ATLANTA — A midtown eyesore is one step closer to becoming Atlanta’s newest park.
The Midtown Alliance announced on Friday that it had chosen design firm Field Operations to redevelop the plot of empty land at 98 14th Street.
The property was once intended to become the tallest high-rise in the city, but the plan never came to fruition.
Since then, the lot has sat empty, walled off by scaffolding for the project that never came.
In March, the Midtown Alliance announced that they were going to turn the plot of land into a park, to bring back some more green space into midtown.
“This is the largest undeveloped site in midtown,” said Kevin Green, Midtown Alliance president and CEO. “It just sat here as midtown grew up around it all.”
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There have been 140 new buildings in the last 20 years in just one square mile of midtown. But there has been only just over an acre of public green space.
“What would make you walk into this site and say wow,” Green said. “We always had our eye on this site, but it was always under contract, always something planned. Ultimately, when that fell through, real estate market cooled, we saw it as an opportunity.”
Now, the Midtown Alliance has the developer to make that dream of a park come true.
“Early ideas for the site include an expansive tree canopy, a flexible performance stage and pavilion, art installations, food and beverage spaces, water features, walking paths, active-use lawns, and more,” the Midtown Alliance said in a news release.
The ideas they came up with came from a community survey filled out by “more than 4,800 responses from residents, workers, and visitors sharing what they’d like to see in the space.”
The Midtown Alliance said it expects to share renderings and preliminary costs for the project in Spring 2026, and anticipates the” installation of a temporary lawn for pop-up events are anticipated to be ready ahead of the FIFA World Cup 2026™ matches in Atlanta next summer.”