Hundreds of Health Technology Jobs Head to Ponce City Market

OLD FOURTH WARD — A New England-based health technology company could bring as many as 700 jobs to the Ponce City Market development.

Athenahealth Inc., based in Watertown, Mass., would take 60,000 square feet of space in the former City Hall East building at 675 Ponce de Leon Ave. Eventually, the company would expand that to 120,000 square feet within five years, according to the Atlanta Business Chronicle.

The company hasn't made a formal announcement, but the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, which cited an unnamed source who pegged the jobs number at 500, reported Athenahealth is expected to make a public statement within days.

Athenahealth already has a presence in metro Atlanta with 100 workers at Anodyne Health Partners, an Alpharetta-based medical coding and business intelligence software firm it purchased in 2009, the Business Chronicle reported.

Workers from the Alpharetta facilities are expected to relocate to the Old Fourth Ward site, according to the publication.

The deal is another significant milestone for Jamestown Properties, which purchased the massive building bounded by the BeltLine trail, Glen Iris Drive and Ponce de Leon and North avenues — for $27 million in July of 2011.

The company — and its Atlanta subsidiary, Green Street Properties — planned $180 million redevelopment of the 16-acre site includes retail, office and residential projects.

Those components, coupled with parking and green spaces, will comprise about 1 million square feet of space at the site, which had been the former Sears, Roebuck & Co. building before becoming a city-owned property.

Last month, Curbed Atlanta reported Jamestown was shifting the residential component from condominiums to rental apartments because the company projects mortgage lending on condos will remain tight, making condos hard to sell.

Courtesy of Immovable Media, see the attached YouTube videos depicting construction progress at Ponce City Market.