A landmark downtown Atlanta building that’s been vacant and moldering for nearly 30 years in a can’t-miss location is seeking a new lease on life. Again.
Refreshed listing photos via Colliers paint the 12-story Medical Arts Building on Peachtree Street in as flattering a light as possible, as the 88,000-square-foot property is being dangled once again for sale and potential redevelopment. The asking price isn’t specified.
Ambitious plans for turning the 1927 structure into top-shelf offices and a hotel have fizzled time and again, and the building remains Atlanta’s tallest unrestored, historic structure, as Axios pointed out during an October sales push.
But with Atlanta slowly warming to the trend of adaptive-reuse housing conversions, intown land costs continually escalating, and the 14-acre Stitch park project showing signs of progress next door, a reasonable question emerges: Could this time be different for the beleaguered Medical Arts Building?
The 12-story Medical Arts Building, constructed of sturdy brick and limestone, has lorded over Atlanta's signature street for nearly a century. Colliers
According to the Atlanta Preservation Center, the Medical Arts Building was designed by Atlanta City Hall architect G. Lloyd Preacher and was once considered among the most well-equipped and modern medical facilities around. Features used to include a drugstore, telegraph office, and cafeteria.
The building has been vacant and in a state of increasing decay since a four-alarm fire ripped through it in 1995.
As recently as 2019, Ohio-based owner GBX Group was planning to remake the building into a boutique hotel, with a restored facade and retail at the base. Clearly, that didn't happen.
A rendering that emerged when building owners GBX proposed a nearly $40 million conversion into Class A offices with retail at the base in 2017. GBX, via Invest Atlanta
Two years before that, GBX had been angling to convert the building to Class A offices over retail—a $39.8 million project that lined up nearly $8 million in historic tax credits and Eastside TAD grant funding but still didn’t move forward.
The current listing states that a new brand with the IHG franchise, a global hotel chain, has been approved for the Peachtree Street location. Atlanta’s hotel market is “recovering strong post-COVID,” the Colliers listing notes, but many “options for [building] redevelopment including mixed-use” could be viable. Tax credits, per the listing, are still on the table.
Included in the sale is a 260-space parking garage that had the distinction of handily winning/losing the Atlanta's Worst Parking Garage Tournament on these pages last year, as determined by hundreds of voters. (Good thing the Medical Arts Building’s Walk Score clocks in at 95, making it a certified “Walker’s Paradise.” )
Find updated photos of the 1927 relic in the gallery, and ponder what should come next.
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