Brian [00:00:07]:

That’s the real advice is just, you got to think big. You got to see the big picture. I always tell people economic development isn’t political. Like who’s against economic growth? I mean, there are people against economic growth, don’t get me wrong. But generally, people want to see economic growth because they want to see wages rise. They want to see,

 

Amanda [00:00:25]

They want to see positive things happening.

 

Brian [00:00:27]

Yeah.

 

Amanda [00:00:30]:

That’s the voice of Brian McGowan, president of Atlanta’s Centennial Yards. He joins us today on our first episode of the new season to talk about a huge mixed-use development project transforming downtown Atlanta. It’s 50 acres, to be exact. And he’ll also share key takeaways for communities of any size. I’m Amanda Ellis, and you’re listening to Inside America’s Best Cities, a podcast for chamber, economic development, and talent attraction professionals. Learn more about this podcast at livabilitymedia.com and with that, let’s jump in. Welcome, Brian, to Inside America’s best cities. We are super excited to chat with you for our first episode of the new season.

 

Brian [00:01:15]:

Thank you.

 

Amanda [00:01:16]:

Thanks so much for being here. So I know you’re here today to chat with us about the Centennial Yards project. Can you start us off by just talking a little bit about what that is? What’s the goal? Give us some context to kick off.

 

Brian [00:01:29]:

Yeah. So it’s one of the largest, most ambitious city center developments in America. So Centennial Yards is 50 acres, vacant acres right in the heart of downtown Atlanta. So it’s right across the street from Mercedes Benz Stadium, the state farm arena. I would say it’s rare to have 50 vacant acres in the heart of any major city, America. It just doesn’t really exist, which I think is what makes this project so unique, we call it the hole. It’s the hole in the heart of the city. So if you come downtown Atlanta, our downtown is not in a great state because of the fact that there’s this big hole right in the middle of it. So our company acquired that property. It was actually where Atlanta was founded. So it’s parking lots now. It’s a big parking structure, the CNN parking deck. It’s right across the street from CNN Center. It used to be rail yards, and there’s a track configuration there called the Circle Y track, which is where all the tracks came together in the southeastern United States. And then a little town popped up around it, which was originally called Terminus because all the rail lines terminated right here on this site. That town later became Atlanta. And so the site’s very historic and it’s very meaningful to you know, arguably it’s the core, the bullseye of the entire southeastern United States transportation system because everything kind of grew from this particular location. So we acquired it and the plan is to build it’ll be a $5 billion, I mentioned 50 acres, $5 billion mixed-use project. So 4000 apartments, offices, bars, and restaurants, and retail, and really building an exciting entertainment adjacent district for the southeastern United States. The site arguably is the most visible piece of real estate probably in the southeastern United States. Just because we host Super Bowls and final fours and sporting events and World Cup. We have the World Cup in mid-2026. And concerts, all the major concerts are held down in this location. So 22 million people a year, approximately come down around this site. So it’s super visible.

 

Amanda [00:03:50]:

Yeah, you’ve talked about what a prime spot this is, but yet it’s been empty for a long time. So what’s kind of behind that? And I think there have been some other efforts too to do different things. So what’s kind of the story there and why is this the thing that stuck?

 

Brian [00:04:04]:

