Quote:
Originally Posted by jwbab
For that amount of money, this should be something pretty special. For comparison, the entire 1105 West Peachtree block with the hotel, office, and residential tower was expected to cost around $400 million.
That is over half a billion dollars on just a portion of the block. Remember CA Ventures is building their student tower on the same block. That could be close to three quarters of a billion dollars in one block.
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I have been inside their Norfolk VA headquarters building, and got to tour the CEO suite there. It is a 'trophy' tower that was built in 1988, and they will likely build something much larger here to accommodate all their staff in Atlanta. They have a railroad museum inside their current HQ building, and I suspect they will have that type of facility inside their Atlanta HQ building. I suspect they will build an 'L' shaped facility, with one portion being the tower. The lower larger lower portion of the building will house their operations, engineering and IT, which fills the majority of their current Atlanta facility. They will want a tower portion for their sales, legal, and executives. Since they are in the business of selling to big corporate customers, they will want an impressive facility to be able to host customers and sell them on railroad services. Their current Norfolk HQ facility is only 22 floors, 282 feet, with 311,000 sq ft of office space. Their current Atlanta facility is only 12 floors tall, and much broader. We are probably looking at something similar to NCR's headquarters, with a 30 floor tower and a shorter tower for operations. Parking would be wedged in the middle next to the student tower. Since Cousins did NCR headquarters, I think NS will be very similar. Also, NS might want their tower to be a bit taller to get some visibility from the interstate as well as compete visually with the neighboring AT&T tower. That makes me believe the tower would face Spring st, not West Peachtree. Their historical 'Southern Railroad' headquarters building, currently being renovated by CIM, is also on Spring Street, so being a company where history is very important (they are nearly 200 years old) they might want a Spring street address or presence. This is all my guess based on what I know about the company.