Allow us to jog your memory: "Doraville Assembly," the massive GM plant fronting I-285 in Doraville, closed 3 and half years ago, just 11 days after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. The ensuing (or continuing, depending on your perspective) real estate meltdown effectively quieted talk of redeveloping the plant into a giant mixed-use development or a new Falcons stadium until 2010. It was in that year that the Orlando-based New Broad Street Companies announced a plan to joint venture with Dekalb County in acquiring the site from GM and turn it into a live-work-play wonderland. Of course this never happened, and though Dekalb County continued to make plans for the site as part of the Atlanta region's Livable Centers Initiative (LCI) program, action still seemed distant. Now the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Recovery for Auto Communities has stepped in to help move redevelopment along. And it's being reported that two (as of yet unnamed) developers are interested. The current price tag for the 165-acre site is $60 million. While $363,636 per acre does seem awfully steep for a site that, among other things, is going to need some serious environmental remediation, assemblages of this kind of acreage on the north side of town with I-285 frontage and both MARTA and railroad access don't come along, well, ever again.
· Old DeKalb GM property proposed for redevelopment [wsbtv.com]