The Atlanta City Council is looking to push a steep tax penalty on real estate mogul John Dewberry for stalling work on a skeletal office tower seen as an eyesore by Midtown residents.
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The city council on Monday unanimously approved a resolution to urge Mayor Andre Dickens to impose a blight tax against the owners of the Campanile tower at 1155 Peachtree St. If the city takes action, Dewberry Group’s general tax bill for the property could skyrocket from $91K to $2.3M, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
It would also represent one of the most significant properties to be hit with the blight tax program, which Atlanta first launched in 2024. It allows Atlanta to tax the landlord of a vacant, blighted property up to 25 times the current rate. In 2024, the city identified 3,000 blighted properties, Atlanta Civic Circle reported.
“Any blighted property is unacceptable. Even more so, a structure of this size sitting stalled for so long at such a prominent intersection,” City Council Member Matt Westmoreland said in a text to Bisnow. “It’s my hope that the property owner will remedy the situation immediately, or sell the parcel to someone who will.”
Dewberry didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on the resolution. Dickens and the city didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on next steps.
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Dewberry, a former Georgia Tech quarterback and one of Atlanta’s best-known commercial real estate figures, bought the tower in 2010 for $36M in a distressed sale, after BellSouth vacated the building following its merger with AT&T. By 2017, Dewberry embarked on a full-scale redevelopment after securing a $186M loan.
But the project was beset by delays, including the pandemic, which shut down construction. The tower has since remained unfinished, with the facade removed and the interior exposed to the elements, despite renewed overhaul plans in 2022.
In an online petition signed by more than 2,500 people, some Midtown residents have called the stalled project an eyesore and expressed frustration over deteriorating sidewalks around the construction site. In May, the city’s Planning Department declared the tower an abandoned construction site and said an exposed fence allowed access to the construction site and was unsafe.
Last year, Dewberry told Bisnow in an interview that despite the criticisms, crews had been doing construction work on the inside of the building and that he had negotiated leases with three companies from outside Georgia that would ultimately occupy 135K SF of a redone tower. He didn’t disclose the identity of those companies at the time.
