Photo tour: Where South Downtown's painstaking rebirth stands now

BY and large, the old blocks just south of Five Points MARTA station have held stubbornly to a dispiriting, ghost-town feel for decades. In recent months, however, that’s given way across much of the neighborhood to the clanging noises and steady optimism of a massive, complex, and extremely expensive construction zone. 

This part of Atlanta—some of it walled off and entombed since Jimmy Carter’s presidency, touched by nothing but rats—is teeming with life, with new people. Most of the newcomers, at this point, are wearing hardhats. But to hear the entrepreneurs and designers behind South Downtown’s rebirth excitedly tell it, the pace of changes and array of new faces is going to start rapidly accelerating in coming months, as if an alarm clock is jolting awake buildings and parking lots across more than 10 blocks that have been slumbering too long. 

Like its neighbors Underground Atlanta and Centennial Yards, South Downtown isn’t just racing to capitalize on FIFA World Cup 2026’s predicted global bonanza next summer (more than 100,000 hotel rooms are already booked), its aiming to morph into a front porch to the festivities Atlanta can be proud of. And then it wants to stick around, strategically expanding over several future real estate cycles, cementing itself as a unique district where what’s very old feels, to an extent, new again. But for now, it’s all a bit messy.   

“The groundswell is coming,” said the upbeat CEO of South Downtown, Jon Birdsong, an Atlanta Tech Village veteran who shifted his career’s focus in early 2024 from Buckhead to a place that’s decidedly not Buckhead. 

Like the tech entrepreneur who heads the village and South Downtown, David Cummings, Birdsong has emerged as one public face for the neighborhood’s metamorphosis. And the groundswell he’s referring to is this: By the time the first World Cup whistle blows in June, South Downtown expects 10 new restaurants to have opened on streets where few traditionally have. Those will run the gamut from Delilah’s Everyday Soul and Japanese-American fusion joint Bottle Rocket (both on Hotel Row), a standalone El Tesoro with a big patio hangout, and Broad Street BBQ and other concepts on what’s largely been a boarded-up block. Smorgasburg Atlanta, the next outpost of a popular open-air food festival in other major cities, is set to start enlivening a newly paved Forsyth Street parking lot in a matter of weeks. 

Elsewhere, at the northernmost point of construction activity nearest to Five Points, South Downtown’s first foray into actual places for people to live is shaping up at 85 Peachtree St., a stately five-story building from 1899 that was Atlanta’s first department store. Birdsong says those 26 units will likely be short-term rentals for the World Cup “to get a little sugar high,” before transitioning to more traditional loft apartments. As he laid out in a recent, costs-breakdown column that would make any rational investor’s palms sweat, the apartment conversion alone is a $28-million endeavor—without the considerable expenses of financing costs and building additional parking—and the prospects of it actually turning a profit soon are slim.  

“To all of us, it seems so obvious that if we build housing, people will come. It’s just really expensive,” said Birdsong. “Housing is one of the things that keeps us up at night: How do we get more of it? And how do we recycle the capital as much as possible? We’re going to have a lot of amazing retail and restaurants here, and to make it a 24/7 neighborhood, we have to have housing.” 

Which begs the questions: With 6 acres of parking lots in the South Downtown portfolio, why not start there? Why hassle with adaptive-reuse housing at the outset? 

“The problem with doing that is people would be moving down to a neighborhood with empty, dark buildings that have been sitting unused for decades,” said Kevin Murphy, South Downtown’s head of development. “Why would anyone want to move to a new-construction, typical Atlanta building surrounded by empty storefronts?

“The idea of putting this investment in now,” Murphy continued, “trying to restore [buildings] back to their glory and beyond, is to create a place that’s full of character, exciting opportunities, where restaurateurs want to be in these spaces, more than commodity spaces. Putting great restoration in begets a higher sense of quality for the entire neighborhood.” 

