A year and change after it broke ground, the transformative Midtown Union project is taking shape and going more vertical by the day, lending an idea how mixed-uses will meld with a tree-lined central boulevard and a whole lot of garage parking.
Consuming nearly a full city block in the subdistrict’s northern reaches, Midtown Union will most prominently see a glassy, 26-story office tower rise over 17th Street, offering 612,000 square feet where investment management firm Invesco will stake its global headquarters.
Fronting Spring Street will be an 18-story apartment building with more than 350 units, neighbored by a 12-story Kimpton hotel (230 keys) along West Peachtree Street.
Spread around the bases will be 32,000 square feet of retail, with more than 1,900 parking spaces stacked and wrapped throughout.
Between the latter two buildings and the offices will be Arts Center Way. It’s described as a tree-lined, pedestrian friendly thoroughfare speckled with specialty shops and restaurants—and it could be the most distinctive feature of a mega-build that developers say puts the human experience first.
The internal retail corridor at night. Midtown Union; designs, Cooper Carry
MetLife Investment Management and Granite Properties officially broke ground on the Cooper Carry-designed project in December 2019.
It’s more recently taken lumps as the recipient of a $57-million tax break from Fulton County’s development authority over the next decade. As with incentives extended recently to Norfolk Southern and BlackRock, critics have lashed Invesco's tax break as “corporate welfare,” while Invest Atlanta and other governing boards have called the handouts necessary in a competitive business-recruitment environment between major cities, as the Saporta Report relayed in November.
Midtown Union is rising on what largely functioned as surface parking for years. Extended bike lanes are expected to wrap around the site, connecting lanes on Spring and West Peachtree street for nondrivers, when construction finishes next year.
All Midtown Union components detailed in the above gallery are scheduled to deliver in the fourth quarter of 2022.
• Blocks of Midtown bike lanes debut; quickly mistaken by drivers for long parking spaces (Urbanize Atlanta)
• Midtown Union (site)
