(The following article by Walter Woods was posted on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution website on June 9.)
ATLANTA — After years of enduring antiquated offices and the slow wheels of government, Norfolk Southern Corp. is looking to pull out of the downtown buildings it’s used for a generation.
The Virginia railroad has been trying since 1999 to unload its four Atlanta buildings and 33 acres, including part of a rail valley behind Philips Arena known as “the Gulch.”
Norfolk Southern is steamed that the state kept putting the brakes on plans to buy the property, leaving its 1,800 employees working in century-old Spring Street offices.
Now the Georgia Department of Transportation has signaled it can’t afford to buy the railroad’s site, and Norfolk Southern may be on the move. Its next stop could be Midtown.
The company said it is looking at buying Promenade One, AT&T’s dated but ideally located building at Peachtree and 14th streets. AT&T has put that office up for sale, and several developers have made offers.
AT&T’s building measures up well for the company, a Norfolk Southern spokesman said. But Norfolk Southern executives have yet to make a final decision, and its spokesman did not offer a timetable.
The company also has about 300 people at Midtown’s One Georgia Center, a 35-year-old Cousins Properties tower on West Peachtree Street. That lease expires this year.
Georgia’s Department of Transportation eventually wants the Gulch for a Peach State Grand Central Station, a passenger depot for trains to Macon and Athens and bus lines to the suburbs.
But the state, at least for now, doesn’t need and can’t afford to buy Norfolk Southern’s real estate, said Hal Wilson, a DOT administrator.
With limited funds, DOT now plans a small, $106 million pilot train headed south to Lovejoy, Wilson said. The first passengers should board by September 2006.
The Clayton County line needs only one property for a scaled back, $5 million platform: the 1948 former Atlanta Constitution building, now sitting empty across Forsyth Street from the Five Points MARTA station.
The city owns the building, also known as the Georgia Power building. A resolution giving it to the state is cooling in the Atlanta City Council.
At the same time, local preservationists have launched an effort to “Save the Constitution” for its modern design, said Tom Little, an architect leading the effort.
DOT still wants someday to build its grand “Multi-Modal Passenger Terminal Facility,” drafted in 1994, including a possible office tower (developer Cousins owns the “air” rights to build above some of the property).
“We’re interested in the future of [Norfolk Southern’s] property,” Wilson said, acknowledging that the company could sell it to someone else in the meantime.
“Will we need it in 10 years? In 20?” Wilson said. “[But we] don’t have a need or the money for it now … and we can’t control federal or state funding.”