Wood-Novare Breaks Ground on Estimated $500M Mixed-Use Project

The project will have 406 condominium units atop 13,000 sf of street-level retail and 24,000 sf of office space at Piedmont and Peachtree roads, the heart of Buckhead's financial district. The condo units will be ready for occupancy this summer with a price range from $160,000 to $300,000.

"This will be one of the few places in Atlanta where, from your home, you can walk to work, Marta and over two million sf of high-end retail," says Wood Partners director Mark Randall. Randall says Realm is "designed to appeal to young professionals seeking a premier resident with top-notch service, advanced technology features and modern design in an urban setting."

A Wood Partner representative tells GlobeSt.com the JV already has a tenant committed for half of the office space and is waiting for the contract to be signed before identifying the company. Realm is at 3324 Peachtree Road.

Novare-Wood paid Atlanta-based Pope & Land Enterprises Inc. $7 million or $3.5 million per acre for the prime two-acre Buckhead site, as GlobeSt.com previously reported. At about $80.35 per sf, the Novare-Wood purchase tops the partners' September 2003 purchase of a 3.76-acre tract at West Peachtree and Alexander Streets in Downtown Atlanta.

At that time, Novare-Wood paid locally base Peachtree Portal LP/TCW Realty Advisors $8.2 million or $2.18 million per acre which equates to about $50 per sf. Novare-Wood's $80.35-per-sf price even topped what area brokers previously believed to have been the highest land price recorded in metro Atlanta--the $62.61-per-sf price Daniel Corp. of Birmingham, AL paid for a 3.3-acre parcels just north of the developers' site at West Peachtree and Alexander Streets. Daniel paid $9 million of $2.73 million per acre, local brokers intimate with the transaction tell GlobeSt.com.

The Realm mixed-use site is next to the Grand Hyatt Atlanta hotel and across from the InterContinental Atlanta Buckhead Hotel which opened in November 2004 on Peachtree Street. Construction on the Realm mixed-use project follows the developers' ground-breaking in December 2003 on a 27-story, retail-oriented condominium tower on the 1.8-acre site of the former Atlanta Cabana Motor Hotel in Midtown.

In August 2003, Novare-Wood broke ground on a 21-story apartment complex on Pharr Road in Buckhead. And this spring, Wood Partners alone plans to break ground on an estimated $70 million, 282-unit, 19-story condominium and retail community in Cobb County's Wildwood development. The 14 stories of condos will sit atop four levels of parking.