10 Stories That Defined Atlanta CRE In 2025
Atlanta’s commercial real estate sector in 2025 got unusually political.
Between data center blowback and immigration raids, the CRE community often found itself factoring the day’s headlines into future plans.
Atlanta’s CRE scene was also full of intrigue, with a disgraced investor sentenced for embezzling millions to gain a piece of the Buckhead office market and a mystery developer touting an audacious plan for a Downtown Atlanta mixed-use development.
Here are the 10 stories that shaped Atlanta’s commercial real estate in 2025.
1) Data Center Blowback
Throughout 2025, data center proposals kept pouring in and data center power usage kept climbing. Total data center capacity in Georgia was a little more than 1.6 gigawatts in 2021. The current center pipeline and centers in operation in the state is more than 19.6 GW this year.
To meet the runaway demand for electricity, Georgia Power sought approval from the Georgia Public Service Commission to expand the state’s grid capacity by 10,000 megawatts in five years. It’s on the verge of receiving that approval, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
In the past few years, Georgia Power received permission to raise electricity rates several times, and consumers have noticed and complained. The PSC responded in July by freezing base electric rates through 2028.
It wasn’t enough to save the jobs of some of its members, however. In a surprise result, voters ousted two PSC Republican board members and elected two Democrats. It was the first time the Democratic Party had won a nonfederal statewide post since 2006.
Data center anxiety showed up at the local level, with eight communities or counties passing moratoriums on data center development since March.
It’s too soon to know if this pushback will have a lasting impact on data center growth in the state. Georgia Power did say its expected pipeline for new large load economic development projects shrunk in Q3 by 6 GW.
2) ICE Chills International Economic Development In Georgia
In August, Hyundai announced plans to up its investment in U.S. automotive plants to $26B.
A month later, agents from the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement descended on an under-construction $7.6B Hyundai factory outside of Savannah, detaining 475 workers, including more than 300 South Korean nationals employed on business visas.
It was the largest immigration enforcement action in U.S. history, and the raid sent chills across both oceans that caused uncertainty in foreign manufacturing investment in the U.S.
Georgia Tech School of Economics professor Tibor Besedeš said at the time that the raid threatened the $350B in South Korean commitments to the U.S.
The raid forced the Trump administration into damage control mode to allay fears of foreign investors. The diplomatic back-and-forth may have subsided fear and anger at U.S. actions. Earlier this month, Hyundai Motor Company CEO José Muñoz told the Atlanta Business Chronicle it would “increase production capacity in Georgia, beyond what we have already announced.”
3) Office Bifurcation
Atlanta’s office market was like a tale of two cities in 2025. Class-A and trophy office stock saw the best of times: a boost to their leasing and rents. For owners of older Class-B projects, it was the worst of times with anemic demand. Landlords of the best of the best in Atlanta noted rising optimism in the metro office market, especially as they snagged prime leases, including Portman Holdings, which inked a deal with EY in Midtown at its new office project this past August.
For some suburban office landlords, the struggle prompted them to simply tear down office buildings to make way for other projects. Others have taken buzzcuts to values in unloading unwanted suburban office buildings to investors or saw their properties sell off on the courthouse steps for fractions of their original amount. One notable example was the 2.2M SF Piedmont Center campus in Buckhead, which Ardent Cos. lost in June to its lender Bawag group.
4) Y’allywood Studios Call It A Wrap
At production’s peak in Georgia, film companies were producing $4.4B of revenue.
Those were the good old days. An ongoing U.S. film slump has been hammering productions in studio-heavy states like California, New York and Georgia since the end of labor strikes by the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and the Writers Guild of America.
By the close of fiscal 2025, production fell to $2.3B, according to the Georgia Film Office.
With loans coming due, some of the state’s studio owners couldn’t wait any longer for a turnaround. They are signing leases for their spaces to be repurposed for other uses, including indoor amusement parks and traditional warehouses. This month, Athena Studios’ owners in Athens said they want to transform the current studio campus into a more than 1M SF data center, The AJC reported.
5) The Nightingale Saga Ends With Prison Time
Disgraced CRE investor and now-former Nightingale Properties CEO Elie Schwartz learned his fate for embezzling roughly $54M from crowdfunding investors in a failed bid to purchase a major Buckhead office complex: seven years and three months in prison.
The sentence was handed down in May in federal court in Atlanta, capping a two-year-plus saga that left hundreds of investors on the CrowdStreet platform with no recompense.
In 2022, Schwartz used CrowdStreet to raise $54M to purchase the nearly 1M SF Atlanta Financial Center and another $8.8M to renovate the Lincoln Place building on Miami Beach. Instead of holding the proceeds in escrow, Schwartz diverted the funds for personal luxuries.
