(The following story by Walter Woods appeared on The Atlanta Journal-Constitution website on June 17.)
ATLANTA — The Norfolk Southern Corp. is chugging its local headquarters to Midtown.
The Virginia railroad company is under contract to buy AT&T’s former Peachtree Street office next to the Woodruff Arts Center. The deal should close in July.
AT&T is in the process of relocating its employees to Promenade II, the building next door, and to its offices off Clairmont Road and I-85.
Norfolk Southern has 1,500 employees downtown, some in offices dating from the early 1900s, and 300 at One Georgia Center, a 35-year-old Cousins Properties tower on West Peachtree Street.
Norfolk Southern has been trying since 1999 to unload four downtown buildings and 33 acres of real estate, including part of a rail valley behind Philips Arena known as “the gulch.”
The company wanted the Georgia Department of Transportation to buy the property for a long-planned downtown train station. But a state official said earlier this month the state doesn’t need and lacks the funds to buy the railroad’s property.
DOT is going ahead with a much smaller train line to Lovejoy, using the former Atlanta Constitution (and Georgia Power) building on Alabama Street for its terminal.