Buckhead Landmark Gets $200 Mil. Investment

The first modern high-rise and tallest office building in Buckhead, a tony Atlanta district, will soon have sister towers. Regent Partners, which bought the Tower Place complex in 1993, is sinking $200 million into new additions for the 1.3 million-sf landmark mixed-used project.

Regent Partners plans to begin construction at the end of this year on the first high-rise. the Regent, a 35-story, luxury apartment tower. On its heels early in 2001 will come Tower Place 400, a 27-story, 585,000-sf, class A office building fronting on Peachtree Road. The towers are scheduled to be completed between the end of 2002 and first quarter 2003.

Built in 1974, Tower Place currently consists of the signature Tower Place 100, a 600,000-sf high-rise office tower; Tower Place 200, a 260,000-sf, low-rise office building; the 60,000-sf American Intercontinental University; a 231-room Double Tree Hotel; a 181-room Courtyard by Marriott hotel; and Tower Walk, a 165,000-sf retail and entertainment complex.

The all-glass Regent apartment building will contain 286 units of which six will be penthouses; a swimming pool and a club lounge. Most of the 2,959 existing high-rise apartments in the Buckhead area have been converted to condos since 1996. The Regent will be the only high-rise luxury complex in this market.

Tower Place 400 will be the tallest office building on Peachtree Road in Buckhead. Office space is at a premium with vacancies hovering at 4.7% in the existing 12 million-sf of office space. Regent is close to signing a lead tenant for the new building. Industry sources speculate the candidates may be either Healtheon/WebMD Corp. or Towers Perrin. Both companies have been looking for large blocks of space. At $26 to $30 psf, rents in Buckhead are among the highest in metro Atlanta.

Regent Partners also plans to develop Tower Place 300, a 250,000-sf, class A office building as part of the complex. While the schedule calls for ground-breaking some time after Tower Place 400 is under way, the signing of a big lease could jump-start construction, industry sources tell GlobeSt.com.