With the Atlanta Braves’ Opening Day mere weeks away, the team’s ballpark now sits in the shadow of Cobb County’s tallest building, which in terms of construction and baseball metaphors is rounding third base.

German engineering giant thyssenkrupp Elevator topped out its 420-foot Innovation and Qualification Center in October, marking the tallest elevator test tower in the Western Hemisphere and one of suburban Atlanta’s highest skyrises. (The twin King and Queen towers in Sandy Springs, for context, stand about 130 feet taller.) 

How thyssenkrupp's new three-building North American headquarters meets Interstate 285. Jonathan Phillips/Urbanize Atlanta

Like the rest of its three-building, $200-million North American headquarters at The Battery Atlanta, thyssenkrupp expects to open the Gensler-designed tower this year. Roughly 900 employees are expected to eventually fill the complex, translating to 650 new Georgia jobs, officials have previously said.

Thyssenkrupp unveiled its plans for a headquarters near the Braves’ Truist Park (then SunTrust Park) in 2018. Ground broke in January 2020, and the tower’s slip-form construction by general contractor Brasfield & Gorrie was completed in just 56 days. The 18-shaft tower will be used to test new concepts, including high-speed elevators and ones that operate with two cabins per shaft, per company officials.  

But the tower’s also meant to function as a billboard of sorts.

“To showcase the elevators at the test tower,” as thyssenkrupp reps noted in a press release, “the IQC will feature a complete glass exterior façade facing The Battery Atlanta, allowing millions of visitors annually to view operations that are normally hidden behind concrete walls in rural locations.”

Original plans also called for the top floors to be reserved as event space, with views for miles, but the company has more recently been mum on that.  

The tower remains too much of a construction site for media tours, reps recently told Urbanize Atlanta, so we summoned the drone for this visual journey of the transformative Cobb County district. Have a look in the gallery above, and expect more photo-driven spotlights of large-scale metro Atlanta development in the near future. 

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