RICKEY McGee moved into his condo at Midtown’s Mayfair Renaissance in 2021, where his balcony affords him a front-row seat to what he considers the biggest eyesore in the neighborhood and a civic disgrace: Dewberry Capital’s delayed gutting and expansion of the 1980s Campanile office high-rise.
The project began construction just before COVID-19 lockdowns and yet remains, as one city official describes it, reminiscent of a war-torn, dystopian urban scene. If Atlanta had a Times Square, a singular hub of art, commerce, and high-value real estate, the Campanile’s location at 14th and Peachtree streets could be it. And there the building has stood—in a state of slow, unsightly, skeletal undress—since Midtown high-rise dwellers were whooping and ringing bells to support pandemic first-responders. Neighbors and Midtown commuters now decry the project as a 21-story slap in the face.
The controversial developer behind the Campanile’s remake, John Dewberry, counters that it’s a complex work-in-progress in an exceedingly difficult environment for office projects, held back further by his desire to make it great. Also, it’s not the Campanile any longer. It’s been rechristened “The Midtowne.”
But at this point, as high-profile tower renovations go, the exposed-bones building is a true anomaly for intown Atlanta, possibly without precedent on such a scale.
McGee says he’s united with his neighbors in disgust for the state of The Midtowne building and frustration with the pace of its conversion, its glacial pre-expansion demolition. Beyond raw aesthetics, they fear it’s a drag on property values that wreaks havoc on rush-hour traffic at street level. They feel it deserves fines levied by the city when construction milestones aren’t met, plus an intervention by the Midtown Quality of Life organization. All of this is occurring (or isn’t occurring) in the most rapidly developing subdistrict in metro Atlanta—and one of the…
Read the full article here
