Revised rendering, details emerge for Castleberry Hill’s Hard Rock project

A new Hard Rock Hotel in Atlanta that’s unlike any other in the country won’t be ready for February’s Super Bowl as originally planned, but it should debut in time for Atlanta’s Final Four basketball tourney in April 2020, officials said today.

The announcement clears the fog on a Castleberry Hill venture that’s been something of a question mark following a ceremonial groundbreaking more than a year and a half ago.

Hard Rock has been angling to build a downtown Atlanta hotel since before the Great Recession. The 11-story boutique that’s finally moving forward will carry a new concept name, “Reverb by Hard Rock,” as Curbed Atlanta relayed when initial renderings emerged in August.

The latest rendering (above) shows a Gensler design with tweaked, unmissable signage, window-heavy spaces at street level, and a rooftop bar with skyline views described by the development team, Bolton Atlanta and Hotel Equities, as “panoramic.”

Bolton Atlanta

Bolton Atlanta

Expect a music-centric lodge (with live music performances) that will aim to become a community hub.

Beyond the 200 guest rooms and roof bar, visitors will find a coworking space called MEET, a coffee and bar concept, Constant Grind, and what’s called the “Roadie Room,” with six queen bunkbeds and space for lounging.

“Atlanta is the perfect location for our first Reverb,” said Todd Hricko, Hard Rock Hotels’s senior vice president of global hotel business development, in a prepared statement. “[It’s] rich in music history, spanning from the greats like Ray Charles and the Black Crowes to current popular artists like Ludacris, Usher, Ciara, and John Mayer.”

Plans call for the hotel to be one component of a mixed-use venture by Bolton Atlanta called Castleberry Park, with 129 luxury apartments in three buildings, a 375-space parking deck, and “multiple high exposure A+ retail store locations,” developers said.

No timeline was specified for the other Castleberry Park pieces, but the Reverb hotel is on track for a February 2020 opening.