Community Corner

Ponce City Market Driving Towards a 2014 Finish

When it's completed in 2014, Ponce City Market will consist of 1.1 million square feet of retail, office space, and residences, including a 50-60,000 square-foot market space.

The recent news that Atlanta mass email marketing service MailChimp will relocate from the westside and take over more than 100,000 square feet of Ponce City Market (PCM), means that the majority of the 450,000 square feet of office space has been filled at the $180 million redevelopment project.

Situated at the eastern edge of the Old Fourth Ward and within a short walk to the Midtown, Virginia Highland and Poncey Highland neighborhoods, the metamorphasis of the old City Hall East building at Ponce de Leon Avenue and Glen Iris Drive continues to evolve in anticipation of its 2014 opening.

When it’s completed, it will consist of 1.1 million square feet of retail, office space, and residences, including a 50-60,000 square-foot market space where chefs and local producers will come together to create a spirited and lively atmosphere akin to Seattle's Pike Place Market.

Take a peek at this video showing the vision for the interior.

With 2014 just a few weeks away, soon commercial units will open at PCM, followed by residences and retail in the fall at the former home to a Sears & Roebuck distribution and warehouse center. Sears discontinued operations at the building in 1986, and four years later the City of Atlanta bought the massive building, which was originally developed in 1926.

Because of its size, only about 10 percent of the facility was ever in active use by the City, which sold the site to Jamestown Properties for $27 million in July of 2011. And now nearly three decades since it was fully functional, the Ponce City Market building is on the verge of a grand revival. How cool is that?

With the project's anticipated completion in the new year, how excited are you to experience and explore the revitalization and redevelopment of this long-standing component of Atlanta’s architectural framework? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.


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