The city of Atlanta will spend $39 million to buy a 41-story downtown office tower from Georgia's state government, saying the city will redevelop the aging building to include mixed-income housing and other uses.

The state has owned the 2 Peachtree Street building for about 30 years. It was the tallest building in Atlanta when it was built in 1968 for the First National Bank of Atlanta, which eventually became part of Wells Fargo & Co.

The state has been emptying the tower of government tenants, moving some into vacant offices around the state capitol. Some state agencies downsized after concluding during the coronavirus pandemic that remote work meant they needed less office space.

4 INJURED IN CLARK ATLANTA UNIVERSITY HOMECOMING SHOOTING

The state budgeted $45 million earlier this year to move out of 2 Peachtree. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Terry England said then that it would cost more to renovate the building than it was worth. Georgia spent more than $100 million on an earlier round of renovations.

Dickens said the site is prime for affordable housing because it's next to the the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority's Five Points rail station. He said housing would go on top, with offices and stores and restaurants on lower floors, and that redevelopment would "move us closer to our vision of a world-class downtown area."

The sale comes as parts of Atlanta's downtown office market struggle. Lenders took back much of the Peachtree Center office complex at a foreclosure auction in September. In 2021, real estate company Jones Lang LaSalle reported that users vacated 600,000 more square feet of office space than they moved into. The trend through the first nine months of this year is modestly positive, though.

German company Newport Re is redeveloping a number of buildings in the southern part of downtown. Los Angeles property investor CIM Group plans to spend $5 billion on office buildings, apartments, a hotel and restaurants atop a railroad gulch and parking lots near Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

Dickens said in a news release that city agency Invest Atlanta will seek a private developer for 2 Peachtree. The mayor said city money would create "dedicated and deeply affordable housing units." Dickens said several hundred new housing units would be created overall, calling it a "huge leap forward" toward his goal to create or preserve 20,000 affordable housing units by 2030. The city says 5,800 units are finished or being built.

The money for the purchase will come from a special taxing district that includes parts of downtown.

John Amanchukwu, a local pastor and father in North Carolina, erupted on a school board this week in a video that has since gone viral in which he criticized the district for prioritizing wokeness instead of focusing on the needs of students who are failing.

“Luke 17:2 says, ‘It is better for a person to have a millstone tied around their neck and to be thrown into the sea than for anyone to harm or damage a child,’” Amanchukwu said in his remarks to the Wake County School Board.

“And so the question today to the school board is: only you know whether or not your role, the policies, the curriculum, and the things you allow in this school system in Wake County, only you know whether or not a millstone is tied around your neck,” he said. “The reality is this: God is going to judge every last one of you for decisions that are made on behalf of children.”

Amanchukwu criticized the district’s spending priorities, noting that in the past year, “we spent $1 million on a ‘diversity office.’”

“How did that benefit black children? How did it benefit children in general?” he said. “Well, 78% of children in 3rd-8th grade, black students, are not proficient in math in Wake County.”

“We’re wasting taxpayer dollars putting money towards this diversity office that’s not benefitting those who need it the most,” he continued. “Sixty-six percent of 3rd-8th grade students are not proficient in reading. Black students, they’re not reading on grade-level, they’re not performing mathematically, and they’re not going to be able to get jobs in fields like STEM. But we’re wasting money on a diversity, equity, and inclusion office while we are failing black students in the name of diversity!”

“You know, in the Jim Crow era, black students were locked out of the public school system. But today they are trapped in and many of these students need options,” he concluded. “They need school choice, they need the opportunity to take their taxpayer dollars and take it to school systems that will benefit them and support them and educate them. And as we talk about inclusion and making sure that the trans student feels comfortable and the queer student feels comfortable, what does that have to do with reading, writing, and arithmetic? As we are teaching cultural Marxism and grooming children to be the next pervert, we are damaging our kids in this public school system and it needs to stop.”

Black man leaves woke school board SHAKING after dismantling CRT to their FACES:

"God is going to judge every last one of you" 

pic.twitter.com/nKL7TYtWBH

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) October 20, 2022