Serta Simmons, Pruitt Health Among GM Redevelopment Prospects

What do a Fortune 500 company, a healthcare company, an e-gaming company and $50M in bonds all have in common? The massive General Motors plant redevelopment.

Integral Group is in the process of issuing $50M in bonds to finance infrastructure work on the first phase of what it calls the Assembly project. That phase of the project would be a 1.4M SF development on more than 50 acres of what used to be the home of the GM manufacturing plant lording over Interstate 285 in Doraville, according to bond offering documents on the website Financial Press.

Those documents list a host of unidentified prospects that Integral is courting to occupy that first phase, including Project Quartz, a headquarters that is seeking 140K SF of office and 70K SF of research and development space as well as a 115K SF parking deck.

According to the the Atlanta Business Chronicle, Project Quartz is the potential consolidation for Serta Simmons Co., one of the largest mattress makers in the world, which would consolidate operations from two other offices in Atlanta. It is a deal Bisnow first reported under the moniker Project Rally, and both code names appear in the bond documents.

Officials with JLL, who represent Simmons, and Integral CEO Egbert Perry declined to comment.

There are other prospects revealed as well in the bond docs:

• Integral is in talks with a healthcare company to move its headquarters under the moniker Project Care. Sources familiar with the deal said that is Norcross-based Pruitt Health, a company focused on senior living facilities, which is eyeing 200K SF of offices, possibly leaving the northern suburbs for a location closer to the city. Sources said talks with Integral were very preliminary.
• Project Warrior, a 31K SF unidentified office user for Baler Village, a part of the overall Assembly development “which would be attractive to the burgeoning 'e-gaming' sector and demographic,” Integral officials state in documents. “Presently, there is a lease under negotiation for Project Warrior, which would serve as the anchor tenant for the Baler Village area.”
• Eviva Yards, a 200-unit, 190K SF multifamily project that would include 30K SF of street-level retail. According to documents, Integral has a letter of intent with an unidentified developer. That developer could be Capstone South. Capstone president Michael Hahn — who also was involved in the development of Assembly's Third Rail movie studio project that is now in operation — wrote on his LinkedIn profile that his firm was developing Eviva Yards in partnership with Integral, with a groundbreaking set for this November.
• An unidentified local brewery, which, according to documents, would develop a 100K SF operation at Assembly. In some of the documents, the project was dubbed “Orph.” Atlanta-based Orpheus Brewing is eyeing various sites around town for a second brewing facility, which would be used to brew its main beer offerings that are sold in grocery stores, said Ford McClure, a brewer and office manager for the company. He declined to say if Orpheus is considering Assembly, but said that Orpheus wants to open a “production facility” in the next two years.

Assembly's total size is 165 acres, with up to 10M SF of commercial development. It is not clear what specific infrastructure projects would be targeted by the initial bond offering. In January, DeKalb County commissioners paved the way for public financing using tax allocation district money to fund the bond payments, and approved a total of $180M into infrastructure work, including developing a tunnel that would connect Assembly to the Doraville MARTA station, a project that development officials in the past said was critical to the overall redevelopment.