Revisiting the utopian vision for South Downtown, eight years later Josh Green Fri, 03/21/2025 - 08:14 Fourteen months after their work in South Downtown began, the Atlanta Ventures team shared video this week that could make any longtime downtown booster’s heart flutter with joy.
The short clip shows Broad Street—one of Atlanta’s most intact but woefully vacant collection of historic facades and storefronts—as a bona fide construction zone, with a full brigade of neon-clad contractors at work. For once, as it pertains to South Downtown, this wasn’t a flashy rendering or sizzle reel. It was real life.
It also looked… kind of familiar.
This spring marks eight years since Germany-based Newport RE lifted the veil on their big-time ambitions for turning acres of old buildings and parking lots south of Five Points into a vibrant, urban district with European scale. And cafes. And lofts. And something called the “fútbol gastropub.”
But alas, what was predicted to be a half-billion-dollar investment in 2017 didn’t come to be. (Ditto for the two residential towers Newport pitched in 2022, with 650 new apartments that might have quickly spurred fundamental changes.)
Newport’s early vision for Hotel Row (at right) and the full-block 222 Mitchell St. building (left), with the newly opened The Benz as a backdrop. Newport RE/file
Red denotes new construction planned to be interspersed throughout Newport’s South Downtown blueprint, as of 2017. Newport RE/file
Anyone with a passing interest in Atlanta development knows Newport’s vision went bust and tumbled into foreclosure proceedings before the tech-based Atlanta Ventures crew swooped in and started packing more properties into a 10-block portfolio. Construction is underway across the district, and Atlanta Ventures heads relayed earlier this month they’ve started touring potential financial partners to help speed the pace of redevelopment.
But will it all stack up to what Newport initially had in mind?
Pretend Broad and Mitchell streets are Memory Lane, and find a quick tour of Newport’s pre-pandemic, utopian outlook for South Downtown in the gallery above.
And for this installment of Friday Fun Bag, let’s ask ourselves: Did we dodge a bullet? Or are we eight years behind?
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South Downtown South Downtown development Atlanta Ventures David Cummings Jon Birdsong Downtown Development Broad Street Atlanta Construction Atlanta Development Newport Newport RE Hotel Row Mercedes-Benz Stadium Friday Fun Bag
Images
Scope of the blocks in question under Newport’s vision, long before mixed-use towers began climbing from the Gulch. Newport RE/file
Red denotes new construction planned to be interspersed throughout Newport’s South Downtown blueprint, as of 2017. Newport RE/file
Newport’s early vision for Hotel Row (at right) and the full-block 222 Mitchell St. building (left), with the newly opened The Benz as a backdrop. Newport RE/file
Looking south on an enlivened and pedestrianized Broad Street, per Newport’s vision. None of this came to pass. Newport RE/file
Newport’s planned revisions for H. L. Green’s store and sign and Broad Street. Newport RE/file
What the Peachtree and Mitchell street intersection in South Downtown could have looked like under the Newport plan.Newport RE/file
Newport RE/file
Newport RE/file
Subtitle Is it finally starting to come true?
Neighborhood Downtown
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Before/After Images
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