Peebles To Debut In Atlanta With Major Redevelopment Of MARTA Station

Peebles Corp. has reached a deal to redevelop a major MARTA station on Atlanta’s Westside, the firm’s first project in Metro Atlanta.

But it won’t be the last, Peebles Chief of Staff Donahue Peebles III, the son of company founder and CEO Don Peebles, told Bisnow in an interview this week. 

“This is not only us planting a flag in this market. This is us putting both feet down and saying, ‘This is where we're going to stay,’” Peebles said. “I can't wait to make Atlanta one of the big tentpoles of our organization.”

Peebles was selected by Atlanta’s transit agency last week to redevelop the 5.5-acre Bankhead MARTA Station to include 495 apartments, office, retail space, a hotel and more than an acre of green space, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Peebles is leading a development team that includes New York-based Exact Capital, Atlanta-based adaptive redevelopment firm Third & Urban and Bolster Real Estate Partners.

Plans call for the developers to set aside 148 units for low-income residents as well, an “incredible opportunity to provide affordable housing and other community amenities convenient to transit,” MARTA CEO Collie Greenwood told the AJC last week.

Peebles said the opportunity for his firm, one of the most prolific minority-owned commercial developers in the country, came during a conversation with Bolster founder Donald Washington at a Washington, D.C., real estate event last year soon after Peebles lost its bid to redevelop Atlanta Housing’s Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center facility. Tishman Speyer was selected initially but abruptly withdrew from the project earlier this year.

Peebles said he saw the redevelopment of a transit station as a better opportunity for the company’s Atlanta debut. The station, located off of Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway on Atlanta’s Westside, is close to the newly opened Westside Reservoir Park and a future corporate campus for Microsoft. 

“We saw Bankhead MARTA that is more fitted to our specialty, quite frankly,” he said. “This was right up the fairway for us.”

Peebles has developed numerous projects along the East Coast over the years, including the 400K SF 108 Leonard St. residences in New York City, the Courtyard by Marriott Washington Downtown/Convention Center hotel, and the 200K SF Lincoln office building and the 675K SF Residences at the Bath Club, both on Miami Beach. 

While the developers have yet to reveal their specific plans for the MARTA station redevelopment, Peebles said it will be an urban, mixed-use project. 

“We’re not thinking of this as a suburban park-and-ride,” he said. “Everything around transit-oriented developments is going to come with scale. Multifamily housing is the backbone for any development like this.”