UrbanizeAtlNewsBot

UrbanizeAtlNewsBot

Images: Glassy tower named for Arthur Blank tops out over Peachtree Josh Green Fri, 12/08/2023 - 08:18 A glass-clad residential tower with a unique purpose has topped out where two popular restaurant buildings once stood, continuing the vertical evolution of Atlanta’s signature street.

Located just south of Piedmont Hospital at 1860 Peachtree Road, the Arthur M. Blank Family Residences is part of a Shepherd Center growth spurt the Buckhead hospital says will allow more patients and their families to receive world-class care and accommodations.

The project is replacing the former restaurant buildings long occupied by Uncle Julio’s and Ted’s Montana Grill, which were razed in 2022. It was named for Home Depot cofounder Blank following a $50-million capital grant from the Atlanta Falcons and United owner’s family foundation.

The residential tower will allow Shepherd Center to add 160 new apartments and more than double its capacity for housing day-program patients and families whose relatives are grappling with spinal cord injury, brain injury, stroke, chronic pain, multiple sclerosis, and other neurological ailments, according to hospital officials.

Josh Green/Urbanize Atlanta

The goal is to ease the financial burden on families who would otherwise have to find lodging elsewhere in Atlanta. More than half of patients currently come to the center for treatment from outside Georgia, per Shepherd Center officials.

As construction ramped up last year, Blank predicted the tower will provide “a safe, accessible place to call home here in Atlanta while [patient families] are away from their own homes” and help “lift the incredible burden of these types of trauma in some small way.”

The tower is positioned just south of Piedmont Hospital’s artfully curved, 16-story Marcus Heart and Vascular Center, and it’s part of a $350-million campaign to benefit Shepherd Center patients and families called “Pursuing Possible.”

Josh Green/Urbanize Atlanta

The Arthur M. Blank Family Residences will allow Shepherd Center to more than double its housing capacity, officials say. Courtesy of Shepherd Center

As is, the Shepherd Center provides care to about 900 inpatients and 7,100 outpatients per year. But space and availability constraints mean the facility can provide housing to families for only 30 days—about half the length of patients’ average stays.

For now, the center has 84 housing units on campus and 36 more nearby.

Shepherd Center officials told Urbanize Atlanta in 2022 the new tower is expected to open in the latter half of next year.

In the gallery above, find a closer look at where construction stands today and where it’s headed.

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