Yeah, all good questions. So the site, as I mentioned, was formal rail yards. So it was congested rail yards. There was a train station on the site. Actually, there was a couple of train stations. All of that went away. Then it became parking lots, basically for surrounding uses. In particular, the stadium, Mercedes Benz Stadium is where the Atlanta Falcons play and Atlanta United. And then the Atlanta Hawks NBA stadium is right across the street from that, which is attached to CNN Center, which is where CNN was founded. And then our convention center, which is the third or fourth busiest convention center in America, is just a half a block away as well. So that’s called the Georgia World Congress Center, Centennial Olympic Park, the Georgia Aquarium, the World of Coke, the College of a Hall of Fame, the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, the Tabernacle, which is a really cool music venue in downtown Atlanta, all within walkie distance of this site. Interestingly enough, the site is also adjacent to where all of our government offices are. So the federal government southeastern headquarters is in Atlanta. So all the federal government offices are there. County government offices are there, city government offices are there. And so is the gold dome, which is the state government capital. So where the Atlanta is obviously the capital of the state of Georgia. So you have all of this really cool activity. I call them people. Like in order to make a retail downtown work, you got to have people generators. Well, we’re surrounded by people generators, including our MARTA station, our subway system. Its main station is adjacent to the site. There’s actually three Marta stations all around the site. So we found an article from a 1982 edition of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that outlined twelve attempts to develop this site up until 1982, which all obviously didn’t come to fruition. And since 1982, there was a couple of other attempts. And people often asked me, they said, well, Brian, why did they fail? And the answer is, because this is really hard. There’s no infrastructure because it was rail stations. So there’s no water, sewer, power. The last time there were buildings on this site was 1858. So we have to build infrastructure. There’s easements and air rights. So there’s lots of existing very complicated real estate agreements on the site.

 

Brian [00:06:30]:

There’s a lot of entities that have the parking rights. So the CNN center has parking rights. The Atlanta Hawks have parking rights. There’s an active rail tunnel running through it. That’s where MARTA actually runs through the site. And then there’s rail lines, active freight lines that run through the site as well. And then to complicate things. Yeah, and to complicate things even more, it turns out every government entity seems to have owns a remnant parcel somewhere within the 50 acres. So as you’re starting to try to acquire property so you can assemble it and do something with it, it becomes difficult, it becomes expensive. I actually should even back up 1 minute and tell you the origin story of how this whole thing came about. So about eight years ago, a guy named Tony Ressler, a billionaire from Los Angeles, a private equity guy, made the decision to buy the Atlanta Hawks. So he was downtown in the final negotiation. They were in the arena. He walked out in front of the arena, which is right across the street from the site. And there’s what we call viaducts around the site. So the streets were raised up to go over the rail yards, because the rail yards just congested downtown, and all the rail yards went away. So he walked out in front of the building to get into his SUV, to take him back to his plane, and he looked over the top of the SUV into the 40-foot hole that was right across the street. And the person he was with him, who was now the president of the Atlanta Hawks, he said, what’s that? And the president, of the Atlanta Hawks, his name is Steve Coonan. He said, that’s the gulch. And Tony, being from LA, said, what’s a gulch? And then Steve says, well, that’s where people know. Admittedly, not a great answer. And then Tony said, I want LA Live there. Right? So LA Live was really the first, if not one of the first, major sports-adjacent entertainment districts in America. It’s in downtown LA. Downtown LA wasn’t in a great place. It’s around the convention center. Down there was lots of parking lots, and there wasn’t a lot of good things happening down there. And then a developer came in and bought it. There was Staples arena, which is now crypto arena, and then they built the Kodak theater and a lot of retail and restaurants. So that really was the inspiration for the project. So Tony Ressler happens to have a brother named Richard Ressler, who is the chairman and one of the founders of CIM Group, which is a large $50 billion developer based out of Los Angeles. But they do things all over the United States. And I tell you all that, to tell you that what this really required to make it work was the commitment of someone like Tony Ressler, who bought the Atlanta Hawks and cares about the future of Atlanta and the future of downtown Atlanta as a business owner. And it just so happens he has a brother named Richard Ressler. Right. So they talk about the alignment of the moon and the stars, who happens to be the founder and runs a company that likes to do very difficult real estate projects. So has the capital, has the appetite for risk, has the creativity and the ability to do something like this. Everything kind of aligned, and it’s underway.

 

Amanda [00:09:43]:

That’s awesome. So would you say it was just a matter of getting the right partners around the same idea and then getting the folks that had the expertise to kind of overcome some of the unique hurdles and the stars just.

