The Midtown site where one of Atlanta’s grandest, most amenitized skyscrapers was pitched, modified, and promised ad nauseam appears to be headed for the courthouse steps.
Six years after its dynamite-induced groundbreaking, the long-stalled No2 Opus Place property in the heart of Midtown is scheduled for a Nov. 7 auction on the Fulton County Courthouse steps, according to filings this week.
The lender, Miami-based real estate debt fund Benmark Capital, provided No2 Opus Place developer Olympia Heights Management with a $40-million, short-term bridge loan to refinance the project last year. Exactly what’s changed since isn’t yet clear; we’ve reached out to Benmark officials for comment and will post any additional information that comes.
Benmark’s two-year loan was originated for the 98 14th Street property in August 2022, according to foreclosure filings this week.
Olympia Heights could not be reached for comment today and has not responded to inquiries in recent years.
An early rendering shows No2 Opus Place when it was designed to be taller—a 730-foot glass statement piece to rival the condo towers of Manhattan and Tokyo. Plans were later scaled back. Perkins+Will/No2 Opus Place
Benmark’s director of originations, Joe Moser, told the Commercial Observer last year the loan was meant to cover Opus Place pre-development costs at the 4-acre site. Benmark officials had traveled to Midtown and came away impressed with recent commercial activity, pointing to Google’s headquarters at nearby 1105 West Peachtree and a “construction boom” as evidence that jobs were flooding into the Midtown submarket and more luxury housing was required.
Olympia Heights, the New York-based company that first unveiled Opus Place as a titanic, three-tower vision in 2014, came to Benmark after receiving notice from its previous bridge lender that its loan would not be extended. Benmark officials told the publication they visited the Midtown property, underwrote the loan, and executed it within 30 days.
But confidence in Opus Place ever beginning construction had waned to point Atlanta real estate observers derisively coined the project “Nopus.”
The $40 million in financing wasn’t a construction loan, but if it was, it would have covered only a fraction of the cost to build Atlanta’s tallest condo tower. Project heads estimated in 2016 (ancient history, at this point) the initial 74-story tower alone would require $300 million to build, necessitating a substantial number of condo presales.
The project's ceremonial groundbreaking was held just before Christmas in 2017, followed by years of empty promises and blown construction timelines.
By 2018, the brokerage attempting to sell the deluxe homes reported more than 50 units had gone under contract, priced between $400,000 and $12 million—the latter an unheard-of price for Midtown to this day.
The most recent, scaled-back plans for Opus Place called for a 53-story, mixed-use tower totaling 1.8-million square feet with commercial and retail space included. Building permits show no activity since 2020, and the unsightly property has largely been idle in recent years, save for a quick spate of groundwork spotted in early 2022.
Olympia Heights later tried to sell off part of the site. The company was also hit with a lawsuit in 2021 from Perkins + Will architecture firm for allegedly not paying invoices for design work totaling roughly $800,000.
The project's main pool would have dwarfed those at other new Midtown buildings. ArX Solutions/No2 Opus Place
Soil testing activity at the 14th Street site in February 2022. Submitted
No2 Opus Place’s bonkers amenities called for two pools, an IMAX screening room, a 40th-floor golf simulator, and an onsite “Lifestyle Curator” to advise residents on how to live their best Atlanta lives.
A $3-million sales center for Opus Place condos materialized onsite but little else ever did. So the project's tallest component to be realized was the full-scale model in that sales center—a luxurious mock condo with 10-foot ceilings.
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Depressing as it may be, November foreclosure filings involving closely watched intown development properties don’t end there.
As Bisnow Atlanta reports, Miami-based lenders BridgeInvest intend to foreclose on a significant portion of Newport RE’s South Downtown holdings next month, including parcels the German firm had begun developing into new uses.
Filings indicate 18 properties are in play, ranging from a parking garage and small commercial buildings to parts of Hotel Row. Newport officials early this year said they’d accumulated more than 50 parcels and lots in the district. In July the company announced it was cutting bait, leaving the South Downtown market, and offloading all of its holdings to seasoned Atlanta developers Braden Fellman Group. How potential foreclosures could impact that sale isn’t yet clear.
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