Emory breaks ground on latest facility, looks to make architectural statement near I-85

The Brookhaven project is part of a planned $1 billion remake of Executive Park

By Josh Green@JoshGreen1234 Oct 7, 2019, 1:22pm EDT

A rendering of a glass and stone building with a drop-off area in front for cars. — The planned facade at the main entry.

Emory University is continuing the redevelopment of a prototypical Brookhaven office park in a way that officials say will make an architectural and eco-friendly statement.

A significant piece of the planned $1 billion, mixed-use overhaul of Executive Park is the new Emory Musculoskeletal Institute. The modernistic, 180,000-square-foot facility officially broke ground last week, just south of where North Druid Hills Road meets Interstate 85.

The LEED-certified building will join what Emory calls its Executive Park health innovation district, offering orthopaedics and spine care, imaging, ambulatory surgery, and physical therapy, alongside clinical and discovery research space, officials said.

Highlights of the eco-friendly project will include retention ponds, underground stormwater systems, and bio-swales designed to capture and manage 95 percent of storm and runoff water; “strategic lighting” meant to tamp down on light pollution; and construction practices that will aim to divert most waste from local landfills.

The institute will also serve as a central hub for Emory’s musculoskeletal services that have been expanding around metro Atlanta.

“Research is also a core part of our mission, and the design of this building will encompass that from its external appearance to the structure of patient and staff flow inside,” noted Scott D. Boden, MD, a professor and chair of Emory’s Department of Orthopaedics, and Emory Orthopaedics and Spine Center director, in a prepared statement.

The university bought roughly 60 acres of Executive Park in 2016, including nine office buildings.

A site plan rendering showing a mixed-use community beside a highway. — A tentative overview of Emory’s mixed-use plans for a remade Executive Park, which is expected to take 15 years to complete.

Elsewhere on the property, the cutting-edge Emory Sports Medicine Complex, which doubles as the Atlanta Hawks’s training and practice facility, opened two years ago. A separate apartment development, Cortland North Druid Hills, has recently sprung up next door, overlooking the interstate.

It’s all just south of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta’s new campus across North Druid Hills Road, where $1.3 billion in development is expected in coming years.

The Emory Musculoskeletal Institute is scheduled to open in the second quarter of 2021.