To help gain a better understanding and paint the picture of what’s happening with key parts of South Downtown’s 57-building holdings now, we toured under-construction areas with development officials on the rainy evening of July 31. What follows are tour photos, commentary, and informational tidbits. 

Prior to heading out with umbrellas, Lucas Roberts, South Downtown’s head of architecture design, issued a word of caution: “These buildings were on their eighth life—I mean, they were coming down,” said Roberts. “If they weren’t done now, this was the last instance to be able to save this 1900s building stock.” 

Come along to see just what he means. 

…

RIGHT now, priority number one at South Downtown is Project Elle, where it’d be tough to throw a rock and not hit scaffolding, traffic cones, fresh plywood, and other telltale signs of construction. 

^^ The project is an L-shaped collection of more than 25 buildings that begins at Ted Turner Drive/Mitchell Street and bends around to Broad Street and up to Five Points, where a $230-million renovation is underway at MARTA’s central transit hub. On Broad Street alone, according to Murphy, six major contractors are at work daily, hustling to meet delivery schedules across just a block and ½. 

The spine of that Broad Street work will be a city-led streetscape project that aims to upgrade blocks between MARTA’s Five Points and Garnett stations prior to Atlanta's World Cup. 

^^ Among South Downtown's first completed facets is Atlanta Tech Village-Sylvan on Hotel Row (at left), along with fresh retail additions Spiller Park coffee and Crates ATL record store. In authenticity-starved Atlanta, the historic street almost has the air of a movie set erected on some suburban backlot. But empty facades these are not. 

^^ Looking west from Hotel Row, the first ground-up new towers at Centennial Yards (apartments at left, hotel at right) and Mercedes-Benz Stadium lend a modernistic contrast to South Downtown's century-old stock.  

^^ A peek into the lobby of Atlanta Tech Village's downtown location, which Birdsong says will likely serve as a pop-up space during World Cup hoopla. The former Sylvan Hotel's floor tiling is original. 

^^ From the street, the revived façade of circa-1910 Hotel Scoville is deceiving. “Some buildings are more mush than building,” said Bryan Capps, South Downtown project manager, who struck down the idea of a hardhat tour by saying “absolutely not.” 

A Rolling Stones music video and RoboCop 2 scenes were filmed here, but the cost to restore the project was recently estimated at $14 million—a prohibitive number that's likely increased since, said Murphy. 

“In the next cycle or the one after that,” he said, “it will make economic sense to build an incredible boutique hotel right here.” 

^^ Just east of Hotel Row, at 140 Forsyth St., this repaved lot will start transitioning from Atlanta Tech Village parking to Smorgasburg on Saturdays and Sundays in October. Expect 55 weekend food vendors and a beer garden, where housing will likely rise in the future. 

“This allows us to have really great activation down here, while we’re doing long-term planning,” said Murphy. “Get people down here on the weekends and have them understand the neighborhood.” 

^^ Back on Mitchell Street, construction of MARTA's first bus-rapid transit line (foreground), a five-mile loop between downtown and the Beltline's Southside Trail in Peoplestown, is shown alongside South Downtown restoration work.  

^^ At left is 185 Mitchell St., one of South Downtown’s oldest buildings (1870s at least, per Capps) is being remade into two two-bedroom apartments and offices, with retail (possibly a diner) at street level. “This is as mixed-use in Atlanta as it gets,” said Murphy. 

Here's how it's expected to look when finished: 

^^ El Tesoro's future standalone space on Mitchell Street, where construction permits were granted by the city on the day of this tour. 

Below is how the restaurant and its patio are expected to look and function, in conjunction with a new plaza space made from a surface parking lot, come next year: 

^^ Heading north on Broad Street, toward Five Points station, these formerly bricked-over buildings are becoming roughly 3,000 square feet of offices with potentially a cocktail bar at bottom, which would overlook the new plaza across the street. 

^^ The most drastic changes in South Downtown today are happening on Broad Street, just south of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. 

