It’s common for office buildings to change ownership and be redeveloped.
Some are converted into apartments or hotels, while others are torn down when the real estate beneath them is more valuable than obsolete offices. Not many find new life as a church sanctuary, but that’s the preordained destiny for a four-story building in Buckhead.
Christ Covenant Church on Tuesday announced it paid nearly $16.9 million to buy Piedmont Place, a 94,000-square-foot office building at 3520 Piedmont Road NE. The church in the short term will act as the landlord to the building’s current roster of office tenants, but eventually plans to transform it into a 2,500-seat sanctuary.
“Since 2017, Christ Covenant Church has grown to more than 2,000 members and three campuses in metro Atlanta,” Jason Dees, senior pastor at Christ Covenant, said in a news release. “At Piedmont Place, the church has an opportunity to build a central gathering place to serve its membership today and reach the city of Atlanta well into the future.”
Credit: Courtesy of Transwestern
Credit: Courtesy of Transwestern
It’s not uncommon for congregations to get creative in finding worship space, whether that’s leasing old storefronts or gathering on weekends at schools or community centers.
The Christ Covenant plan appears to be unique among recent office redevelopment efforts around metro Atlanta, which continues to grapple with a post-pandemic glut of aging and unwanted office buildings. About 25% of all office square footage in the Atlanta area is vacant, and most of that empty space is concentrated in older buildings and suburban office parks.
Piedmont Place was built in 1983, according to real estate services firm Transwestern, which brokered the sale. It is about 62% occupied.
Hall Capital sold the building after paying $21.8 million to buy it in July 2021, meaning the building’s value has decreased about 22%.
Transwestern has been retained by the church to provide agency leasing and asset services for the building until the redevelopment plan kicks into gear. The church did not provide a timeline or a project budget for its sanctuary.
Bradley Fulkerson, who leads Transwestern’s tenant advisory and workplace solutions group in Atlanta, said Piedmont Place “is among only a few properties in Buckhead with developable land.”
“The property offers immediate occupancy up to 30,000 square feet with flexible one- to two-year lease terms, unique in the submarket,” Fulkerson said, making a sales pitch that Piedmont Place serves a niche as a short-term office option for the right tenants.
Several office buildings have been sold recently for demolition and redevelopment plans, especially north of Atlanta in the region’s largest office submarket Central Perimeter. Conversion projects, when an office building isn’t torn down but retrofitted into something else, are also taking place around Atlanta but tend to be more expensive, difficult and only viable for select buildings.
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