Back in January we told the sad story of one of the most valuable pieces of dirt in all of Atlanta, if not the Southeast- nearly 2 acres on Peachtree across the street from the High Museum in Midtown. Purchased for $17 million by Atlanta-based developer and home builder John Wieland from the Woodruff Arts Center back in the heyday, the site has sat, fallow, as the real estate crash precluded anyone from doing anything with it. Now the Atlanta Business Chronicle is reporting that two buyers are circling, and that the site could be activated for a hotel/residential tower with an arts space on the bottom. Apparently still in the running to purchase the site is a group led by Alvin James, now backed by a group of Chinese EB-5 visa-seeking investors (instead of the European hedge fund money he originally claimed to have been fronting). The other group pursuing the deal is a publicly-traded company with an Atlanta office...too many possibilities there to speculate. We don't care who ends up with it, it's just time to fill in this gap in Peachtree's smile.
· High Museum property in play [Atlanta Business Chronicle]