As the WFH zeitgeist increasingly goes the way of weekend Zoom calls with high school friends, a Buckhead development is transforming a long-idle, high-profile site while vowing to raise the bar on upscale office life.

Promising a “new brand standard” in Buckhead, Highwoods Properties and Brand Properties formed a joint venture to build a 135,000-square-foot office project at 2827 Peachtree Road in the Garden Hills neighborhood that’s recently started going vertical.

Located just north of Jesus Junction, the site had been fenced-off and vacant for seven years—and the subject of neighborhood pushback on earlier development designs. Two longstanding businesses immediately south of the construction site, Fellini’s Pizza and La Fonda Latina, remain open.  

A recent drone photo of the 2827 Peachtree Road site's foundational work and the beginnings of vertical construction, next to operating restaurants at left.

CBRE marketing materials have described the highly amenitized 2827 Peachtree project as “Buckhead’s ultimate business platform,” with “statuesque architecture [and] state-of-the-art features and amenities.”

Those perks will include a motorcourt with valet parking for office tenants, on-site car detailing, elevated patio spaces with WiFi, and private balconies, per CBRE.

All told, the offices are being positioned to offer “the prestige of a Buckhead location and the ease of Garden Hills access,” as marketers have put it. Like other pandemic-era office ventures around Atlanta, some floors will have direct access to a parking deck to minimize the need for elevators and other entryways.

Plans for the Peachtree Road facade, retail, and restaurant spaces in Garden Hills. CBRE

Typical office floorplates will span 27,500 square feet, in addition to 10 executive suites. At street level, expect 1,500 square feet for retail shops and 11,000 square feet for two chef-driven restaurants.

The site is the former location of Garden Hills Shopping Center, a charming Peachtree strip that once housed Garden Hills Cinema, Fantasyland Records (for more than three decades), and a multitude of other businesses. Earlier proposals to redevelop the property were lightning rods for controversy, after a fire had rendered the shopping center uninhabitable in 2013. The site had been vacant—save for a tall fence along Peachtree Road and a few trees—ever since.

The fenced-off Peachtree Road property in question, at right, as seen prior to construction in 2020.Google Maps

Prior to the project’s groundbreaking earlier this year, development officials said the $79-million venture had already been 62 percent pre-leased to multiple tenants, but none of them were specified.

Plans call for delivering the project in the third quarter of 2023. Have a closer look in the above gallery.

• Buckhead news, discussion (Urbanize Atlanta)