Building boomlet: Projects bring broader boost

State Farm campus: Developer KDC and State Farm said the new corporate campus project will include 2.2 million square feet of office space, 100,000 square feet of retail, restaurant and entertainment space and a 175-room hotel. The first new office tower is expected to open in late 2016.

Centennial Olympic Park area: The new National Center for Civil and Human Rights and the College Football Hall of Fame are expected to become marquee venues for tourists along with the World of Coca-Cola and Georgia Aquarium at the downtown park.

Ponce City Market: Developer Jamestown Properties is in the midst of revitalizing the former Sears warehouse and City Hall East on Ponce De Leon Avenue along the Atlanta Beltline's eastside. The $200 million project includes nearly a half million square feet of office space, 330,000 square feet of retail, and residences.

Buckhead Atlanta: The $1 billion transformation of Buckhead's former party scene and the new vision for the former Streets of Buckhead development, which stalled when the economy crashed. Developer OliverMcMillan is building 370 luxury apartments, 300,000 square feet of space for restaurants and top shelf retailers. A second phase is in the works.

Avalon: This $600 million project in Alpharetta includes 250 luxury apartments, 101 for-sale residences, space for top retailers like Crate & Barrel and Orvis, a movie theater and Whole Foods grocery store. The project also calls for hotels and will have so-called "gigabit" Internet, 100 times faster than most folks have in their homes. A second phase is also planned.

Alpharetta town center: The city plans to redevelop 22 acres downtown, including a park, town square, library and new city hall in the first phase.

Sandy Springs town center: Sandy Springs officials recently picked real estate development firms Carter and Selig Enterprise to build a new complex along Roswell Road and Sandy Springs Circle that include a performing arts center, city hall, green space and retail. "You could talk to most developers right now and they'll say it's an exciting time," said Malloy Peterson, a senior vice president with Carter.

THE GREAT RECESSION, FIVE YEARS LATER

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution brings you comprehensive coverage of the region's economy, including this ongoing look at the 5th anniversary of the government-declared end of the Great Recession. Earlier this month we reported on five metro Atlanta workers thrown into flux by unemployment and changing jobs. On Monday staff writer Dan Chapman chronicled the returning growth of home building in outer counties such as Forsyth and Cherokee. Today,we take the temperature of two key Georgia businesses, banking and commercial real estate. Read them all at myajc.com.

It’s not the go-go days of last decade, but the rattle and thump of jackhammers, saws and backhoes has returned to the metro Atlanta soundtrack.

The new National Center for Civil and Human Rights is finally here and the College Football Hall of Fame is well underway. Two new major league stadiums are in the pipeline.

Master-planned projects in Buckhead and Alpharetta that screeched to a halt during the financial collapse have new owners and plans to open this year. New apartment development is happening so fast, particularly on the luxury end, some observers warn of a bubble.

Tally up all the apartments, offices, shops and warehouses under construction at the end of last year, and the square footage would fill Atlanta’s tallest building more than eight times. That’s about four times the activity the beleaguered metro area saw just three years ago, though still far less than during the pre-recession boom.

Commercial development — and the jobs and tax revenue it generates — are key cogs in the metro economy.

“The symbol of Atlanta is the phoenix, and Atlanta is emerging from the ashes of the real estate depression,” said Ken Ashley, an executive director at real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield.

Not long ago, owners of Union Square and Southlake malls and Bank of America Plaza, Atlanta’s tallest building, handed over the keys when their loans came due and the money came up short. Grand visions of condo towers with names like Trump and CityPlace that were pitched before the Great Recession never materialized.

Technically, the recession ended five years ago this month. In reality the hangover has lingered with metro Atlanta long since, throttling jobs and tax digests.

Bank of America Plaza tumbled into foreclosure in February 2012, the victim of overheated real estate prices and corporate cutbacks that left it half empty. That was nearly three years after the National Bureau of Economic Research said the Great Recession ended.

The Atlanta region lost more than 50,000 construction jobs from the peak in 2006 to the trough in early 2011. Plummeting home and commercial property values ravaged the county and school system budgets.

Industry leaders say the region’s commercial real estate market is stronger today than in years.

New stadiums for the Atlanta Falcons and Braves – totaling about $2 billion — are scheduled to open in 2017. A streetcar line in downtown Atlanta is about to start service. Neighborhoods along the city’s Beltline are heating up with both commercial and residential development.

Meanwhile, corporate expansions and job growth has caused those vacant office towers to slowly fill to the point that developers are dreaming up new ones on sites near Perimeter Mall and in Buckhead.

Two key metrics:

The new commercial activity — particularly inside the perimeter — has prompted Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed to consider selling large city-owned assets such as Underground Atlanta and the city’s Civic Center in hopes they will add to the development rebound.

Larry Gellerstedt, president and CEO of Atlanta-based Cousins Properties, said his company is looking to make new investments here after focusing more attention for the past few years on faster growing markets such as Dallas and Houston. Cousins is starting the second phase of its Emory Point mixed-use complex, a joint venture with Gables Residential near the Decatur university.

The project recently landed an Earth Fare grocery store, and the apartments are nearly fully leased, Gellerstedt said. Cousins is also scouting office towers to buy and recently announced a joint venture with Ackerman & Co. to develop a new office tower near Perimeter Mall. That project would require landing an anchor tenant.

“If you look at any period of time, including the Olympics,” Gellerstedt said, “the amount of development going on inside the loop is historic by any stretch I’ve seen.”

Two projects encapsulated the woes of development in metro Atlanta — the former Streets of Buckhead and Prospect Park in Alpharetta. Stalled by the recession, they’ve been recast and will open later this year under new names.

Streets of Buckhead, taken over and downsized by developer OliverMcMilkan, will open as Buckhead Atlanta beginning in September.

The $1 billion project is still ambitious and will include 370 luxury apartments, the headquarters and flagship store for Spanx and 300,000 square feet of high-end retailers such as Hermes, Christian Louboutin and Brunello Cucinelli.

“Atlanta wasn’t the only city with a failed and stopped project with cranes in the air,” Dene Oliver, the CEO of California-based OliverMcMillan, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently. He said the firm is already planning a second phase, possibly included luxury high-rise condos.

“There were a lot of doubters who said we couldn’t get this done,” he said.

In Alpharetta, North American Properties took over the former Prospect Park and is turning it into Avalon, a $600 million mix of apartments, single-family homes, retail, hotels and offices that will sport restaurants by well-known intown chefs. The first phase, to include the residences, a Whole Foods grocery and retailers such as Calypso St. Barth and Orvis, will open in this fall.

Three years ago when North American scooped up the property, it was an eyesore with an unstable, partially built parking deck. Mark Toro, managing partner for North American in Atlanta, said his group first considered building a typical “lifestyle” center with luxury retailers.

But he and his partners soon released the project needed constant life and the energy of a mixed-use project with residences and hotel guests. Avalon, he said, was designed around hospitality and providing unique restaurants and retailers to create an experience — a level of service to make the property immune to threats such as of e-commerce.

The retail space is 97 percent leased and 5,000 people are on waiting lists for the 101 for-sale residences and 250 luxury rental homes, Toro said.

Toro said Avalon’s next phase could include a speculative office tower built to be ready for future corporate demand. Toro said his partners see a new tower as a critical need in Alpharetta, where office space is tightening.

Toro also said in-town demand is strong. He said the Auburn and Edgewood corridors in Atlanta are the next hot areas for development, thanks in part to the new streetcar system and the popular Beltline.

“No one, including us,” he said, “could have anticipated the demand we’ve seen coming out of the recession.”