At prominent building near Piedmont Park, owners ponder what to do next

The familiar “Cantoni” sign that glowed next to Piedmont Park since 2003 is gone, but what exactly will become of the furniture showplace’s former digs isn’t yet known.

As eagle-eyed readers have pointed out, the buildings that housed Cantoni Furniture and Illuminations Lighting, where Cooledge Avenue meets Monroe Drive in Virginia-Highland, are surrounded by construction fencing and in the midst of transition into…. something else.  

Combined, the properties span more than 39,000 square feet. Atlanta’s marquee greenspace is across the street, and the BeltLine’s Eastside Trail trailhead is half a block to the south.

The property is owned by Mimms Enterprises, a Roswell-based commercial real estate company with a portfolio of shopping center holdings dotted around North Georgia.

Sarah Gretzmacher, a Mimms’ business development associate, said the company has “a few things in the pipeline” for the former Cantoni site and hopes to have ideas narrowed down within the next four months.

“We’ve done some demolishing of the interior, and that’s as far as we’ve taken the project, until we figure out who our tenant or tenants will be,” Gretzmacher tells Urbanize Atlanta.

The combined properties last sold for $7.5 million in 2019, according to the most recent tax records on file with the city.

Building permits indicate the former showrooms will be gutted, with all interior walls, electrical, HVAC, and lighting removed, leaving little more than the sprinkler system.  

Cantoni has relocated to a new showroom west of Midtown, where Brady Avenue meets Howell Mill Road. Illuminations Lighting now operates in Buckhead near Atlanta Decorative Arts Center.

Seeing such a prominent intown property morph into another use should be interesting. Any brilliant ideas for what might work?

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