New City Buys 19-Acre Site Near Future Microsoft Campus
The developer behind 725 Ponce and the $1B Fourth Ward development has purchased a large site roughly a mile from the future Microsoft campus in Westside Atlanta.
New City Properties has acquired a 19-acre parcel at 930 Marietta Blvd. for $15.7M. The seller is listed as Metro Atlanta Land Group LLC, a company that is registered to Gwendolyn Dean Dykes of Duluth.
The property was once home to a concrete recycling plant, but today remains largely vacant, except for a single empty warehouse building, New City President Jim Irwin told Bisnow.
The site abuts Westside Reservoir Park and is roughly a mile northeast of the Microsoft campus site in the Grove Park neighborhood. The area has become a target of new development in recent years since Microsoft purchased 90 acres from former baseball star Mark Teixeira, who had planned a large mixed-use development near the park called Quarry Yards.
New City plans to break ground on a new mixed-use project at some point, Irwin said. The site falls under the Atlanta BeltLine mixed-use zoning classification.
New City built offices over retail at 725 Ponce, where it signed BlackRock to 120K SF, and included a large office component alongside a hotel and apartments at its upcoming Fourth Ward project, where MailChimp plans to move its headquarters.
But Irwin said he was unsure if New City would build any office at the new 19-acre Westside property.
“We don't yet have a specific plan,” Irwin told Bisnow.
Instead, Irwin said he wants to take a year or more and consult with residents of nearby neighborhoods as well as members of the various Neighborhood Planning Units to hear what they would envision for the site. The final plan will be influenced by the neighborhoods' input, Irwin said.
“I expect to spend over a year connecting with all of the neighboring property owners and neighborhoods, very intentionally, not generating specific plans until we've heard from everyone,” he said. “This is really an opportunity to redeem a piece of land and weave it back into the sort of the network of the neighborhood.”
While Microsoft has yet to release its development plans, the tech giant previously announced that it will not only develop space for its employees, but also a mix of other commercial developments, including affordable housing and retail.
New City previously redeveloped in three warehouses on Defoor Hills Road into loft office in Upper Westside along with Sweetwater Holdings and Wyatt Capital.
