There is a seven-year-old promise attached to the 17-story building at Peachtree Street and Memorial Drive. In 2019, Atlanta authorized closing the Atlanta City Detention Center and created a task force to turn it into a Center for Equity.
The building is still a jail. The pending deal would sell it to Fulton County so it can remain one.
What Atlanta and Fulton have actually agreed to
In an Aug. 31 counteroffer released Sept. 1, Mayor Andre Dickens proposed selling the detention center for $68 million. The offer also asked Fulton County to commit $200 million over 10 years to the Morehouse School of Medicine and Atrium Health hospital project and address commercial property assessments. There is an echo of the 2019 equity promise in Dickens’ attempt to attach hospital funding to the sale. But neither his letter nor his public explanation identifies the hospital as a substitute for the Center for Equity.
On Sept. 2, Fulton County accepted the price in principle and rejected those additional conditions. Commission Chairman Robb Pitts wrote that they were unrelated to the real estate transaction. He also said Atlanta would have to pay Fulton’s costs for housing, food, medical care and staffing when the city uses beds in the building.
The county gave Atlanta until 5 p.m. Sept. 10 to respond and wants to close by Dec. 4. Nothing has been signed. Agreement on a price is not a completed sale.
Fulton is buying capacity it already uses
Fulton currently leases space for up to 700 detainees inside the city jail. The four-year agreement, priced at $50 per detainee per day with no renewal option, expires at the end of 2026.
Fulton has around 1,900 detainees at Rice Street and roughly 700 downtown, with its total jail population recently reported below 3,000. The city building has approximately 1,300 rated beds, although that does not mean every bed is immediately usable.
Fulton’s own construction schedule explains the urgency. In April, commissioners authorized financing of up to $1.363 billion for a new special-purpose facility and Rice Street renovations. The new facility is expected to open in 2031. Work at Rice Street continues through 2035.
Buying the city jail preserves capacity during that work and could reduce the need for temporary construction or sending detainees elsewhere. It also gives Fulton direct control over renovations and operations. The county says the building still needs about $75 million in work.
That is the benefit to Fulton. It is not buying an empty Downtown building. It is buying control of beds it already depends on.
What happened to the Center for Equity
Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms signed legislation authorizing the jail’s closure in May 2019. The council resolution creating the reuse task force was introduced by then-Councilmember Dickens. Its final report included four design proposals, more than 10 proposed legal changes and four service areas.
The full conversion never received a funded construction schedule. In 2022, Atlanta changed direction and leased the beds to Fulton as Rice Street struggled with overcrowding.
One piece of the earlier vision did open. The Center for Diversion and Services held its ribbon-cutting in October 2024 and became fully operational in January 2025. It has a separate entrance and staff and connects people experiencing behavioral-health, housing and substance-use crises with services instead of jail. Fulton says it intends to keep the center operating after a purchase.
No public record I found shows Atlanta formally comparing continued detention with the Center for Equity and deciding that jail use was better. The record shows a reuse plan that never secured construction funding, a county that needed beds and a city offered $68 million plus relief from operating costs. That may explain the decision, but it does not settle what South Downtown is giving up. If the sale closes, detention remains the block’s primary use, and the broader Center for Equity promised in 2019 ends as an unfinished plan. If Fulton buys the building, should the agreement guarantee the diversion center stays and set a date for reconsidering the jail’s long-term use?ou live or work within a few blocks of Peachtree and Memorial, what would actually change on that corner for you if the county owns the building instead of the city?
You live or work within a few blocks of Peachtree and Memorial, what would actually change on that corner for you if the county owns the building instead of the city?
