim pitched the project as a 3.8M SF campus with 1.7M SF of life sciences and office, 1,500 residential units, retail, a data center, a boutique hotel, a conference center and a 100K SF film studio, according to a 2022 presentation to Central Atlanta Progress.

But Kim defaulted on those loans, and McCall took the site back via a $20M foreclosure in March 2023, the AJC reported.

Branch said McCall is seeking around $85 per SF for the property, which is already fielding off-market offers from developers.

“The thing that’s most exciting, if you look at prime development sites in Midtown … you’re going to pay $500 a SF,” Branch said.

Developers that have expressed early interest in Artisan Yards are also considering a similar life sciences vision, Branch said. Kim is now a vice president at CBRE and helping Gwinnett County find a master developer for Gwinnett Place Mall. 

When reached by phone, Kim declined to comment on Artisan Yards. 

Branch, who is marketing the site along with SSG Regional Partner Peyton Stinson, said he sees the Artisan Yards site as part of a new development corridor that involves Jon Birdsong and David Cummings’ South Downtown redevelopment, Centennial Yards and the Georgia World Congress Center.

“The market is moving to the area around Mercedes-Benz [Stadium],” Branch said. “I think [the buyer] may well be somebody coming from outside Atlanta — LA, Chicago — coming in and saying, ‘Hey, this area is as hot as a firecracker.’”