Georgia’s First Home-Grown Mass Timber Building Opens

Mark it on your calendar when you come to town for IWF this summer: it’s a stunner.

Georgia has long been known as one of the leading states for supplying timber to the building industry so it was only a matter of time before the first Mass Timber structure using native supplies opened.

That happened this spring with the debut of 619 Ponce De Leon Avenue, a 115,000-square-foot structure that is adjacent to Atlanta’s wildly successful Ponce City Market. The four-story building includes retail on the street level as well as offices and commercial spaces above, topped off with a rooftop garden.

In reporting on its opening the Urbanize Atlanta website called it “the state’s first Georgia-grown, mass-timber building to use a regional supply chain.”

Part of a revitalized neighborhood on the east side of Atlanta – the Ponce City Market itself was once a Sears Roebuck store and production facility – the new building can be accessed by the Belt Line walkway and includes a Pottery Barn store and the North American headquarters for financial services company Sage.

Urbanize Atlanta’s report included what it called a “fun fact: It takes just 16 minutes to grow the amount of Georgia timber needed to build 619 Ponce, with such a vast swath of 22 million acres of commercially available pine forests in the state. What’s also unique about Georgia is the trees’ relatively quick life-cycle of 25 years from seedling to maturity, versus 80 years in other cases.”

So, when you come to the International Woodworking Fair this August, add it to your itinerary: 619 Ponce is just 6 miles away from the Georgia World Congress Center.

Image: Handel Architects LLP

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