Dilweg Buys Downtown Atlanta's Centennial Tower

ATLANTA—Centennial Tower, a 652,092 square-foot office tower in Downtown Atlanta, just traded hands. Dilweg Companies, a commercial real estate investment and management firm based in Durham, NC, acquired the office asset from Jackson Corporate Real Estate.

Centennial Tower is a 36-story, class A office building in the heart of Downtown Atlanta at 101 Marietta Street. The office building sits one block from the nationally renowned Centennial Olympic Park.

“When it comes to the Atlanta office market, the aphorism 'a rising tide lifts all boats' is especially true for submarkets such as Midtown and Downtown,” Travis Deese, senior research analyst at CBRE Atlanta, tells GlobeSt.com. “Buckhead and Central Perimeter have led the pace for the Atlanta market with regards to dwindling vacancy and rising rents over the past 24 months.”

Centennial Tower was built in 1975 and renovated in 1998. The building is 75% occupied at the time of sale with major tenants such as Turner Broadcasting, Peer 1 Hosting, Oracle, and the Atlanta Hawks.

Dilweg plans to invest more than $7 million to upgrade the buildings' operating systems, common areas and tenant amenities to reposition the property. The firm has awarded the leasing and management of Centennial Tower to CBRE.

“Overall we are very bullish on downtown Atlanta, and we believe Centennial Tower is well-positioned to capitalize on the area's continued revitalization,” says Anthony Dilweg, CEO of the Dilweg. “The Atlanta office market is booming right now. We have acquired more than 1.2 million square feet of value add office space in the last week alone and are diligently looking to add to our Atlanta portfolio over the next 24 months."

The purchase of Centennial Tower brings Dilweg's Atlanta office holdings to more than 1.5 million square feet. The firm closed on Royal Centre, a 630,000 square foot office portfolio in Alpharetta, last week in a joint venture with New York Life. Dilweg also owns two other suburban Atlanta office assets, Barrett Summit in Kennesaw, and The Paddocks in Johns Creek.

“As rents in these submarkets continue to rise at an exponential pace, tenants have begun to venture in other Central Business District markets,” says Deese. “Downtown offers the same public transit infrastructure and class A properties with substantially lower rents than their Midtown and Buckhead counterparts. Currently, asking rates for class A space in Downtown is an average of 32% lower than either Midtown or Buckhead. Downtown is expected to grow all around going into 2016 as more and more tenants catch on to the value that is Downtown.”