After Scandal Blew Up A Sale, Atlanta Financial Center Owner Lands Extension

On a snowy January evening in 1971, three executives with Atlanta-based Cousins Properties left Vermont on a private jet after visiting an urban development site in Burlington. 

Soon after takeoff, the 10-seat Rockwell 1121 Jet Commander carrying the trio, as well as the pilot and co-pilot, disappeared from radar, fueling a mystery that was solved 53 years later after a research team finally discovered the wreckage deep in Lake Champlain.

Undersea researcher Gary Kozak and his team announced that he found and created sonar images of the submerged wreckage of the private corporate jet 3 miles southwest of where the aircraft took off from Burlington, west of Juniper Island,  The Associated Press reported. While Kozak hasn't recovered any of…

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Owners of the 31M SF of office space in the Central Perimeter submarket should take a lesson from Atlanta's once-premier neighborhood, a panel of commercial real estate experts said during Bisnow's Expanding the Perimeter event last week.

Build better pedestrian infrastructure now, or get left behind

“Buckhead was for a long time the gold standard of real estate values in Atlanta. The highest office rents, highest apartment rents, highest home sales,” Coro Realty Advisors President Robert Fransen said. “If you look at Buckhead now, it’s really none of those things anymore.”

“Office rents are higher in the Old Fourth Ward. Retail rents are higher in Midtown. Apartment rents are higher in West Midtown,” he added. “What all of those things have that Buckhead does not is the walkability piece.” Central Perimeter, which spans DeKalb and Fulton counties and encompasses the cities…

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After nearly two decades of decline, the number of bars and restaurants catering to members of the LGBTQIA+ community began ticking back up in the wake of the pandemic. Research from the National Institutes of Health indicates the number of these establishments nationwide grew by 10% from 2021 to 2023.

This shift has occurred despite a challenging, sometimes dangerous landscape for queer communities in particular and an uncertain playing field for the broader economy and real estate industry. But for a community intimately familiar with carrying on in the face of difficult circumstances, keeping these spaces going — and even growing them — is worth the hard days.

“Our queer spaces across the country are incredibly important,” said Danielle Spring, co-owner of Femme, a lesbian restaurant and bar in Worcester, Massachusetts, that welcomes everyone but places a specific focus on providing a haven for members of the LGBTQIA+ community.

“I’m in my 40s, and when we were growing up, we didn't have safe spaces. We invite our patrons to come as they are, no matter how they identify,” Spring said. “We provide the space for them. Anyone who walks in the door, we embrace them.”

The number of gay bars in the U.S. declined 41% from 2002 to 2019, according to the NIH. The last five years have brought a pandemic that shuttered establishments of all kinds, rapidly escalating prices and a wave of anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation and sentiment in some of the most populous states…

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