 

Brian [00:09:55]:

Yeah, yeah. I mean, part of it is, you know, it just so happens the guy who buys the Atlanta ox has a brother who does, you know. So I think there’s a little bit of that, but I think it really requires to do a project as difficult as this. It really required a public-private partnership. And so this project that’s on its third mayor, this actually started with Mayor Kaseem Reed, was when these conversations started. And the project required public incentives, and the economic developers in the room will understand that. So it required an incentive from the state government and an incentive from the local government, the city of Atlanta. And those incentives were designed to really offset the cost of the fact that there’s no infrastructure. So cities, you know, you pay taxes, and those taxes go to police and fire and public facilities such as streets and curbs and gutters and power and all those things. Right? This site didn’t have any of that, and the city didn’t have the money available to go ahead and put it in in order to provide it for a developer. So a structure was created that it’s actually a tax increment financing district. So we get to basically, Centennial Yards keeps the property tax for 18 years, and after which then all the property tax goes back to the taxing entities. And so that money, then that tax increment is used to offset the cost of the infrastructure. And then there’s also a sales tax rebate on the site for 28 years, which came through the state of Georgia. So both of those combined, the value is up to $1.8 billion to help pay for the infrastructure that the government entities didn’t have available.

 

Amanda [00:11:38]:

Yes. Well, it sounds like all the complexities of that probably keep you really busy and the team of… You have a pretty decent-sized team, it looks like, from the website.

 

Brian [00:11:47]:

Yeah, I mean, we probably have close to 50 people here in Atlanta. CIM has offices all across the US. There’s probably 100 people working on this project at any given moment.

 

Amanda [00:12:00]:

So I know that this project also involves a significant commitment to opportunities for everyone. Things like workforce goals, affordable housing goals, small business support. Can you talk about some of that?

 

Brian [00:12:11]:

Yes. Yeah. So in order to get those incentives in place, there was a development agreement that had to be negotiated between the city of Atlanta and CIM group or Centennial Yards. And Centennial Yards is basically a wholly owned subsidiary of CIM Group. And then I’m the president of that company, which is owned by CIM. So in order to get those incentives, a development agreement had to be created that governs how we’re going to get that tax increment and what the limitations are on it. You have to verify expenses and show the government that we actually spent the money in order to get reimbursed for money, et cetera. But part of that included an affordable housing requirement. So that was that 20% of all the units we build will be affordable at 80% of area median income for 99 years. So that’s a big issue in any city in America where costs are rising and it’s getting harder and harder for people to live in the core of the city. So that was one incentive. I mean, agreement. The other thing that we agreed to was 38% of our contractors will be minority female business enterprises. So think about that. So we’re going to spend $5 billion. 38% of $5 billion will go to minority female business enterprises. So we’re actually at 39 and a half percent right now. We’re really excited about that. That 38%, again, for people who work for cities will know this is a very high percentage. Most cities have that some kind of requirement that’s usually between 15 and 20%. The city of Atlanta has a 38% MFBE requirement for its entities, and so we agreed to match that. There was also a number of complicated, I won’t get into it, but asset swaps. So there was some buildings on the site that the city owned, and we wanted those. And so we purchased other buildings in downtown and renovated them and turned them into office spaces and then swapped them with the city. We agreed to build a police substation on site. We agreed to build a fire station on site. There was also an old bridge running through the site that connected two neighborhoods that was condemned by the city in 2018. And we committed to tearing it down and rebuilding it, which we’ve done, and there’s other things that we’ve done and more that we will do, but that’s the core of it.

 

Amanda [00:14:40]:

So I feel like these mixed-use development concepts, granted, none quite as large as this one yet, but that’s something I’ve been hearing a lot about more recently in the field. So why do you think that’s kind of more at the forefront?

 

Brian [00:14:53]:

It’s a really good question. I don’t want to say Covid and work from home caused it, but I think Covid and work from home kind of accelerated that trend.

 

Amanda [00:15:03]:

A bit of wanting Everything kind of in closer proximity.

