Report: Midtown packed on another 2,200 residences in 2024

Josh Green

Mon, 12/09/2024 – 13:46

Atlanta’s champ for explosive vertical growth over the past dozen years and counting is reporting another strong year—and projecting more boom times ahead.

Midtown Alliance, a nonprofit coalition of business and community leaders, has taken stock of development described as moving at “a torrid pace” again in 2024, when another new project of significant scale delivered, on average, every two months.

Those projects are adding to $10 billion in private development that’s has been invested over the past six years alone in the 1.2-square-mile Midtown Improvement District, or what’s generally considered the neighborhood’s commercial core.

Throughout 2024, six major developments were finished and opened, notably adding another nearly 2,200 living options to the subdistrict and boosting Midtown’s status as a residential district, according to Midtown Alliance’s year-end tabulations. (Alliance leaders reported earlier this year that roughly 60 new people were moving into Midtown every week.)

A zoomed-out view over Piedmont Park in late May as The Meadow grass was still recovering from Atlanta Jazz Festival 2024. Urbanize Atlanta

New high-rise entrants to Midtown’s apartment market this year included Momentum Midtown (70 total stories), Emmi Midtown (31 stories), Loria Ansley (28 stories), and Society Atlanta (also 31 stories).

The number of new residences tallied in 2024 is the second most for a 12-month period in Midtown history, and almost all of them are apartments, as opposed to for-sale condos, per Midtown Alliance. (The last condo project to come online in Midtown was the 40 West 12th building, which started selling 64 units in pandemic-challenged 2020; new product there is still for sale.)

Collectively, the six developments that came online in 2024 added another 65,000 square feet of retail space to Midtown’s streets.

That includes a restaurant component at Portman’s Ten Twenty Spring building declared finished last week—a 530,000-square-foot Class A venture that will likely be Midtown’s last spec office building in coming years.

Overview of core Midtown development over the past six years, with the recent proposal neighboring The Varsity and the under-construction, two-tower Middle Street Partners project near Piedmont Park not shown. Courtesy of Midtown Alliance

Some other juicy tidbits from Midtown Alliance’s year-end wrap up:

• Gangbusters growth in the student housing sector (a category that didn’t exist in Midtown a decade ago) continues, with 600 new student beds delivering this year and another 800 on tap for 2025. Per Midtown Alliance’s calculations, some 8,500 of Midtown’s current 28,000 residents are college students attending Georgia Tech, SCAD Atlanta, Emory University, Georgia State University, and other area schools.

• Apart from the third phase of Tech Square and a component of Rockefeller Group’s 1072 West Peachtree skyscraper (a 60-story project set to deliver in 2026), the Midtown submarket appears to be in pause mode when it comes to new offices. “Generally in place of new construction,” noted the year-end report, “the emphasis will shift more toward existing office buildings in the district making investments to upgrade their spaces and attract new tenants.”

• Midtown development in general shows few signs of petering out—at least not in 2025. Next year will begin with seven projects actively under construction and more that have been approved to start.

• The next buildings of significant scale on tap for Midtown in 2025 will deliver more than 1,000 additional apartments. Those include the two-tower 1081 Juniper St. project, Modera Parkside, and student-housing venture Rambler Atlanta, which topped out in late summer over Peachtree Street.

• Those next projects on the Midtown horizon will add another 15,000 square feet of retail to the mix.

• Today, CoStar pegs the average rent for non-student apartments in Midtown at $2,460 monthly, per Midtown Alliance.

Proximity of three new Midtown high-rises to each other, with the leafy city beyond. Urbanize Atlanta