Turner Buys Aging Downtown Building Near His Penthouse Home

ATLANTA-Why is billionaire media mogul Ted Turner buying a 50-year-old Downtown, fully-leased commercial building several blocks from CNN Center where he maintains a penthouse apartment?

Turner’s purchase, through Luckie Street Properties, has Downtown wags puzzled. Turner isn’t talking–yet. The building is about a block from Centennial Olympic Park, an area of active residential and commercial development.

Luckie Street paid United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta $2.95 million or $62.77 per sf for the Bona Allen building at Luckie and Spring Streets, according to Databank Inc., a locally-based commercial real estate research house. Luckie Street also represented the Turner Foundation in the transaction.

For the near term, the Bona Allen building will continue as office space for current tenants. The main tenant is the Visiting Nurses Health System, occupying about 75% of the rentable sf. On the ground floor are an Atlanta Police station and a restaurant. Carter & Associates had the building on the market for about a year.