The building most Atlantans still call CNN Center turned 50 this year, and yesterday it threw itself a reunion.
The reopening event for The CTR, hosted by CP Group, marked the soft return of the 50-year-old downtown complex after a five-year, $200 million reimagining. The official grand opening lands in June, but yesterday was about welcoming the building back into the conversation, with food, drinks, a confetti drop, and a toast from Mayor Andre Dickens.
CP Group CEO Chris Eachus opened the program with a line that set the tone for the afternoon: "You can't make new old friends." That framing did the work the whole afternoon. This building has watched Atlanta grow up. It hosted NBA games in the arena next door, employed a generation of Turner and CNN staffers, and sat at the center of what downtown looked like to a kid in 1976. The room was full of people who had a story tied to it.
What's actually different now
The atrium has been rebuilt. The arrival experience is reimagined. The ATL letters outside, created by SCAD graduate Michael Porten, stand where the iconic CNN letters once did. Center Foodworks and Mastro's Ocean Club are open. Eleven commissioned murals and works of art from Atlanta's arts community are installed throughout, with more than $1 million invested in local artists alone. Residential floors are still to come.
CP Group has put more than $200 million into the building so far, and Eachus was clear they're just getting started. The pitch is that this place is no longer a building you pass through on the way somewhere else. It's a place you stop, eat, work, live, and stay.
Honoring Ted Turner
Ted Turner passed away two weeks ago, and members of his family were in the room. Eachus didn't rush past it. He acknowledged that for most of Atlanta, this building has one name and one story, and it belongs to Ted. CNN launched from inside this atrium in 1980 before anyone believed the world needed a 24-hour news channel. Millions of visitors took the studio tour, waved at the cameras, and went home telling people they'd been to the place where the news came from.
CP Group is restoring Ted's apartment upstairs and working with his family to keep his story alive inside the building for the next 50 years. That detail landed.
The bigger picture from Invest Atlanta
Dr. Eloisa Klementich, president and CEO of Invest Atlanta, gave the room the number that mattered most. Within roughly a mile of The Center, there are about eight major projects in motion, totaling 8,500 residential units, with 30% of those designated affordable under Mayor Dickens' housing goal. Total investment across that footprint, over $15 billion.
That is the context for why this reopening is more than a ribbon cutting. The Center is one piece of a downtown that is being rebuilt around residents, not just commuters and tourists. Dan Corso of the Atlanta Sports Council pointed out that Sports Business Journal just named Atlanta the number one city in the U.S. for sports business, citing the infrastructure that lets this city host the biggest events in the world. The Center is now part of that infrastructure.
World Cup is 26 days out
In three weeks, the World Cup arrives. Eight matches. A semifinal. Millions of eyes on Atlanta. The Center will host the volunteer headquarters for the World Cup host committee, with over 3,000 volunteers cycling through. The ATL House, the host committee's hospitality space, is going into the old Dantana's location. One of the largest official FIFA merchandise stores in the city is already open inside the building.
A lot of visitors are going to walk through these doors over the next month. As Eachus put it, he can't think of a better way for an old friend to reintroduce itself to the world.
This is the reopening downtown needed. Not a grand opening with a ribbon and a press release, but a reunion that acknowledged what this building has been to Atlanta and what it stopped being for a stretch. The $200 million from CP Group, the $15 billion across the surrounding blocks, the 8,500 units coming online, the World Cup landing in three weeks, all of it points in the same direction. Downtown Atlanta is not the picture in your head anymore. It is becoming a 24-hour neighborhood where people actually live, and The CTR is one of the anchors making that possible. The building has its name back. Now it has a job to do.
Would you spend an afternoon at The Center once the residential floors and full programming are live, or is downtown still off your regular rotation?
