MidCity Real Estate Partners Nominated for Award from Urban Land Institute
MidCity Real Estate Partners is nominated by the Urban Land Institute as a finalist for the award of “Excellence in Town Center Development” for our work on the Alpharetta City Center. Learn more about the project here.
read moreARC’s Developments of Excellence Awards Recognize Community-Enhancing Places
Alpharetta City Center is the beating heart of downtown Alpharetta. Its walkable 26 acres are home to Alpharetta City Hall, a Fulton County Library branch, as well as restaurants, retail, offices, luxury apartments, single-family houses, and 2.5 acres of green space. The project is a result of a public-private partnership whose groundwork was laid 15 years ago when the city of Alpharetta first set forth its goals to build a true downtown through its LCI program. In the years since, it has worked steadily to create City Center from mostly underutilized commercial spaces around the intersection of N. Main Street and Academy Street. The transformation is dramatic. The City Center has replaced an assortment of empty lots and underused buildings with a unified building design that blends seamlessly with the surrounding historic downtown, including a network of bike-ped paths that connect housing to schools, retail, and other amenities. The development is designed around five major green spaces. At its center, the Town Green connects the new City Hall to the restaurants and shops of Main Street. City Center has attracted a great deal of development, such as chef-driven restaurants and residential, retail, and offices — including DataScan, whose headquarters now fill 36,000 of a 45,000 square-foot building. The development has important green touches, too. Pervious surfaces — which help reduce storm-water runoff — make up more than 10 of its 26 acres. This was accomplished by replacing old streets and parking lots with green spaces that house freestanding buildings. In addition, pervious materials were installed wherever possible to mitigate storm-water, and an underground system filters storm-water runoff before it reaches the property’s detention pond. This article was first published by the Atlanta Regional Commission on November 2nd, 2018. To read the original posting of this article, click...
read moreMixed-use development booming in metro Atlanta area
Is Atlanta’s love affair with the car over? If recent mixed-use projects in development across the metro area are any indication, autos may soon become optional. The drive to get out from behind the wheel and walk, bike or hop on public transit is fueling an array of new construction projects with live-work-play themes. While mixed-use developments have changed the metro area landscape in recent years, even more are rising both intown and in suburban communities. Developers are devising projects with retail and restaurant spaces, offices, recreation and residential components. And all include some element of travel that does not involve a car. That fact pleases the staff of the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC)’s Livable Centers Initiative, which has been working toward . “The basic premise of the [LCI] program was to get people out of their cars and create this environment where you can live, work and play in close proximity,” said Sam Shenbaga, ARC’s community development group manager. “That program has been successful throughout metro Atlanta, as we now have about 119 designated LCI areas where we want to create these dense, walkable communities. And it’s been happening as much in downtown, Midtown and Buckhead as Acworth, Woodstock and other outlying suburbs.” Establishing these projects may take longer in some areas, he added. “Midtown has had this idea for a long time,” he said. “But sometimes it’s slower to come to other areas where the idea of doing dense, walkable, mixed income projects might be new.” Still, Shenbaga said he is celebrating the successes. “Since the program began in 1999, vehicle miles traveled per capita has dropped by 13 percent, and while it’s not all from the LCI program, LCI has had a big role in making that happen,” he said. “Twenty-nine percent of commercial development and 69 percent of office development has been in these projects that get people off the roads and walking and biking more. They’re in communities with apartments, condos, grocery stores, parks and bike trails, so people don’t need to get in their personal vehicles for every trip.” ARC identifies two groups behind the push to abandon cars. One is the aging population that wants the lifestyle a mixed-use project brings, particularly the ability to walk to services, restaurants and recreation from a one-story living space. The second group, typically including millennials, is the next generation of workers who want to trade commuting time for communing time. That’s the allure of Alpharetta’s City Center project, a 25-acre redevelopment in Alpharetta’s downtown area that is adding 100,000 square feet of retail and 36,000 square feet of office space, along with apartments, single-family homes, parks and a dozen restaurants. This article was originally published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on August 3rd, 2018 and written by H.M. Cauley. To read the article in its original publication, click...
read moreCrocker Partners and MidCity plan Sandy Springs project along Georgia 400
Developers in Atlanta’s central Perimeter are drawing up plans for more projects, as tenants look to expand while existing office space fills up. The latest ambitions come from a joint venture between Atlanta’s MidCity Real Estate Partners and Florida-based Crocker Partners. The companies want to develop NorthPlace, which could include up to 370,000 square feet of office space. The 3.7-acre site stands at Barfield Road and Georgia 400 in Sandy Springs and just southeast of the new Mercedes Benz USA headquarters. The site has been a target of development for years. Crocker bought it in 2007, just before the downturn. Today, Barfield Road is part of an active corridor connecting Hammond Drive, Mount Vernon Highway and Abernathy Road, an area home to blue chip companies such as UPS, Global Payments, and IBM (ISS). Earlier this year, Mercedes Benz said it was relocating its headquarters from New Jersey to a site on Abernathy. Ashton Woods Homes also plans to convert the 76-acre site around the headquarters into a mix of townhomes, flats, apartments and retail. The development could feature more than 1,000 planned housing units. Anticipating that residential growth, NorthPlace developers have plans for ground floor retail. The site’s density can also be adjusted based on the needs of tenants, and it could accommodate build-to-suit projects from 20,000 to 100,000 square feet. “What makes us different is that we can dial up the density or go smaller,” said Kirk Demetrops, president and founder of MidCity Real Estate Partners. The joint venture has started marketing the property and needs significant pre-leasing before it would launch construction. Warner Summers – Architecture is designing the project. Across the central Perimeter, plans for new projects show how much demand Atlanta’s largest single office district is seeing from prospective tenants — and how much the market’s class A space is tightening. Overall vacancy is the lowest in over eight years, with class A vacancy dropping to 11 percent, according to market data. Roughly 2 million square of tenants in the market have leases expiring over the next two years, Demetrops said. Companies are also expanding. Atlanta Business Chronicle is reporting today Enterprise software maker VMware Inc. (NYSE: VMW) plans to expand its Atlanta-based AirWatch business — a move that would create more than 300 jobs. Palo Alto, Calif.-based VMware is said to be scouting the central Perimeter and north Fulton for at least 50,000 square feet of space. General Electric officials are also expected to tour buildings and sites across Atlanta as the company considers Georgia as a possibility to relocate its Connecticut headquarters. The Wall Street Journal recently reported a decision could come by the end of this year. Big blocks of class A Perimeter office space are drying up, as new development has been limited by tighter lending and rising construction costs. The last speculative office building to break ground in the central Perimeter was almost 10 years ago, according to data from real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield. One of the few class A blocks just became available after Newell Rubbermaid Inc. decided to move its corporate headquarters from one side of Georgia 400 to the other. Developers see an opportunity, especially along Abernathy and 400. Later this year, Hines plans to start a spec office project on 14 acres at Mount Vernon Highway, Abernathy Road and Georgia 400. Cousins Properties Inc., Ackerman & Co., and H.J. Russell & Co. also formed a joint venture to develop a mixed-use project on the same corridor. All this comes as rents soar to...
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