July 14, 2021

ATLANTA, GA – Balfour Beatty has started construction on NEWPORT RE’s (NEWPORT) $6.4 million Hotel Row project in Downtown Atlanta. Once complete, the adaptive reuse project will revive Atlanta’s original hotel district and offer a retail, restaurant, and creative office space for the growing community.  

NEWPORT’s Hotel Row project consists of the rehabilitation and restoration of 19th-century brick buildings, the Sylvan, the Scoville, and the Gordon Hotel, into 32,200 square feet of retail, restaurant, and creative office space along Mitchell Street. The Balfour Beatty project team will repair and replace the mass timber framework dating back to pre-war origins and restore the building’s exterior brick façade storefronts to preserve the genuine aesthetic of the historic Hotel Row area. The buildings will also feature new roofing and rear windows, and the Sylvan building will include a new modernized elevator. 

The Hotel Row project is located across the street from 222 Mitchell Street, where Balfour Beatty has started demolition activities to deliver a 370,000-gross-square-foot mixed-use space with an additional 27,000-square-foot rooftop. The construction portion of the redevelopment will total $35.5 million, including the full restoration of one early 19th-century building and two mid-century buildings in addition to converting a two-story parking deck into a pocket park. The 222 Mitchell buildings have been vacant for more than nearly 20 years and combine to be NEWPORT’s largest holding in the developer’s ambitious South Downtown plan, an investment of $500 million over the next several years across South Downtown Atlanta.

“Balfour Beatty is proud to work with Newport on these two unique projects,” said Mike Macon, Balfour Beatty senior vice president of operations and business unit leader in Georgia. “We look forward to growing our relationship with the Newport team while helping them restore and revive the rich history of this South Downtown Atlanta community.”

Construction is underway for Newport’s Hotel Row project and the Balfour Beatty team will leverage the latest technologies and lean construction methods, such as Building Information Modeling for design, construction and coordination, as well laser scanning to capture as-built conditions for shop drawing assistance. The rehabilitation and restoration activities of Hotel Row are scheduled for completion December 2021 and will employ 230 workers.

“It takes the right mindset and extreme patience to work with these old, historic buildings, and we knew from the start that identifying the right construction partner would be a crucial component to this work,” said Thomas Bullock, senior vice president, NEWPORT. “We are grateful to have Balfour Beatty’s team on the ground with us every day helping bring these buildings back to life.”

For more information on South Downtown and Newport’s revitalization efforts as well as retail and office leasing through Jones Lang LaSalle, visit southdwntn.com.