Nearly four years after it was initially proposed, an office tower project appears to be moving forward—albeit in an altered state—amidst a Midtown corridor transforming with new development.
Cousins Properties is expected to bring plans before the Midtown Development Review Committee today for a 26-story office building that would climb from a long-cleared site where West Peachtree Street meets 8th and 7th streets.
Plans call for 408,000 square feet of offices and 14,000 square feet of retail, according to the Midtown DRC agenda.
Cousins’ initial plan for the 8th@West tower, as drawn up by Pickard Chilton and HKS architects, raised eyebrows for its striking, blade-like design among a forest of boxier new buildings. But that earlier incarnation called for substantially more square footage and five additional stories.
The building's distinctive blade-like feature, as illustrated in previous renderings. Courtesy of Cousins Properties
According to Midtown DRC officials, the building is expected to include a nine-story parking podium with 786 parking spaces accessed from 8th and Cypress streets. Retail would be placed along West Peachtree at the northwest and southwest corners of the site, with a shared lobby in between.
A central greenspace would bisect the block, allowing for a pedestrian corridor through the site, while an existing one-story building at the property’s northeast corner would be repurposed for restaurant or retail use, per the new plans.
The cleared site in the 800 block of West Peachtree Street, as it appeared in March. Josh Green/Urbanize Atlanta
When originally pitched in the spring of 2018, the project was predicted to be Atlanta’s tallest office tower in a decade. A few blocks north on the same street, the office component of Selig Development’s 1105 West Peachtree complex—Google’s future Midtown headquarters—now stands 31 stories.
The proposal’s website has been disabled, but marketing materials on Cousins’ website still depict the 31-story building as initially proposed.
The Daiquiri Factory, a cleaners, and Sonic Mobile offices previously occupied by site, but last year Cousins razed those buildings and fenced the property.
The site in March, looking south toward downtown. Josh Green/Urbanize Atlanta
About four blocks south of Cousins’ site on West Peachtree, a row of new office high-rises includes Portman Holdings’ Coda, the two towers of Anthem Technology Center, and Norfolk Southern’s recently unveiled Atlanta headquarters. Projects underway just north of Cousins' site include Toll Brothers’ 36-story residential venture Momentum Midtown.
Also on the Midtown DRC docket this evening are updated applications from two more significant tower proposals: Trammell Crow Company’s 30-story Stratus Midtown, and Rockefeller Group’s 61-story residential project.
The latter proposal—also on West Peachtree Street—would be Atlanta’s tallest new building in almost three decades.
• Recent Midtown news, discussion (Urbanize Atlanta)
