New renderings: Pullman Yard’s ‘creative city’ to launch construction in weeks, per developers

Century-old Kirkwood property is set for an entertainment-centric makeover

By Sean Richard Keenan@ThatSeanKeenan Feb 15, 2019, 11:27am EST

An earlier aerial rendering of the whole vision for the redevelopment project. — Layout for the latest Pullman Yard vision, with sound stages near Rogers Street.

The clearest redevelopment vision to date for Kirkwood’s historic but decrepit Pratt-Pullman Yard site has emerged.

Currently, site work is underway at the 27-acre parcel, and “major construction” is expected to launch in coming weeks, the site’s owner, Adam Rosenfelt, tells Curbed Atlanta.

Rosenfelt and his wife and development partner Maureen Meulen, heads of film production group Atomic Entertainment, aim to turn the former sugar and fertilizer processing plant—and later, train depot—into a “creative city” mixed-use campus.

The goal is that the property would continue to be a Hollywood magnet while becoming a public-accessible, neighborhood hub, developers have stressed. The site has played host to gritty scenes in The Hunger Games, Baby Driver, and currently the third installment of Bad Boys, among many other movie and television productions.

Rosenfelt has said plans call for a roughly $200-million, adaptive-reuse overhaul of the century-old warehouse district that capitalizes on its inimitable (and protected) historic features.

Renderings released today illustrate how many of those historic spaces could be reconfigured for twenty-first century habitation.

An interior of one proposed office building.

Once complete, the site will feature sound stages for film production, as well as offices, residences, a boutique hotel, a food hall, and green space, according to its owners.

In September, project officials announced they had hired Rainey Shane, JLL’s adaptive-reuse director and one of the development managers for the Ponce City Market project, to manage the property’s overhaul.

As part of a bidding process two years ago, the State of Georgia sold the Pullman property to Atomic for the California company’s proposed $8 million, the highest initial bid.

The sale of the property was the culmination of a saga dating back to 1990, when the Georgia Building Authority (GBA) acquired the rundown facility, which had been built in 1904 as a processing plant and later used by the Pullman Passenger Rail Company.