The Varsity's Owners Consolidating Their Valuable Midtown Real Estate
The family behind one of Atlanta’s most iconic restaurants raised eyebrows this week when it filed an application to consolidate its ownership of numerous parcels around its prominent Midtown site.
The Gordy family, which has owned The Varsity since the restaurant's founding in 1928, has been open to redeveloping the single-story restaurant at 61 North Ave. NW and its surrounding parking lots since 2022.
But the moves aren't related to any upcoming project on the prominent site at the corner of North Avenue and Spring Street, which sits in the heart of the massive development boom in the surrounding Midtown neighborhood.
In this instance, at least, the Gordy family is simply cutting down the number of Atlanta tax bills it gets to two, one for the Varsity restaurant and another for its parking lot business, Chief Operating Officer John Browne told Bisnow in a statement.
“As with many multi-generational family businesses, we have acquired properties across the state through different entities, including multiple parcels around our North Ave. location,” Browne said. “We recently filed for an application to consolidate 11 parcels in Midtown into two, which will reduce the number of tax bills we receive from the city. This will streamline our financial operations by clearly delineating the revenue from our restaurant and parking businesses and simplifying the tax allocations.”
The family is seeking to combine 61 North Ave. with 636 and 640 Spring St. into one restaurant lot and 656, 664, 670, 674 and 680 Spring St. and 73 Ponce De Leon Ave. into another tax lot.
The recent applications, posted Jan. 26 on the message board Skyscraperpage, caused various Midtown stakeholders to reach out to The Varsity about the reasons behind the action and whether it was indicative that redevelopment plans were coming to fruition, a spokesperson for the company told Bisnow.
Four years shy of the 100th anniversary of The Varsity slinging its famed chili dogs and its servers asking customers, “What’ll ya have?” the skyline surrounding the eatery has gone through an evolution into a nexus of business and technology.
Sitting just north of The Varsity are Georgia Tech's expanding Tech Square and new offices for Google, NCR, Anthem and Coda.
Chick-fil-A Chairman Dan Cathy has also been exploring building a deck over the Interstate 75/85 interchange, including park space on a North Avenue bridge over the highway.
Cathy is the chairman of the MCP Foundation, headed by former Atlanta Regional Commission Executive Director Doug Hooker, which is attempting to raise capital to create 12 acres of green space along North Avenue to Fifth Street, connecting West Midtown and the Georgia Tech campus to the heart of Midtown.
Such a project could make The Varsity’s property even more valuable to outside developers. It is already a site that prominent Atlanta real estate attorney Abe Schear described to the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last year as “the last great parcel in that part of Midtown.”
The Varsity did sell its former Athens location to Fuqua Development in 2021. It was then closed to make way for Fuqua's planned mixed-use project at the site. But The Varsity also opened a new location some 20 miles west of Downtown Athens in Winder a year ago.
This week, The Varsity opened a new location in Cartersville, just outside of the LakePoint Sports youth athletics complex.
Cushman & Wakefield Managing Director Matt Hawkins, who was tapped to market The Varsity's Midtown holdings to developers in 2022, told Bisnow Wednesday the family is no longer seeking offers.
“Nothing going on here,” Hawkins said in an email. “I do advise the family, but we aren’t on the market.”
CORRECTION, JAN. 31, 4 P.M. ET: A previous version of the story misstated the opening date for The Varsity Winder. The story has been updated.