 

Brian [00:15:09]:

Yeah.

 

Amanda [00:15:10]:

People want to blend your life.

 

Brian [00:15:12]:

Exactly. Yeah. People are going to work more where they live, like literally in their apartments or their houses. And so they’re going to want the amenities that they would get if they had to go into work every day. So they want to be able to have a good gym nearby. They want to have good restaurants or bars or coffee shops, places to go for entertainment. So people are going to want all that kind of close in. But mixed-use is interesting how it’s seemingly a new concept in the US, although it’s not really more denser places are mixed-use. So New York is all… It’s a mixed-use city, right?

 

Amanda [00:15:50]:

Yeah.

 

Brian [00:15:51]:

And every building is mixed-use, whereas some of the more newer cities in America, and I spent a lot of my career in, you know, west coast cities because they’re newer, are more spread out, and so things are less mixed-use the further west you get. Right. Because the cost of real estate was cheaper, that development happened in a more of a spread-out way. So you don’t get buildings that have live work, play in one building, live work play, usually three different places. But I think a lot of this was driven, even pre-pandemic, by talent attraction. So the big, big companies, the big tech companies in particular, as you know, it’s all about talent right now. So it used to be about low cost of living, et cetera. It’s always a little bit about that. But companies go where they can get the best talent.

 

Amanda [00:16:42]:

Yeah, it’s really interesting. And even thinking about what you were saying about how things have shifted after the pandemic, and I think the biggest shift in how we work has honestly been the hybrid environment. Right? Like, if you look at percentages, that wasn’t really much of a thing that everyone was doing before, and now it’s almost everybody to some level. Right. If your job can support it, has some of that flexibility. And so, but then it’s interesting because then you need all of those spaces to work, right? Like you need home to work. When you need it to be work. You might still want to be close to work, although, I don’t know, I guess people might be more willing to commute when they’re doing it once or twice a week instead of every day. But, yeah, it’s definitely been a game-changer.

 

Brian [00:17:21]:

No, it’s funny you say that because I remember early in my career, I was working in southern California, and I was at a meeting in Los Angeles. It was like a government building, and attached to each of the seats was an ashtray. And now we look at it like, oh, my God, I can’t imagine they would allow that. I think it’s sort of like work-from-home. So I always tell small town mayors, make sure you have great downtowns, no matter how small they are. Just make sure they’re really cool and interesting out of art and music and places where young people want to go. If you have that, then you can attract some of those remote workers who can now live from any place. So that all goes back to these mixed-use environments like we’re building in Centennial Yards. Technically, you don’t need to own a car because we’re going to build office space. You’re going to have bars and restaurants, sporting events, music venues, transit station right across the streets. I think that’s the way people need to start thinking is like, if you’re a mayor of a city, you probably have a downtown, and your downtown is probably not maximized and operating as efficiently and as well as it could. So it’s like, that’s the focus. You got to have a great, cool downtown if you want to attract any kind of future economic growth.

 

Amanda [00:18:39]:

Well, and I think you made a great point about cars, because in the Southeast, we love our cars, right?

 

Brian [00:18:43]:

Yeah, we do.

 

Amanda [00:18:44]:

And of course, Atlanta has so much car traffic already. So just having a place where you’re building something, that’s not necessarily going to create a lot more of.

 

Brian [00:18:54]:

Yeah, as a matter of fact, I’ll add a point that I always remind people of. If you live in Atlanta, if you’ve been to Atlanta for a sporting event or a music event, one of the disadvantages is that because there’s nothing to do downtown Atlanta before or after the event, everybody shows up at the same time. And then after, maybe you want to come early and have a cocktail before you go into the concert with your friends. There’s not a lot of places to do that downtown. Or you’re at an event, and after the event, your team won, or you’re hyped up because you just saw Metallica or Beyonce and you want to go out with your friends, there’s nothing to do. You got to get in your car with everybody else at the exact same time, and you’re all stuck in traffic. So having a venue like ours, a development like ours in downtown, is going to sort of stagger that traffic because we have the battery here where the Braves play and the Braves…

 

Amanda [00:19:50]:

That’s what I was thinking of when you were talking.

