Renderings: 420-foot elevator-testing tower to become Cobb County’s tallest

Industry leaders plan to test “rope-free,” sideways-moving systems at the $240 million HQ

By Sean Richard Keenan@ThatSeanKeenan Jul 27, 2018, 9:49am EDT

a rendering of the test tower — Thyssenkrupp’s new headquarters will be used to test elevator concepts.

Cobb County’s vertical growth spurt continues.

With the Braves Real Estate Development Company planning Cobb’s soon-to-be-tallest high-rise, some might have thought the rapidly urbanizing county would be topping out for the time being.

Not so fast, says thyssenkrupp, one of the biggest names in the elevator industry.

On Thursday, thyssenkrupp officials announced plans for a $240 million headquarters at The Battery at Cobb’s SunTrust Park, the Atlanta Braves’s new ballpark.

As a sort of crash test arena for the company’s innovations, a 420-foot high-rise is planned for the 4.8-acre site (for context, that would mirror the height of Buckhead’s Tower Place building), where thyssenkrupp aims to station some 900 full-time employees.

The move should bring about 650 new jobs to Georgia—thanks in no small part to more Cobb tax breaks and other incentives, as the AJC reports.

Thyssenkrupp’s Elevator Americas Complex—the development’s official moniker—would house Cobb’s tallest building, stealing the show from the Braves’s office tower to-be.

Within the mammoth structure, 18 elevator shafts are expected to test high-speed and unconventional people-moving mechanisms.

The new facilities would allow the company to tweak the “world’s first rope-free and sideways-moving elevator system, the MULTI,” according to a press release.

That elevator concept, obviously, would not only travel up-and-down, but side-to-side—an idea relegated to futuristic sci-fi movies. Thyssenkrupp would also be testing “two-cabins-per-shaft” systems—TWIN.

Said thyssenkrupp CEO Andreas Schierenbeck in a statement: “Within our network of spectacular high-speed test towers in Germany and China, the new facility in Atlanta will be the third laboratory for futuristic technologies.”

Six percent of thyssenkrupp’s North American workforce would be employed at its base at The Battery, where a 155,000-square-foot corporate headquarters and 80,000-square-foot business headquarters are also expected to be built.

The final hurdle for thyssenkrupp’s development comes by way of the Federal Aviation Administration, which is expected to approve the project’s height ambitions next month, according to the Marietta Daily Journal.

Officials expect the Elevator Americas Complex to open in early 2022, according to MDJ.