Crescent, Williams File Plans for Multimillion-Dollar Projects

John A. Williams, founder and former chairman of Post Properties Inc. and currently president of locally based Grove Street Partners and three other development firms, plans a 170,000-sf hotel to be built under a 120,000-sf condominium complex and a 160-unit seniors housing development on a 1.7-acre parcel at Peachtree and Stafford roads in the affluent Buckhead district, eight miles north of Downtown.

Crescent Resources LLC of Charlotte, NC also has chosen Buckhead to develop a 20-story, 500,000-sf office tower behind the 820,000-sf Phipps Plaza shopping center. In 2001, Crescent had also planned an office building in the Cumberland-Galleria submarket but shelved the project after deciding the market wasn't ready for new product, area brokers familiar with the plans tell GlobeSt.com.

Crescent and Williams paid top dollar for their development sites, as GlobeSt.com previously reported. Williams' dirt holds the distinction of being the most expensive in metro Atlanta and possibly the entire Southeast, researchers and consultants who monitor daily courthouse filings, tell GlobeSt.com.

Last August, Williams' company paid local developer David Songy and his Songy Partners firm $10 million, or $5.89 per acre ($135.04 per sf), for a 1.7-acre parcel adjacent to Dante's Down the Hatch restaurant and across Peachtree Street from the nearly 1.6-million-sf Lenox Square mall.

Also in August, Crescent purchased a prime three-acre surface parking lot between Phipps Plaza and its Lenox Road movie house for $$7.2 million or $2.4 million per acre ($55.10 per sf).