'Jewel' hotel to join groundswell of investment in South Downtown

A boutique hotel is set to replace a troubled office project on Pryor Street and join a groundswell of South Downtown private investment stretching from Underground Atlanta to the doorstep of Castleberry Hill.  

Mississippi-based The Thrash Group recently paid $16 million for a six-story office building from the 1950s that overlooks the Fulton County Courthouse at 166 Pryor Street SW.

According to officials with Berkadia Hotels & Hospitality, which closed the deal with Atlanta-based seller Access Point Financial, the developer plans to complete a stalled renovation and open the former office property as Origin Hotel Atlanta, the next location of a growing lifestyle brand.

Origin operates other boutique hotels in Denver, Austin, Lexington, and Raleigh.

Atlanta’s Origin Hotel will have 124 rooms (from standard king rooms to suites), a restaurant, bar, and space for meetings and events, according to Berkadia officials. 

The building stands where Pryor and Mitchell streets meet—roughly two blocks east of developer Newport’s revival of downtown’s historic Hotel Row, which won’t include hotel uses. CIM Group, however, is moving forward with a high-rise hotel with 291 rooms in the nearby Gulch, as part of the massive Centennial Yards project.  

Berkadia officials noted as a selling point the Pryor Street property is “highly accessible to public transit.”

Berkadia managing director Kyle Stevenson called the property's sale “a complicated transaction” involving an uncompleted office building that will become “a spectacular boutique hotel” and "a jewel for the downtown Atlanta hotel market," according to an announcement on Friday.

We’ve asked project officials for a construction timeline and for renderings or other images associated with the project but have yet to hear back. According to Fulton County property records, the building last sold in 2016 for $4.9 million.

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