The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tax break for mixed-use project gets preliminary OK
Fulton County leaders on Tuesday gave conditional approval for a 10-year, $5.4 million tax break to developer S.J. Collins Enterprises for the second phase of its $450 million mixed-use development known as The Interlock in West Midtown.
The Fulton County Development Authority voted 8-1 to approve the deal.
The company received a $7.5 million tax abatement from Invest Atlanta in 2018 for the first phase of the development, which will offer office and retail space, in addition to a hotel west of the Downtown Connector, along Northside Drive.
Jeff Garrison, a partner with the Fairburn-based real estate development firm, said that area west of Georgia Tech desperately needs the vibrancy seen on the east side of campus.
“Right now it’s all fast food on the Northside corridor, and that’s not representative of what they want to do with (their) community,” Garrison said.
Garrison said S.J. Collins officials spent 300 hours in community meetings over two years, engaging with the public and working with Georgia Tech, which owns some of the property through an affiliate.
But the tax deals haven’t been free of controversy.
In June 2018, Invest Atlanta board member Julian Bene wrote of the project that “it is time to reconsider the wisdom of multimillion-dollar tax concessions for projects with minimal public benefit.”
When asked why his company applied for the second-phase tax incentives through Fulton’s Development Authority instead of Invest Atlanta, Garrison said he liked working with the county’s agency on its Southern Post project in Roswell. The company received a $2.7 million tax abatement for that project in July 2019.
On Tuesday, a majority of the Fulton development board voted in favor of the tax break after the developer promised at least $5 million of infrastructure improvements and a 40,000-squarefoot grocery store in a part of town that needs both.
Vice chairman Steve Broadbent, a former Johns
Creek councilman, said he came into the meeting planning to vote no but was persuaded by the promise of new infrastructure.
Garrison’s presentation didn’t sway member Tom Tidwell. “I don’t think that we should be providing tax abatement for a grocery store that would be more convenient,” said Tidwell, former Buckhead Council of Neighborhoods head.
The tax break will only go into effect if the project delivers the promised infrastructure improvements and grocery. Garrison said he expects a portion of The Interlock to open in spring 2023.
But a lot needs to happen between now and then, including excavating lead-contaminated soil from the property previously used as a dumping site for a steel mill.