Atlanta apartment prowess; Peachtree Center; future The Forge vision?

METROWIDE—Apartment construction is continuing at a rapid clip across the U.S., and metro Atlanta remains a top producer, according to a new analysis by national apartment search website RentCafe. 

The Atlanta metro is on pace to complete another 17,512 new apartments in 2025, good for the fifth most in the country, behind the metro areas of New York, Dallas, Austin, and Phoenix, respectively. Atlanta’s apartment outlook puts it well ahead of competing metros in the South, including Miami and Houston, per RentCafe’s findings. 

Zooming in, the City of Atlanta leads the way by a huge margin with 6,359 apartments in the 2025 pipeline (that’s equal to the volume of new construction in the next top 10 metro cities combined). Gwinnett County cities Lawrenceville and Sugar Hill also stand out this year, each with 900 new units expected to debut. 

Overall, the analysis found apartment construction has shifted heavily to what’s defined as the South, spanning from Texas to Maryland. The more than 265,600 new apartments on pace to deliver in that zone this year account for 52 percent of the nation’s total, and Southern metros account for more than half of the top 20 cities this year. As shown here: 

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DOWNTOWN—Any grandiose ideas for what 2.5 million square feet of downtown Atlanta office space (and more) could become? Commercial real estate services company JLL has listed for sale all six towers at downtown’s landmark but vacancy-riddled Peachtree Center complex—alongside the property’s 115,000-square-foot food hall—for an undisclosed price, CoStar News reports. 

The John Portman-designed high-rises stand between roughly 20 percent and 73 percent vacant today, three years after previous owner Banyan Street Capital defaulted on its mortgage and Peachtree Center went to special servicer Situs AMC, per CoStar. JLL says the complex has appraised for $121 million but acknowledged it’s likely to trade at a discount, either piecemeal or as a six-building package deal. 

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DOWNTOWN—A mysterious project rendering depicting a futuristic hub of a half-dozen skyrises lording over downtown Atlanta has sent our inboxes and DMs into a tizzy this week. Could it be the future of the long-planned, crypto-backed The Forge megaproject, or is it hyperbolic, AI-generated nonsense? 

The image appears on a website for token-based Torch RWA, which lists an office address in Midtown’s 1100 Peachtree building. The website describes The Forge, as shown in a variety of conflicting visuals, as a 10-million-square-foot mixed-user that would be “an architectural testament to visionary urban transformation” and “not merely a structure, but a masterful reimagining of metropolitan living, where exclusivity meets accessibility in perfect harmony.” (Finally, someone's cracked the code!) 

Webstar Technology Group, which describes itself as a pioneer in the “tokenization of real estate assets” with a goal of redeveloping “urban and resort landscapes through smart design, community focus, and cutting-edge technology” announced in July it had put the 10-acre The Forge site under contract. 

The Forge is being designed by Nelson Worldwide, “the visionary force behind Atlanta landmarks such as The Battery and the St. Regis Hotel,” notes the promotional site. 

A Nelson Worldwide rep tells Urbanize Atlanta the design lead on The Forge project is out of the office this week and unavailable for comment. Emailed inquiries to Torch RWA were either unreturned this week or bounced back as undeliverable. The company’s website describes it as “Tokenized. Dividend-Paying. Backed by $3 [billion-plus] in premium developments.”

We asked Atlanta readers in a poll last month if they believed The Forge would move forward as planned, and 350 respondents were split between optimistic and decidedly not. Recommended reading is Bisnow Atlanta’s recent deep dive into Webstar’s practices and the origins of The Forge and a sibling, $650-million concept up in Commerce called Bear Village. 

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• Is Atlanta’s hot streak ending—or are red flags overblown? (Urbanize Atlanta)