How a long-vacant corner in the northern blocks of downtown could be repurposed for Atlanta visitors is coming into clearer focus. 

Officials with Atlanta-based BCA Studios Architects have recently shared renderings depicting how a dual-branded hotel project could look and function at 524 West Peachtree St., between a major hospital and the Connector freeway. 

Hotel uses have been pitched for the relatively tight, .46-acre corner site—where the 1920s Rosser Building was demolished more than six years ago—for a decade. 

According to BCA Studios, the project will include Georgia’s first Motto by Hilton hotel adjacent to a TownPlace Suites by Marriott, both of them operating independently. Plans call for 381 rooms total, plus a rooftop restaurant and coffee shop at street level. 

Looking north across the two-brand proposal into Midtown. BCA Studios Architects

The 524 West Peachtree St. site where a 1920s building was razed six years ago. Google Maps

The architecture firm counts offices in Atlanta and Gainesville, and its portfolio includes numerous hotel projects around the Sunbelt, including multi-brand high-rise hospitality developments.

The site is situated between the Connector and Emory University Hospital Midtown, directly south of a 3,000-space parking garage that city planners once hailed as being “beautiful” before it debuted in 2021. 

Next door to the west is historic Baltimore Block, a row of 1880s landmark buildings considered Atlanta’s first apartments.  

We’ve inquired with developer Horizon Hospitality for a construction outlook this week, and we’ll update this story with any additional details that come. Building permit filings show no activity since September, when the project initially came to light. 

A Special Administrative permit filing from last year indicates the hotel project would include just 19 onsite parking spaces total, when 384 are allowed. (Parking decks are located next door and across the street to both the east and south.) Per the filing, 45 bicycle parking spaces would also be in the mix. 

Property records indicate the site sold for $8.4 million to an Alpharetta-based LLC called Atlanta Hotel Development in 2023. 

How the West Peachtree Street hotel project would stack up next to a newer, large parking garage just to the north. BCA Studios Architects

Google Maps

The West Peachtree Street site was formerly home to the Rosser Building, named for an architecture firm based there for decades, until it was demolished in 2018 to make way for a 12-story, dual-branded Marriott hotel that didn’t move forward. Ditto for another hotel proposal that had been put together a couple of years earlier.

The site's former structure was designed by prominent Atlanta architect A. Ten Eyck Brown for an automobile distributor, and it was once considered part of the city’s “Automobile Row,” a chain of distributors and dealerships. Following its automobile uses, the building served as the headquarters for Eastern Airlines. In the 1980s, Rosser architects moved into the building, occupying it until 2012. Abandoned and in desperate need of repair, the building was sold in 2015.

Since before the COVID-19 pandemic, the Motto by Hilton brand has been trying to crack into the Atlanta market as part of the Waldo’s development in Old Fourth Ward, which remains delayed more than three years after initial phases of construction launched.

Looking south across the site today toward Centennial Olympic Park. Google Maps

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