Downtown AJC Building Being Donated to City of Atlanta
Decatur Metro | November 9, 2010 | 9:21 amHow DOES the AJC get all these great scoops? 
The paper reports this morning that Cox Enterprises will be donating its downtown building along Marietta Street and the former printing press building behind it to the City of Atlanta. The property is estimated at $50 million.
According to the AJC, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed plans to “put police and fire training academies in the buildings, use the auditorium for public meetings, create a gallery space that formerly was at City Hall East, and use warehouse and parking space.”
Not only will this fill a currently vacant building in downtown Atlanta, but it’ll save the city some serious coin as they move departments from leased spaces.
Nice move Cox Communications!
You would post this story shortly after I used AJC and Puke together in a previous post!
I’m glad the building was donated. But I’m curious: Isn’t AJC in a tight spot financially these days? If so, why donate instead of sell a building worth $50 million? I’m not being snarky just really wondering. As much as I regret that the AJC has declined, I’m still addicted to my daily local hardcopy paper as are the Sports section and Comics readers in our family. I don’t want the AJC to disappear.
Well, Cox Communications donated the building, and its a private entity so we don’t know what sort of financial shape they’re in.
Also last I heard, with the move to Dunwoody, the AJC is back in the black.
I’m also curious what was in it for the AJC. I’m sure it wasn’t 100% altruistic. I guess they did the math and realized a tax write-off for 2010 was worth a lot more than whatever proceeds they’d get from a sale at some distant point in the future in a depressed real estate market. This way, they probably save lots of cash in the current year, plus they avoid future property tax payments on the building. I’m also sure they had no desire to become landlords.
The catch is that the building is filled with like 10 billion AJC Reaches.
At first I thought that said 10 billion Roaches–I guess 10 billion Reaches is even scarier.
The donation is from cox corporate. The ajc was previously a tenant in a cox building. The move to dunwoody put the ajc in a cheaper building under a different landlord.
This will be an even bigger bonanza for Atlanta than the City Hall East “deal of the century”!
Reckon anyone will remember this when another “history” is written about the AJC? Maybe the writer will then include the omissions from the last one.