Buckhead-based RocaPoint Partners and New York developer Georgetown Company teamed in 2020 to buy Dunwoody’s former Gold Kist headquarters, a 1970s complex bordering Interstate 285 that the poultry company had vacated a decade prior.
Three years later, the modernist concrete structure’s transition to its next life is readily apparent from that interstate—and nearby MARTA trains, too.
Construction that includes additional, timber-built floors is underway at 244 Perimeter Center Parkway in Dunwoody, the centerpiece building of a new mixed-use hub called Campus 244.
The project’s designers, New York-based S9 Architecture, shared with Urbanize Atlanta this week fresh renderings and construction photos showing where Campus 244 stood as of late March.
The 1970s structure and its 12-acre site as seen beside MARTA tracks (left) and Interstate 285 prior to construction. Courtesy of S9 Architecture
Courtesy of S9 Architecture/Winter Construction
As is, the 244 building spans 286,000 square feet across three floors, organized around two light wells. S9’s goal is to reconfigure the modernist structure to allow for better connections to the rest of the campus, blurring lines between what’s indoors and out.
“Through relocating the core and creating a public, 60-foot wide exterior passage day-lit through the lightwells, the experience of the site and building is transformed,” a project rep explained via email this week. “Additionally, S9’s design adds two floors to the building in heavy timber, incorporating multiple tenant and amenity terraces.”
Elsewhere in Atlanta, the firm’s past and present work includes Ponce City Market, the 222 Mitchell project, New City’s 725 Ponce, and the Teachers Village tower proposal downtown.
Apart from being used as a film set in Clint Eastwood’s Centennial Olympic Park bombing movie Richard Jewell, the 13-acre site had seen little activity since 2011—until Campus 244’s ground-breakng last year. Dunwoody city officials rejected a high-rise proposal for the property called Crown Towers several years ago.
In late 2021, the multiphase Campus 244 redevelopment inked a deal for a 145-key Element Hotel to also be built as part of phase one.
We’ve asked for a construction update on where the initial phase stands in terms of delivery and will post any additional info that comes. [UPDATE: 3:45 p.m., April 5: Office tenants are scheduled to move into Campus 244 at the beginning of 2024, the development teams says.]
Courtesy of S9 Architecture
Courtesy of S9 Architecture
Eventually, Campus 244 is expected to span 1-million square feet adjacent to Dunwoody’s MARTA station, near Perimeter Mall, joining a Central Perimeter development boom that aspires to remake the edge city into a more walkable district.
Campus 244 developers have pointed to investments in Central Perimeter from Fortune 500 and 100 companies across the Southeast as reasons why the project makes sense in its location. An added bonus for companies, as developers have noted, is the property’s 1,000 feet of I-285 frontage, lending “unparalleled signage opportunities.”
Along with the ground-up hotel, Campus 244’s initial phase calls for reimagining the Gold Kist offices into five stories of modernized, Class A office space with 15-foot ceilings and a timber overbuild, encompassing 400,000 square feet total.
The S9-designed building will offer large floorplates (90,000 square feet) and post-pandemic features such as touch-free elevators and restrooms, sophisticated HVAC systems, large patios, and operable windows, according to developers.
How Campus 244's central greenspace is planned to greet office workers and hotel guests. Courtesy of RocaPoint Partners/Georgetown Company; designs, S9 Architecture
The new boutique hotel, part of Marriott Bonvoy’s portfolio, will feature a local chef-driven restaurant, lobby bar, and meeting areas that spill out onto a central Campus 244 greenspace. It’ll be owned and operated by Vision Hospitality Group, which runs nine other lodges in metro Atlanta, including the new AC Hotel by Marriott Atlanta Perimeter nearby.
Once all phases are complete, Campus 244 will see 25,000 square feet of food and beverage operations—including names from another RocaPoint and Georgetown joint venture, Forsyth County’s $500-million Halcyon project, officials have said. Plans call for four or five restaurants to eventually surround the central park space.
Along with State Farm’s new three-tower regional headquarters, significant mixed-use projects underway in the area include GID Development Group’s $2-billion High Street and a hipper, more fashionable remake of Perimeter Place called Ashford Lane.
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