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Crane watch: Tech Square tower begins ascent over Midtown (atlanta.urbanize.city)

submitted 7 months ago by UrbanizeAtlNewsBot@yall.theatl.social to c/atlantanews@yall.theatl.social

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Crane watch: Tech Square tower begins ascent over Midtown Josh Green Mon, 03/18/2024 - 08:18 A Midtown project more than four years in the making is starting to visibly come out of the ground, expanding Georgia Tech’s footprint in Atlanta’s new high-rise epicenter.

Situated at the northwest corner of West Peachtree and 5th streets, infrastructure work for the block-sized Technology Square Phase 3 project is now above ground level, beneath two construction cranes.

Tech Square—an education, retail, and dining district—opened its initial phase in the early 2000s. Considered the final phase, the current 828 W. Peachtree Street expansion project has been in design or undergoing site preparations since 2019.

One goal is to activate streets with retail and student activity, creating a more cohesive urban district.

The wide 5th Street sidewalk today, where the project's The Porch facet is planned. Josh Green/Urbanize Atlanta

How Phase 3's The Porch facet is expected to look and function. Eskew Dumez Ripple; RJTR; Georgia Tech

Phase 3 will include two buildings totaling 416,500 square feet, across the street from The Biltmore House on West Peachtree Street.

The block in question is also bounded by Spring and 5th streets, and Biltmore Place. It’s one block north of Tech Square’s Coda, a John Portman and Associates-designed office tower.

Named for philanthropists Penny and William “Bill” George, the 18-story George Tower will be home to the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, in addition to other programs. The second building, the 14-story Scheller Tower, will house Tech’s graduate and executive education programs in the Ernest Scheller Jr. College of Business, according to Georgia Tech.

Another facet will be called The Porch, a place meant for socializing and sharing ideas. It’s designed as a nod to traditional Southern architecture, with huge kinetic doorways that fully open, blurring the line between indoors and outdoors.

According to architecture firm Eskew Dumez Ripple, the two buildings will be tied together by a central, communal zone and pathway that “continues through the building form, truncating at the podium and [spilling] into a monumental gathering space.” Georgia Tech officials previously said the project will also include an underground parking deck.

Where infrastructure for Tech Square's third phase has come out of the ground between Spring and West Peachtree streets. Project officials have said an unspecified amount of buried parking will be located here. Josh Green/Urbanize Atlanta

The 828 W. Peachtree Street site in the context of Midtown blocks. Google Maps

The lower floors of Phase 3 are scheduled to open for occupancy in January 2026, with upper floors delivering later that year, project officials have said.

To set the stage for Tech Square growth, two low-rise buildings fronting West Peachtree Street were razed in 2021 for an interim parking lot. The eastern side of that block was converted into a temporary campus “flex area” for additional parking and greenspace to host outdoor concerts, food trucks, and pop-up restaurants.

Later, a “groundbreaking” ceremony for Phase 3—attended by Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, University System of Georgia Chancellor Sonny Perdue, and other dignitaries—was held back in October 2022. But development didn’t begin in earnest until September last year.

Two cranes lord over the intersections of 5th and Spring streets in Tech Square today. Josh Green/Urbanize Atlanta