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Touring Hotel Row, from OutKast-muraled basements to rooftops, as South Downtown construction launches

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Newport CEO and new EVP of development share details on changes coming to Mitchell Street and beyond

By Mike Jordan
A look down a long street of old rooftops that leads to Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
An elevated vantage showing how Hotel Row’s old facades lead to Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Photos by Mike Jordan

The cranes aren’t yet moving on Mitchell Street, but a recent tour of downtown Atlanta’s Hotel Row provided a fresh look at progress of the South Downtown development project as it begins transitioning from renderings to reality.

Highlighted by an appearance from Olaf Kunkat, founder and CEO of Newport Holding, the private equity group redeveloping South Downtown (or what’s branded as South Dwntn), the media event provided updates on the 12-acre project. It piggybacked on recent development news coming out of the neighborhood, including CIM Group’s reveal of residential and hotel space for its Gulch redevelopment, and retail announcements for WRS Inc.’s reimagined Underground Atlanta.

Currently, the most progress has happened at 233 Mitchell Street, the Sylvan building, and the cluster of buildings at 222 Mitchell, with interior clearing of the structures mostly complete.

The fourth floor of Sylvan will become office space, which looks out directly at Mercedes-Benz Stadium’s diagonal logo. As for 222 Mitchell, it will be a mix of retail and office space—more than 260,000 combined square feet—with rooftop spaces that developers say have expansive potential for downtown events and activity.

“We identified a number of buildings that need a light refurbishment approach, and others that need a more intensive scope of work,” Kunkat said. “This doesn’t fit to the phase plan we’d already developed, so we reshaped that, and we’re starting here on Hotel Row and Broad Streets, and on Mitchell Street.”

Also reshaped is the structure of the executive team at Newport, which will impact South Downtown.

This includes 2019’s departure announcements from executive vice president Katherine Kelley, the company’s top development exec, who left in January, and Newport president Jake Nawrocki, who’ll officially exit this month.

Replacing Kelley as EVP is Atlanta native Kevin Murphy, who has an architectural degree from Georgia Tech and spent more than a decade in New York City working on privately owned historic buildings in Manhattan.

Murphy, sharing that he’d been back home for only about 100 days, said he jumped at the opportunity to “make an impactful contribution.” He also said that along with local architect talent, he’s looking to establish great partnerships “for Atlanta and by Atlanta,” and specifically named his alma mater as a place where he expects to find ideas.

A mural of the rap duo OutKast in a basement, on a brick wall.
A space-age, 3D OutKast mural discovered in the basement of the retail unit at 219 Mitchell Street. The red and white rocket is creatively painted cast-iron plumbing.

“It’s almost the exact right time for me to come in, and it’s the exact right type of thing I’ve been working on,” he said. “It’s really great to do all the thinking, but it’s also more important just to start, which we have done.”

According to both Murphy and Kunkat, the restructured team will continue working “building by building” on Newport-owned properties on Forsyth, Broad, and Peachtree streets, including the well-known H.L. Green building.

Noting that financing for South Downtown is going “quite nicely,” Kunkat said Newport is working on an equity basis until possibly February, when he plans to show new building permits to lenders and explain how it’ll all be structured, from an ROI point-of-view.

“This is only to create a model,” he noted. “The real development is depending on the market, and the demand of the market.”

Kunkat said he comes to Atlanta once a month to support the team, though it wouldn’t surprise anyone if that increases soon, as construction ramps up. It’s hard to imagine he’d spend too much time back in Hamburg, with so much at stake in South Downtown, and so much possibility, as he explained.

“You definitely wouldn’t have a chance in Europe to do something like this—to create a neighborhood and put it back to life,” Kunkat said. “That’s supposedly something you would just do once in your life, right?”

The answer, at least in terms of the lifespan of Atlanta and the upkeep of lower downtown, seems for decades to have been “yes.” At least, for now, it looks like the future could include some pretty funky shops, work environments within walking distance of The Benz, and very lit rooftop parties.

If nothing else, with announcements of signed retail tenants promised soon from Newport, it could be businesses that share new EVP Murphy’s “for Atlanta, by Atlanta” ethos and get the spaces with murals, as did the eccentric former Cat Eye Creative gallery, one of South Downtown’s Pop Up Row retail tenants from April to September. (It’d especially be a shame if someone didn’t put that OutKast-inspired “ATLiens” mural underneath 219 Mitchell to good use.)

For more glimpses of where things stand now, unique vantage points on the city, and raw spaces where tenant activity is planned soon, see below:

A mural along an empty street in downtown Atlanta, with a flag overhead.
A South “Dwntwn” mural entertains pedestrians on the ground floor of 222 Mitchell Street.
An empty space at the ground floor of a building in downtown Atlanta.
What the street level entrance to 222 Mitchell Street looks like today.
A rooftop with a view of the Falcons stadium in the distance.
More Mercedes-Benz Stadium sightseeing from the roof of 222 Mitchell Street.
A view of downtown Atlanta’s skyline from a rooftop.
The downtown skyline, centered by the Sun Dial Restaurant atop the Westin Peachtree Plaza, lines up nicely on the rooftop.
The rooftop of an older building with a white building in the background.
The rooftop deck is crowned by a helipad and looks northwest toward the Richard B. Russell Federal Building and State Farm Arena.
A rooftop view down to a street with a red brick building across the way.
View from above the intersection of Mitchell and Forsyth streets.
A view from a rooftop in a lower section of downtown Atlanta.
A shot from the rooftop at 222 Mitchell Street, looking eastward along Mitchell Street toward the Georgia Capitol building, provides a vantage point on an older section of the city most Atlantans haven’t seen.
Two Atlanta arenas in the distance are shown among many rooftops.
Both Mercedes-Benz Stadium and State Farm Arena are visible from atop 222 Mitchell Street.
Buildings old and new seen from a top floor window of an office building.
Windows along a corridor inside 222 Mitchell Street, below the rooftop, offer a glimpse of the Gulch.
A basement space with graffiti covering a brick wall at left.
The basement of 219 Mitchell Street, underneath a former barbershop called Barberlon Emporium.
A small room with graffiti covering the walls in downtown Atlanta.
One of several murals in the retail space of 227 Mitchell Street from local collective Cat Eye Creative, a tenant of Pop Up Row.
The papered-over storefront of a downtown office building.
The storefront at South Downtown’s office headquarters on Mitchell Street, which has previously housed eateries The Hot Dog Boutique and Caribbean Legacy, a Guyanese restaurant.
An empty old office space on the fourth floor of a building.
Future office space on the fourth floor of Sylvan West.
A view out the window of a building to a billboard and the Falcons’s stadium beyond.
“The Benz” is the Sylvan’s fourth-floor answer to the classic Goodie Mob question, “Who’s that peekin’ in my window?” And maybe also the back of a billboard.
In a watercolor rendering, we see the pedestrian-friendly vision for Mitchell Street.
A rendering shows the pedestrian-friendly vision for Mitchell Street. Newport owns nearly every building along this section.
Newport US RE
A rendering of downtown Atlanta and where planned development might go.
A broader look at Newport’s intentions for the area.
Newport US RE

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