The longtime tenant of a Midtown property where Atlanta’s tallest building in decades is proposed has cleared out.

The U.S. Postal Service has closed the Midtown Station and Passport Mega Center at 1072 W. Peachtree Street and moved operations to temporary locations elsewhere in the city.

That 1.1-acre site where West Peachtree Street meets 12th Street, which has been occupied by a USPS office building and its parking lot for well over a decade, was bought by Rockefeller Group for $25 million in 2020. The New York-based developer plans to erect Atlanta’s fifth tallest high-rise on the corner property, according to plans that emerged in November.

A source close to the matter says USPS moved out of the Midtown branch this past weekend and that retail operations will eventually reopen along Juniper Street, on the backside of Selig's 1065 Peachtree Street building. (Rockefeller Group recently partnered with Selig on the 40 West 12th condos, a block from the post office). 

How the U.S. Post Office's building, now vacant, appears at the southwest corner of West Peachtree and 12th streets today. Google Maps

Plans for activating the corner of West Peachtree and 12th streets. Rockefeller Group; Brock Hudgins Architects; TVS

For now, according to a USPS announcement last month, all retail operations and drop shipments for the Midtown center have moved to the Civic Center Post Office location at 570 Piedmont Avenue NE.

Midtown passport operations have transferred to the Atlanta Main Post Office at 390 Crown Road, per the postal service.

A Rockefeller Group spokesperson referred all inquiries regarding the USPS move back to the post office this week and declined to answer questions regarding the 61-story West Peachtree Street development’s status.

Other people associated with the project didn’t respond to emailed questions.  

Permitting records show no recent activity on file for the Rockefeller Group project. It was last vetted by the Midtown Development Review Committee in December, when DRC members were pleased with updates from an earlier incarnation but recommended further design tweaks.

Among the most buzzed-about Atlanta proposals in recent years, the skyscraper could help reshape Midtown’s skyline, especially when viewed from the west.

Northwest view toward Atlantic Station, eclipsing the SkyHouse Midtown apartments to the north, according to 2021 renderings. Rockefeller Group; Brock Hudgins Architects; TVS

The building, as designed by architecture firms TVS Design and Brock Hudgins, would include 350 market-rate apartments and 212,000 square feet of offices.

At the base, roughly 6,600 square feet of retail is planned along West Peachtree Street. An eight-story parking deck with some 850 spaces would be fully screened with translucent glass, project leaders have said.

In terms of sheer stories, the building as proposed would tally the second-most in Atlanta, bested only by Westin Peachtree Plaza’s 73 stories. Atlanta’s second tallest building, SunTrust/Truist Plaza, has 60 stories.

Rockefeller Group’s venture is one of three new towers that entered (or re-entered) Midtown’s development pipeline late in 2021 within a few blocks of each other.

The others are high-rise office proposals from Cousins Properties (887 West Peachtree Street) and Trammel Crow (80 Peachtree Place, called Stratus Midtown).

Collectively, the three projects would bring 117 stories of vertical development.   

• Recent Midtown news, discussion (Urbanize Atlanta)