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As the city’s sixth-tallest building, Georgia-Pacific Center’s planned conversion highlights how weak office demand is incentivizing building owners to reconsider how to make the most of their high-rises.

The company declined to disclose the project’s anticipated budget or other financing information. Georgia-Pacific project lead Suzanne Maynard said the development team “will be exploring all incentive programs that may make sense for this project.”

ExploreDevelopers explore reusing metro Atlanta’s aging office towers

Downtown Atlanta has been trying to redefine itself beyond just an office community. Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said Georgia-Pacific’s plans match those revitalization efforts.

“This transformative redevelopment is a significant step in moving Atlanta forward, turning an important block in the heart of the city into a vibrant and welcoming destination that breathes new life into downtown,” he said in the release.

A lively Peachtree Street

Georgia-Pacific Center is a fixture of one of downtown’s premier office corridors.

It’s located on Peachtree Street near the city’s hotel district and adjacent to Peachtree Center and Woodruff Park.

Clark Dean, executive managing director with real estate services firm Transwestern, who is consulting for Georgia-Pacific on its project, said a redeveloped tower could extend energy from bustling Midtown into downtown.

“A thoughtful mixed-use project of this scale on Peachtree (Street) promises to launch a long-awaited renaissance for our city’s most important main street business district,” Dean said in the release.

The project will include roughly 125,000 square feet of space to be leased by retail, restaurant and entertainment tenants. The proposed central plaza — roughly the size of two hockey rinks — is an amenity designed to encourage gatherings.

The project also includes more than 2,100 parking spaces, and is located next to the Peachtree Center MARTA station and an Atlanta Streetcar stop.

Beyond just an office

Georgia-Pacific is a private company owned by Koch Inc. that has employed thousands of Atlantans at its tower over the decades, but its workspace needs have dwindled with time.

For five financial quarters in a row, the amount of available office space in metro Atlanta has broken records. The region ended June with roughly a third of all office square footage empty or otherwise available for rent, according to real estate services firm CBRE.

Georgia-Pacific Center’s conversion will preserve about 600,000 square feet of office space, which will be anchored by Georgia-Pacific and Koch’s Atlanta operations. Currently, more than 3,000 Georgia-Pacific employees are based in Atlanta. The amount of office space both companies will use and how much will be available for other companies to lease haven’t been finalized.

Georgia-Pacific assembled an in-house development team to lead the effort. In addition to Transwestern, it’s also partnering with architect Rule Joy Trammell + Rubio, retail broker Healy Weatherholtz, civil engineering firm Kimley-Horn, interior design firm Studio Saint and preconstruction contractor Brasfield andamp; Gorrie.

Georgia-Pacific expects to break ground in summer 2025 and complete the conversion by the fall of 2027.

Future of downtown

This story is part of an occasional series by the AJC that looks at the future of Atlanta’s downtown. Several high-profile developments are poised to bring billions of dollars into the city’s core while it continues to grapple with the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic and a challenging real estate financing market. Atlanta’s downtown will also garner international attention when soccer’s World Cup comes to town in 2026, providing a deadline for the city and downtown stakeholders to make promised improvements.