Schwartz reported to the minimum security Otisville Satellite Camp in New York in July to begin serving his sentence. A receiver for the bankrupt investment entity continues efforts to claw back funds from other parties.
6) Microsoft Cedes Westside Land To The City
Ever since Microsoft announced it was halting plans to transform 90 acres on Atlanta’s Westside into a mixed-use campus, the Quarry Yards site has remained untouched.
But in November, the tech giant announced it would be donating the 22.5-acre site in the Grove Park neighborhood to the city of Atlanta and its Atlanta Urban Development Corp. affiliate. Both Microsoft and Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens at the time said the move was in part to fulfill a promise to set aside a quarter of the Quarry Yard site for community use.
The city has not offered details on its plans for the land, but the trade is expected to be completed by the summer of 2026.
7) The Atlanta Braves Franchise Expands Its CRE Empire
The fourth-place Atlanta Braves swung a home run in April when the organization purchased Pennant Park, a six-building, 763K SF office complex next door to The Battery Atlanta for around $93M from Rubenstein Partners.
With the office space, the Braves Development Co., the real estate arm for the team, also got nearly 2,700 parking spots less than a mile from the Truist Park stadium.
“With relative minimum capital improvements, we anticipate Pennant Park being 90% leased by year-end, a substantial improvement from the sub-85% occupancy the building was at when we acquired it back in April,” Atlanta Braves Holdings President Mike Plant said during a Nov. 5 earnings call.
Plant at the time said 11% of the company’s total revenue to date was driven by its mixed-use developments, including a 56% increase in revenues due to Pennant Park’s acquisition and leasing. The Braves expect to generate $100M in annual revenues from the company's 3M SF in real estate holdings, Plant said.
8) Mayor Dickens' TAD Wishes
Earlier this year, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens floated an idea to extend the life of the city’s various tax allocation districts to fuel affordable housing projects into his next term.
Also known as TADs, these districts levy an extra tax on business and property owners in an area to fund various infrastructure initiatives. Under Dickens’ proposed Neighborhood Reinvestment Initiative, the mayor is seeking to expand the life of the TADs beyond their 2030 expiration and into 2050 and create the ability to fund $5B in projects through the city’s economic development arm, Invest Atlanta.
Dickens is facing an uphill battle. The plan would need the approval of not only the city council but also Fulton County and Atlanta Public Schools, both of which pushed back on past efforts to extend TADs, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. The plan is also facing grassroots pushback from some city residents, the Atlanta Community Press Collective reported.
Earlier this month, the mayor punted the plan for the city council’s consideration into 2026.
9) The Mystery And Money Behind An Upstart Developer Catches Attention
Webstar Technology Group seemed to come out of thin air. A penny-stock company, Webstar announced it was going to buy a prime Downtown Atlanta site called Forge Atlanta to make way for a $756M mixed-use development.
A subsequent investigation by Bisnow found that Webstar and its executives left a corporate paper trail that securities law experts said raised serious red flags, including filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission riddled with spelling errors, executives with unverifiable résumés and a lack of discernible experience with large-scale projects.
Webstar also had a land deal collapse in 2024 for a $650M amusement park in Commerce called Bear Village.
Despite the odds, Webstar announced this week it had closed on the 10-acre parcel, previously reported to be had for $33M. Now, its executives say they expect to line up financing in 2026 for the first phase of Forge Atlanta, which would include a 300-room hotel, 600 luxury condominium units and 60,500 SF of retail and entertainment space.
Develop Fulton, the economic development arm for the county, agreed in principle to support a more than $220M bond that would give Webstar property tax abatements for 10 years, saving the developer nearly $10M in property taxes.
10) Atlanta’s Shifting Brokerage Leadership Landscape
This year saw a sea change among the leaders of commercial real estate brokerage houses in Atlanta.
In the closing days of December, Selig Enterprises CEO Steve Selig announced he planned to retire at the end of the year, turning leadership over to daughter Mindy Selig and nephew Greg Lewis starting Jan. 1. Selig, 82, said he would remain chairman of the firm and co-owner with sister Cathy Selig, according to an Atlanta Business Chronicle report.
Just three months earlier, Chris Ahrenkiel left Selig to take over the Atlanta office for Cushman & Wakefield in September.
In September, veteran Atlanta CRE pro Chris White was named the market leader for office occupier services at Franklin Street. White departed in 2024 as vice chairman of Savills in Atlanta.
In March, Chris Scott left Cresa to head up the Atlanta office of Newmark, taking over for the former chief, Sean Moynihan, who was promoted by Newmark to head up its New York, New Jersey and Connecticut region.
And in September, Transwestern Real Estate Services named Nathan Knowles as the Southeastern market leader from Atlanta, the ABC previously reported. Knowles replaced Bruce Ford, who was named chief operating officer of the brokerage firm a year earlier.
