Exclusive: Midtown project is moving forward as rare new condos

Juniper and 5th venture lands financing for one of Atlanta’s largest new condo communities in ages

By Josh Green@JoshGreen1234 Mar 19, 2018, 1:55pm EDT

The project as seen from the corner of Juniper and 5th streets.

Development wonks have argued for years that Atlanta is starved for condos, as opposed to apartments, and now a developer with a growing presence in the city is preparing to test that assertion in a significant way.

Dezhu US, an Atlanta-based subsidiary of a prominent Chinese developer, has scored a $6 million loan that green-lights a project called Juniper and 5th to move forward with the construction of 150 condominiums in Midtown, a rep tells Curbed Atlanta.

BridgeInvest, a private real estate lender that’s branching into Georgia after success in Florida, provided the land-acquisition capital that’s allowing the five-story building to rise on a 1.8-acre site a block from Peachtree Street.

With its unique, stepped design that descends down to two stories, the project has been percolating, under a different developer, since 2015. It will consume the entire eastern side of Juniper Street between 5th and 4th streets, just north of Ponce de Leon Avenue.

For years, the site has been bookended by parking lots, with a couple of low-rise commercial buildings in between.

Renderings of the project by local firm Smith Dalia indicate it will feature two courtyards and, on the flip side, plenty of balcony space fronting Juniper.

A rendering showing the project’s stepped side.

Apart from the 189 for-sale units proposed at the Opus Place tower, Juniper and 5th would mark the largest serving of ground-up new condos in Midtown since the Great Recession.

Elsewhere, smaller Midtown projects such as the 45-unit One Museum Place have delivered, and Atlanta-based developer Selig is moving forward with a 73-home condo tower on West Peachtree Street.

Still, the volume of new condos made available in recent years pales in comparison to thousands of new apartments that have cropped up in mid-rises and towers across the ITP landscape.

Beyond Midtown, Dezhu is behind four different residential proposals near Boulevard in Old Fourth Ward and a piece of the Hard Rock Hotel mixed-use build in Castleberry Hill.

At Juniper and 5th, Dezhu expects to launch construction immediately and debut the project by the end of 2019.

Expect condo prices in the $500,000s and $600,000s.