By Derek Major
The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) has tapped a group of Black-owned companies for the redevelopment of Bankhead Station, the last stop on MARTA’s Green Line.
The New York-based Peebles Corporation, Exact Capital, and Bolster Real Estate Partners, based in Bankhead, will transform the station into a mixed-use development. The new complex will include 495 multi-family housing units, a hotel, offices, retail, and workshare space.
According to Peebles Corporation Executive Vice President Donahue Peebles III, Atlanta has been a location they’ve been looking at and are excited about the project.
“We’re excited to do this with MARTA, we’re trying to do more with MARTA and hopefully, this is the first of a number of projects we’re doing,” said Peebles III. “Atlanta has been a target market for us for a long time, it’s a pro-business pro-Black city that’s been growing significantly and we’ve pursued a number of different Avenues to enter the marketplace.”
Peebles added that in addition to the apartments, office space, and hotel, the Bankhead Station redevelopment will also include an increase in parking spaces and more than an acre of green space for residents to relax and play on. Peebles also added that more than 140 apartments will be priced at affordable rates for middle-income earners.
The MARTA redevelopment will revolutionize the Bankhead Station from an empty station after work hours into a vibrant and active community that relies on public transportation and hyper-local entertainment.
“This is a transformational project in a number of ways,” Peebles told BLACK ENTERPRISE. “The first is that we’re able to create real cultural vibrancy on site and have people there in a live, work, play environment so that there are no dead times like the downtowns in some cities where outside of the nine to five there’s not a soul on the streets, which is certainly something the city of Atlantic can benefit from as public transportation becomes more and more the preferred mode of transportation as the population grows and traveling infrastructure struggles to keep up.”
Peebles added it’s too soon to determine a construction timeline for the space. However, other companies are announcing plans in the area. Microsoft announced plans to build a campus in Grove Park, less than two miles from Bankhead.
Peebles Corporation Chairman and CEO Don Peebles, who is also involved in the Affirmation Tower Project in New York City and the Angel’s Landing skyscraper in Los Angeles, told BLACK ENTERPRISE that Black economic empowerment is driving new development and construction in the South.
“We’ve been looking at Atlanta for decades, since the early 1990s and we’re going to focus much more on Atlanta and other areas in the south because I think when it comes to Black economic empowerment they’re more progressive than the so-called progressive cities like New York City,” said Peebles. “So we’re really excited to be there.”
MARTA began taking bids for the station redevelopments early last year and is currently soliciting bids for additional redevelopments at Midtown’s Arts Center Station and a multi-phase development at Edgewood/Candler Park Station.
Credit: Black Enterprise
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