 

Brian [00:19:51]:

…Move their stadium. And it’s a really cool mixed-use environment. There’s apartments and bars and restaurants. So people will go to a Braves game but not go into the stadium. They go because they just want to hang around other Braves fans. So that’s going to happen down here. There’ll be Falcons games or United games or Hawks games or a concert where people may not have a ticket, but they just want to be down in that environment. And so they’ll come earlier and they’ll stay later. So it should have an effect of alleviating traffic.

 

Amanda [00:20:19]:

Yeah, I can’t wait to see what you do with it. So I know you’re looking… I believe parts are supposed to be finished in time for the World Cup, right? In 2026, but not the whole thing.

 

Brian [00:20:28]:

Not the whole thing. My construction people tell me that concrete takes time to dry. You have to let it dry. So I’m like, oh, okay. You have to factor that into it.

 

Amanda [00:20:36]:

So what year are you looking at that you think so?

 

Brian [00:20:39]:

By 2028, the entire site will either be complete or under construction. That’s the goal. Now, by mid-2026, there’ll be significant portions, probably between 30 and 40% of the site complete and operational. Bars and restaurants and hotels. We’ve completed a building. Now we have two buildings under construction as we speak. And this upcoming year is going to be a really exciting time for us. We’re full steam ahead despite the economy and all the other things that are scary in the world right now. We’re barreling forward to get as much of this done for the World Cup as possible. And as I said, by 2028, the entire site should be well underway.

 

Amanda [00:21:25]:

So, thinking about advice for our listeners. If they’re wanting to do something like this, where should they start? And I guess, caveat that thinking about the different sizes of communities. Right. A smaller place, of course, is not going to be spending that level of money or having that much space. But what are your thoughts there?

 

Brian [00:21:45]:

Well, I think you got to think big, right? So as I’ve done economic development in various parts of the country, and I’ve done it for small cities and I’ve done it for the federal government, I’ve been kind of run the gamut in that world that I think a lot of smaller places think, oh, that can’t be us. We’re too small. We don’t have enough money. We’re not located in the right place. Whatever it is, I say those are all excuses. You can’t allow yourself to go down that path. You have to think big. The people of that community and the future generations of that community depend on you to think big. I’m fortunate that I work in a city, Atlanta, that thinks big. From the Olympics to the busiest airport in the world to all of our great colleges and universities and all of our Fortune 500 companies, we do think big, but that doesn’t mean small cities can’t think big. So if your downtown is not in a great state, you got to look at it differently. There’s probably capital or developers out there that would partner with you to figure out how to solve some of those problems. But I will say, I think I alluded to this earlier, too, that this project that we’re working on, Centennial Yards, is a monster project. This is just so complicated. Like I joke to people, I wake up every day and I can’t imagine what problems are going to come at that day. It’s literally unpredictable because no one’s ever done anything like this before. It’s so complicated that it really, like this saying, it takes a village to raise a child. Well, it takes a village to do a big project in any given city or jurisdiction in America. So you can’t go it alone. You have to have really strong public-private partnerships to make anything work like this. So the public sector has to work closely with the private sector, which means the public sector has to understand the private sector and what drives it. So what drives the public sector is returns return on investment. So it’s like capital will come, but government people have to understand that there are investors who want to get paid back. Right. So that’s, like, critical, but it’s also critical for the private sector folks to really understand that there are different factors driving a public sector’s perspective, which is affordable housing, which is minority business contracting, which is infrastructure, equity, and inclusion and all the other things. So if you can align all of get. That’s the beautiful thing about this project. You know, the state of Georgia is a Republican. It’s a red state, and the city of Atlanta is a democratic city. It’s a blue city. And the governor of that red state and multiple mayors of this blue city all work together to make this work. I think everybody sees the bigger picture. And so I think that’s the real advice is just, you got to think big. You got to see the big picture. I always tell people economic development isn’t political. Like, who’s against economic growth? I mean, there are people against economic growth. Don’t get me wrong.

