From tires to spires

Jarred Schenke

May 1, 2008

The former Ford automotive plant in Hapeville is now a derelict, producing nothing but ghosts and silence. But for one of Atlanta's mega-developers, the plant will become Atlanta's next mini-city, an intensive commercial array of hotels, retailers, corporate offices overlooking the nearby runway of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, and even distribution warehouses.

Someday.

For now, Jacoby Development is expected to operate the city's newest parking lot, with 4,000 spaces for travelers destined for the new international terminal at Hartsfield, says Jim Jacoby, president of Atlanta-based Jacoby Development.

"Our focus is really on the new international terminal," Jacoby says. "We'll be the only parking [lot] ...for international parking." Parking is a quick way for Jacoby Development to garner some cash flow on a massive piece of land that, for all practical purposes, is a ghost town.

If any developer can transform a former auto plant known for its Taurus and Sable vehicles, it's Jacoby. The man and his company have quite a pedigree in transforming former industrial wastelands into mini metropolises.

Jacoby is the one who developed the initial phases of Atlantic Station, the mixed-use mini-city just off of 17th Street in Downtown that seems to keep morphing year after year. Before selling off its interest in the project, Jacoby had developed two office towers, a major retail and condominium center and had lured Ikea, a popular home furnishings retailer that is choosy on its locations.

Evolving plans

Jacoby has been busy since the inception of Atlantic Station, with the developer's sights set upon similar mega-projects in Hawaii and Florida. But as talk of the closing of the Ford plant in the industrialized suburb of Atlanta was coming to the fore during the early 2000s, the company returned its attention to its hometown.

In March, Jacoby Development contracted to purchase 122 acres of land, including the monolithic Ford plant, for an undisclosed sum. And so far, Jacoby says his plans for the property are "evolving."

"The fact is that's it's a great piece of real estate," he says. "We have a lot of ideas and thoughts, but we're looking at something a lot bigger than just trying to create another office district in Atlanta. There's substantial valuation to the parking, and we will only be building as we have a tenant."

Jacoby hopes to break ground on the first stages of the project in 2009.

The other side of the city

Ford isn't the only plant shuttering in Atlanta, nor the only one targeted for redevelopment. On the opposite side of the city, overlooking I-285, is the General Motors plant, which, after years of struggle, finally scheduled to shut operations by September 2008, according to Chris Lee, a spokesperson for the Detroit automaker.

So far, GM has been completely mum on the fate of the plant, other than to say it plans to work with the locality to find alternative uses for it. For now though, "it's an operational facility; nothing is for sale," Lee says.

That hasn't stopped the city of Doraville, where the plant is located at the intersection of Buford Highway and I-285, from envisioning what could become of the GM plant.

"Nobody knows who's going to get it," says Mayor Ray Jenkins. "We have a proposed map that would be mixed-use."

The city recently tapped Georgia Tech to plan what could become of the property, and as expected, mixed-use projects topped the list. And for the other portions of former GM property, that's already been realized, including a BrandSmart retail store and the under-development Peachtree Pavilion, a shopping center anchored by Korean grocery chain Super H Mart.

Jenkins says it's extremely important to his city that something becomes of the former plant. "We'll still get the real estate tax [from GM], but we'll lose the taxes on the equipment and the employees," he says. "If it goes a long time, it'll hurt us."

But some experts say the time of the mega project has come and gone. Not that big dreams and bigger realities aren't possible, it's just that such developments are going to take much longer to see the light of day. And the reason can be summed up into two words: credit crunch.

"Massive mixed-use developments, particularly redevelopments of former industrial zones, are going to slow down in the near term," says Michael Beyard, a senior resident fellow with the Urban Land Institute, a real estate think tank based in Virginia.

Beyard, whose specialty is retail and entertainment developments, says the redevelopment of major industrial complexes – including automotive plants – isn't unprecedented. The latest was the transformation of a shuttered car facility in San Jose, which eventually became the Grand Mall of the Bay Area in the mid-1990s.

An unavorable market

But any mixed-use project will find the current financing market unfavorable, particularly if the developer is pushing any of the blacklisted residential components, like town homes or condominiums, Beyard says.

The current credit crunch isn't necessarily going to destroy either Jacoby's or Doraville's plans, "but it will slow it down," says Tad Leithead, senior VP of development with Cousins Properties.

"I doubt they can put anything together right now given the financial chaos," Leithead says.

Leithead should know. He was instrumental in helping Cousins secure the development of Terminus at Peachtree, a mixed-use (albeit office-tower focused) development at the corner of Peachtree and Piedmont roads in Buckhead. The project already is underway with a second 500,000-square-foot office tower.

In his estimation, most mixed-use projects on the scale of Atlantic Station could see a development cycle of 25 years. For example, the Galleria office complex in Cobb County began with a land sale in 1978, and 30 years later, there are six office buildings, a hotel, a convention center and a major retail mall – and still a pad site available for another one or two office towers, Leithead says.

"In today's environment, it's going to take a while to get it going," he says. "You still have several opportunities at Atlantic Station."

Of course, the better the concept, the less time from planning until realization, even in this environment, Beyard says. "The success depends on the strength of the market at that point and the strength of the development concept."