Site of planned Buckhead Village tower shows signs of life

Paperwork recently filed with the City of Atlanta has stirred hope among some Buckhead residents that days could be numbered for an unsightly block of boarded-up buildings neighboring a ritzy shopping and dining district.  

The development team that’s been planning a luxury mixed-use, high-rise project at 321 Pharr Road in Buckhead Village for three years filed for permits this month to demolish nine structures on site. 

Those vacant buildings stand along Pharr Road, North Fulton Road, and Grandview Avenue, according to a Dec. 2 application for a commercial demolition permit. 

The filing is under review with Atlanta’s Department of City Planning, and demolition permits have yet to be issued, records indicate. 

New York-based developer Tidal Real Estate Partners first brought plans before Buckhead development officials in early 2023 for a posh new apartment tower studded with public art, with an impressive motor lobby and small village of retail at the base.

Tidal officials haven’t responded to a request for an update on where the project stands, to include information on demolition work. A similar request submitted Sunday to city officials and Buckhead development arbiters produced no additional information. 

A promotional website relays that the 321 Pharr project is “being designed and developed by Tidal REP, and the investment sits in Tidal GP Fund II.” It also promises a “new benchmark” for multifamily properties in the city.

Encompassing nearly a full block, the site is home to an array of smaller buildings where School of Rock, Mediterranean restaurant Lily White, a cleaners, a salon, and other businesses operated. It’s located a block from Jamestown’s Buckhead Village district, between the Alexan Buckhead apartments and landmark restaurant Atlanta Fish Market. 

Months after the businesses vacated the site, the buildings have remained boarded up, triggering complaints to Urbanize Atlanta from neighbors who were concerned about blight and squatters last year. “It seems like a huge shame that so many local businesses were displaced for this project, only for the developers to turn around and leave the property in horrible shape,” one nearby resident commented in September 2024. 

The block has since been encircled with construction fencing topped with barbed wire. 

A code complaint filed in April aimed to alert city officials the properties in question had been boarded up for longer than six months. Records indicate a citation was issued in May, but for how much isn’t specified. 

Tidal’s approved plans call for a 21-story upscale building, which would top out at 225 feet, the maximum height allowed in Buckhead Village. Its 406 apartments would continue a surge of new residential options—both under construction and proposed—from developers banking on walkability to luxury shopping and a multitude of eateries as selling points.

According to plans Tidal brought to Buckhead officials in 2023, rents at the Pharr Road project would range from about $2,800 to north of $5,000 monthly, with no smaller studio apartments in the mix. Renderings indicate the 18,540 square feet of planned retail would be separated into four slots along Pharr Road and North Fulton Drive around the corner—activating two streets. The 17,000 square feet of public space would nearly double what the district requires with a development of such scale, project leaders have said.  

Tidal reps said in 2023 they hoped to deliver the building this year. 

The block is part of Buckhead’s Garden Hills, a leafy, quiet residential neighborhood that extends south toward Midtown. 

Neighbors previously said the site has been boarded up and idle since roughly January 2024. 

Find more context and images for 321 Pharr Road in the gallery above. 

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