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ATLANTA (AP) — Midtown Atlanta is increasing transforming into a technology hub, with the latest plans for Technology Square recently announced.
Atlanta developer Portman and the Georgia Institute of Technology unveiled a 21-story second phase for the project and gave it a new name, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported (bit.ly/1Szgnyy).
Known in planning stages as the High Performance Computing Center, the tower will bear the shorter and artsier name Coda.
Tech and Portman hope the tower, expected to break ground in November and be finished in early 2019, will burnish midtown Atlanta's status as a technology hub.
If all goes as planned, the L-shaped glass building will be home to some 2,400 workers, including Georgia Tech researchers and staff and employees from private companies that would collaborate with the university on new technologies.
"The whole theme behind this project is to create an environment for collaboration to get people out of their silos," said Travis Garland, Portman's director of leasing on the project. "It's definitively one-of-a-kind in the Southeast and probably one-of-a-kind across the country."
Other universities have collaborative research spaces with the private sector, but Tech Square brings together office space, hotels, a conference center, Tech's business school and student housing along with innovation centers and corporate offices, the Atlanta newspaper reported.
The first phase of the overall development, which opened in 2003, created a new center for the region's tech scene. AT&T, Panasonic, Southern Company, Home Depot, NCR and others have innovation labs there. NCR, now based in Duluth, is building a new headquarters nearby that in a few years is expected to house 3,600 workers.
The entire complex will total about 1 million square feet. About 750,000 square feet will be office, retail and data center space, The Journal-Constitution reported. Georgia Tech will occupy and lease from Portman about half of the office floor space, while the rest will be leased to major companies and startups, Garland said.
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