Downtown Atlanta may get bio corridor
Atlanta’s economic development agency will commission a feasibility study for the project — located between Georgia Tech and the Georgia World Congress Center — that could generate thousands of high-tech jobs and gentrify the neighborhoods of English Avenue and Vine City.
The project, an expansion of the 11-acre Technology Enterprise Park near Georgia Tech, could also attract renewable energy, defense, electronics and communications companies.
The redevelopment is an attempt to turn “brownfields into high-tech greenfields,” said David Hartnett, vice president of bioscience and technology for the Metro Atlanta Chamber. Bioscience and technology are key areas of focus for the state, which is marketing a dozen counties surrounding Atlanta as the “Innovation Crescent.”
The 100-acres “is an under-utilized real estate asset in the Innovation Crescent that could be a jewel to attract knowledge-based companies to metro Atlanta,” said Gregg Simon, manager of business engagement at the Atlanta Development Authority (ADA), the city’s economic development arm.
The mixed-used development, which could include a combination of light manufacturing, research and development, office, retail and housing, would be comparable to University Park at MIT, a 2.3 million-square-foot, mixed-use biotech park in Cambridge, Mass., Simon said.
Transforming a redevelopment of such scale from imagination to reality will take years, if it ever gets off the ground.
The six-month study, expected to be commissioned in February, will examine need, the viability of the location and estimated project costs.
The roughly $250,000 study is financially backed by the ADA, the Metro Atlanta Chamber, Georgia Tech and The University Financing Foundation Inc.
One of the biggest headaches with developing mega-projects involves acquiring land from multiple owners.
In this case, however, the 100 acres are owned by a handful of landowners, many of whom are public entities, such as the Atlanta Housing Authority and Georgia World Congress Center.
Even so, getting buy-in from the project’s stakeholders will be a challenge because each has its own mission and priorities for the real estate it controls.
For instance, the Housing Authority’s mission isn’t to create jobs, but to develop low-income housing, Simon noted.
“We’re an interested partner,” said John Majeroni, Georgia Tech’s executive director of real estate development. “But, we need to make sure this works financially for everybody.”
The project will require financial support from philanthropic foundations and the public and private sectors.
“It’s proven that these developments can be financed,” Simon said, citing similar research parks in Florida and Baltimore.
Technology Enterprise Park, a joint project between Georgia Tech and the University Financing Foundation, presently provides 173,000 square feet of multi-tenant laboratory space in two buildings and will ultimately include four buildings offering a total of 600,000 square feet of space, two parking decks and a supporting research facility.
The tech park is home to CardioMEMS Inc., a Georgia Tech spin-off , and established companies such as Altea Therapeutics Corp. that want access to university researchers and specialized equipment.
“If we were able to expand the park, that’s even more companies that we can spin out and more companies that we can attract from out of town, out of state,” said Stephen Fleming, a vice provost at Georgia Tech.
Having an economic development master plan and site in place would help recruit life sciences companies to Georgia, said Charles Craig, president of Georgia Bio, a nonprofit that promotes the state’s biotech industry.