Town and Gown: How Colleges have invigorated Intown Atlanta

Like many urban areas, Atlanta is fortunate to be home to many colleges and universities.

The Georgia Institute for Technology, better known as Georgia Tech, Georgia State University, the Historically Black Colleges and Universities, known as HBCUs, of the Atlanta University Center including Spelman College (All Female), Morehouse College (All Male, and the alma mater of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King), plus numerous technical and business schools.  Additionally, Midtown and Cristo Rey Atlanta Jesuit High Schools add to the vitality of the Downtown and Midtown areas of the city.

Georgia State has been a major player in the revitalization of Downtown Atlanta, by bringing in thousands of students, faculty, staff and visitors, plus, ushering in a building boom of new construction. Residence halls that temporarily housed athletes for the 1996 Olympics have become mainstays and help convert what was a commuter school into one with an abundance of on-campus social life.

Georgia Tech expanded its campus across Interstates 75/85 to the east, with Tech Square’s Georgia Tech Hotel, and CODA, a multi-use research, co-working complex.  Georgia Tech also transformed abandoned and blighted areas across the Midtown/Downtown Connector to open Technology Square in 2003.  The second phase 21-story Coda Building opened in 2019 and has drawn more top-tier tech companies to work as close to Georgia Tech’s campus as possible.

More recently, Georgia Tech has started construction on Tech Square Phase 3, part of its further expansion into Midtown Atlanta.  It is these works that have been attributed, in part, to corporations such as Microsoft, Google, and Nike making investments in the area and expanding their presence to capture the prospective graduates.

DLBP is interested in the role that Atlanta’s prestigious colleagues have played, and will continue to play, in the evolution of the city.