 

Amanda [00:24:52]:

There’s always someone.

 

Brian [00:24:53]:

But generally, people want to see economic growth because they want to see wages rise. They want to see positive. We’re in this, such a politically divisive environment now. And I think in economic development, you got to push that aside because Republicans, Democrats want jobs for the people who live in their district. Right. Republicans, Democrats want affordable housing for people who live in their districts. There’s no question about that. So you got to move past all that.

 

Amanda [00:25:21]:

And we all want nice places to live, regardless.

 

Brian [00:25:24]:

Yeah, we want fun places to live. We want to be proud of where we live. Right. Everybody wants to be proud and brag about their city and where they live, so.

 

Amanda [00:25:31]:

Exactly.

 

Brian [00:25:32]:

We should come together on that.

 

Amanda [00:25:33]:

Well, that is a great segue to my final question that I always ask a fun question. It is, what’s your bucket list thing about Atlanta and an off-the-beaten-path thing if you had to pick one thing.

 

Brian [00:25:45]:

Well, I have to say the Atlanta Belt Line, because I used to be the CEO of the Atlanta Belt Line. So for listeners who aren’t familiar, the Atlanta Belt Line is a 23-mile abandoned rail corridor. It says rails to trails, but very big, goes through 44 neighborhoods. So it’s a circle. That’s why it’s called the Belt Line. And it’s been wildly successful where it exists. So if you jump on a bike or a scooter and you go around the entire belt line, you will have experienced Atlanta. You’ll have been through most of its greatest neighborhoods, and you can stop at breweries along the way and restaurants, and it’s a really fun thing to do. But the other thing I think that I love about Atlanta and Georgia generally is its music history. So I think being mostly a Californian, I grew up on the East Coast, but mostly in California. I never really knew, and I’m embarrassed to say this, that I didn’t really appreciate the wide breadth and depth of Georgia’s music scene from the, you know, to, I mean, we have, it’s not just country music, it’s not just hip hop, it’s not just rock, it’s everything.

 

Amanda [00:26:55]:

Yeah, we’ve been seeing a lot more cities kind of embracing the music culture and promoting that more in some unexpected places, which is really cool.

 

Brian [00:27:04]:

Yeah. And I think as an economic developer, it all goes back to talent attraction. And if you’re young in your twenties and you can live anywhere, why wouldn’t you live in a place that has a great music and sports and entertainment scene? And fortunately, Atlanta does really well in that. And Centennial Yards is just going to make it better. It’s going to offer more for people who come here from around the world for sporting events. And like you said earlier, the World Cup or Super Bowl will be back here in a couple of years. And so college football championship games are played here and we have people come in from, I think, you know, personally, I want to make sure that when you come to Centennial Yards, you hear live music spilling into the streets and all different kinds of music, and you can really experience Atlanta culture. So music and art and people and food and all of that should be something that when you come to Centennial Yards, you walk away going, man, I just experienced what Atlanta really has to offer.

 

Amanda [00:28:04]:

Yes. Well, thank you so much, Brian, for coming on and sharing all that. What a great kickoff episode.

 

Brian [00:28:09]:

Yeah, my pleasure. This was fun.

 

Amanda [00:28:16]:

Thanks for listening to the Livability podcast where we take you Inside America’s Best Cities. At Livability, we highlight the unsung awesomeness of small and mid-sized cities across the country. We also partner with communities to reach their target companies and potential residents through digital content and print magazine programs. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow, rate, and review this show wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also learn more about us at livabilitymedia.com. Have an idea for an upcoming episode? Email me at [email protected]. Until next time, from Livability, I’m Amanda Ellis, sharing the stories of America’s most promising places.