CIM To Raze AJC's Former Printing Press To Make Room For New Office Tower
The team developing the Gulch in Downtown Atlanta is prepping the building where The Atlanta Journal-Constitution was long published for demolition.
CIM Group filed an application with the city of Atlanta to raze the windowless concrete building attached to 2 City Plaza, the office tower that was once home to Atlanta's largest daily newspaper.
CIM, which acquired the property through a land-swap deal with the city in 2018, is incorporating it into the larger Centennial Yards project it is developing to replace the sea of parking lots and railroad tracks long known as the Gulch.
If approved, CIM would tear down the building that formerly housed the AJC’s printing press to make way for a 520K SF Class-A office development dubbed 1 Centennial Yards, said Brian McGowan, president of CIM’s Centennial Yards Co. division.
Just not anytime soon.
McGowan told Bisnow that CIM submitted the application to obtain the permit that will allow them to begin work when market conditions warrant.
“It would be the first new office building in downtown Atlanta in probably decades,” McGowan said. “We’re moving forward for when the market turns, maybe next year.”
CIM's new office would tower over its next-door neighbor, 2 City Plaza, a nine-story office building that AJC parent company Cox Enterprises donated to the city in 2010 when it moved its operations to Central Perimeter. Atlanta's watershed management department is headquartered today in 2 City Plaza.
McGowan said CIM is shopping 1 Centennial Yards to potential tenants, but it won’t begin construction without a pre-lease. That likely won’t happen this year given the chill experienced by the U.S. office market overall as tenants reconfigure their space needs as a result of hybrid work schedules and a recent spate of layoffs.
“We’re continuing to market that building to prospects so we’re ready to go,” he said.
The developer finally started construction last year on its $5B redevelopment plan for the Gulch property. The Lofts at Centennial Yards South, a 162-unit apartment complex that is an adaptive reuse of part of Norfolk Southern's old building at 125 Spring St., opened last year and is more than 90% occupied, McGowan said.
Wild Leap Atlanta — a taphouse and restaurant run by Wild Leap brewery and housed at The Lofts — held its official grand opening over the weekend. Next up, CIM is under construction with a 304-unit apartment project and a 294-room hotel, both along Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
CIM is partnering with a group led by Atlanta Hawks owner and billionaire financier Tony Ressler — whose brother, Richard Ressler, is a principal at CIM — on the development, which is surrounded by some of the city's premier attractions in Centennial Olympic Park, Mercedes-Benz Stadium and State Farm Arena. CIM was granted a contentious $1.9B incentive package by the city in 2018 that included tax breaks for 20 years and the use of future sales taxes over 30 years to offset the costs of new development and infrastructure work.
All told, CIM will aim at turning the Gulch into a minicity spanning 12M SF of new offices, multifamily, hotel and retail.