^^ This Broad Street building has grappled with longstanding issues from invasive trees, including a root that was growing completely through the structure and out, requiring crews to remove pallets' worth of bricks.

“There’s a huge amount of brickwork to get it all put back together,” said Roberts. “These are complete and full restorations. You could have built three, four, five times the amount of building for the expense and time required to bring these back.” 

^^ Where the barbecue concept is being built out on Broad Street. Birdsong said lease negotiations are ongoing with several potential tenants on both sides of the street. “These are all unique, boutique, local, and ambitious entrepreneurs and restaurateurs," he noted, "who really want to put a stamp on the Atlanta culinary scene.” 

^^ “There’s about a dozen retail spaces on this block, going down to the corner, and six are signed up and starting design to be open for the World Cup,” Murphy recapped. “The second floor will be individual office suites for companies that grow out of the [Atlanta Tech Village]… They can have their own address here.” 

Here's a fresh preview of what could be in store on Broad Street: 

^^ The block of Peachtree Street just south of Five Points paints a more idle picture for now, at least from the street. South Downtown crews recently finished installing a new roof on the landmark, 1907 M. Rich Building at 82 Peachtree St. (center). Design plans to convert the building to 63 residential units, likely after phase one work concludes, are nearly finished, per Murphy.  

^^ At 85 Peachtree St., where the 26 loft apartments are underway, this 3,200-square-foot, street-level space is being converted to “one massive retail restaurant opportunity.” The building next door (81 Peachtree St.) is currently being hollowed out to serve as this space's courtyard and a public paseo linking Peachtree and Broad streets.

A separate, smaller retail space fronting Broad Street is also in the works at the back of this building. 

^^ These mysterious steel beams near the Broad Street section of the building could have been associated with MARTA’s construction next door five decades ago, but nobody’s sure. 

^^ Upper floors of 85 Peachtree St. are being fitted out as apartments ranging from studios to two-bedrooms. “These windows, the ceiling heights, these are going to be the one-of-a-kind, Tribeca-style lofts that people in Atlanta don’t think we have,” said Roberts. 

^^ The upper floors of the former department store building, according to South Downtown estimates, were unoccupied for 50 years.  

“As we’ve found through multiple design iterations and construction and discovery, the buildings kind of want to be what they were originally,” said Capps. “If it was an office or department store, it definitely wants to be that, so shoehorning residential units into these old buildings is proving pretty challenging." 

^^ Developers called an audible in the construction process and decided to install this shared deck at 85 Peachtree St. atop what was going to be a roof. It affords unique downtown perspectives today. 

“We’re pretty confident we’ll be able to find 26 people who want to move down here,” said Murphy.  

“No new parking,” added Birdsong. “That’s why MARTA is so important.” 

^^ Where the 81 Peachtree Building (right) is becoming a shared courtyard space for the apartments and retail. 

^^ Future apartment views to the M. Rich Building across the street. 

^^ Behind the combo of 81/85 Peachtree St., this massive open space will become a courtyard off Broad Street, with a new concrete and cobblestone patio. Birdsong and company aren’t big on bandying about project renderings, but suffice it to say the vision for this aspect of the district, just steps from MARTA’s main hub, is compelling. 

“We’d just rather show versus tell,” Birdsong said. “We don't want to over-promise, under-deliver.” 

^^ Heading back toward Hotel Row, the tour passes this parking garage at the corner of Forsyth Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. Birdsong said nearly $1 million has been poured into the historic 1950s structure—it was featured in pictures of 1960s civil rights sit-ins happening around this block—in the form of safety and security upgrades, such as lights, cameras, gates, and new doors.

^^ We conclude back on Hotel Row, which takes on a different character when up-lighted at night. 

“We’re making the early investments now, those big critical investments,” said Murphy, in summary, “to make this a great, cool neighborhood where people want to be.” 

[CORRECTION: 5:06 p.m., Aug. 12: Information in this article that was incorrectly attributed to other sources has been corrected as coming from Capps during the tour.]

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