Goat Farm unveils creative hub for key downtown redevelopment site

The first step for turning a barren, Georgia Tech-owned downtown site into a bustling creative and tech hub will be led by a familiar Atlanta name: Goat Farm, a celebrated, multidisciplinary cultural center that recently expanded in Blandtown. 

Goat Farm officials announced today a concept called LOOP—billed as a new downtown nerve center for “creative and technological exchange”—will transform the former Randall Brothers Warehouse building at 665 Marietta St. 

The former warehouse is the last standing structure across a 7.3-acre site Georgia Tech bought for $36 million in 2018 and later cleared. 

The Goat Farm concept will mark the first component for what Georgia Tech envisions as a sweeping, multi-tower redevelopment called Creative Quarter. Like Tech Square and the growing Science Square district before it, Georgia Tech’s goal with Creative Quarter is to expand its campus and link existing portions together, but with a focus on arts and entertainment. 

Plans call for opening LOOP next year—in time for 2026 FIFA World Cup matches that begin in June. The adaptive-reuse building will be anchored by artist studios and a performance hub to foster boundary-pushing, cross-disciplinary work in the fields of contemporary art, performance, music, and design, per Goat Farm officials. 

The official description announced today reads, in part: 

“LOOP will activate the Creative Quarter as both a physical and conceptual platform for creative interchange, intending to connect artists, innovators, students, and local, national, and international visitors in an ongoing dialogue… Powered by Goat Farm, LOOP is a contemporary arts initiative serving as a place to test new ideas and foster experimentation.” 

Anthony Harper, Goat Farm cofounder, called the LOOP project an example of how Georgia Tech and his cultural center are collaborating during the district’s early phases of redevelopment. 

Georgia Tech officials have “recognized, in practical terms, that pairing analytical skills with creative skills makes their students more adaptable, more valuable, and ultimately more impactful after graduation,” Harper noted in today’s announcement.

Leading the redesign of the historic Randall Brothers Warehouse and its interiors will be MALL-Stayner Architects, headed by principals Christian Stayner and Jennifer Bonner, the latter best known in Atlanta for the Haus Gables project in Old Fourth Ward. 

Plans on Marietta Street call for “endlessly reconfigurable elements” and “playful yet refined sculptural interventions that contrast with the building’s industrial character,” per a description. 

“We were inspired by the die-cut profiles of traditional crown mouldings once manufactured in the building,” Bonner, a firm co-principal, noted in the LOOP announcement. “We turned to a large-scale metallic curtain as a sculptural intervention. Free-flowing ripples and loops carve out new spaces, ready to host an evolving spectrum of arts and entertainment programming.”

Other collaborators in the LOOP project are listed as Anava Projects (consulting for national and international arts and design events and opportunities); JJLA (booking for live events and entertainment); and Neda Abghari, Asha Advisory Principal (consulting on local arts, education, and nonprofit events, plus opportunities and partnerships.) 

After selling the Marietta Street property, Randall Brothers relocated its Atlanta facility to an overhauled headquarters building overlooking Atlanta Road near Interstate 285.

Find more context, imagery, and site photos in the gallery above.

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