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Among the developers jumping into Atlanta's hot pre-recession condo market was Donald Trump, whose $300 million condo building was supposed to rise at 15th and West Peachtree streets. It never happened, despite the future president-elect's optimism at the time.
“It’s a great location in a great city,” he said in an August 2006 interview introducing the project. “I’ve loved Atlanta for years.”
Trump and Atlanta are in the news today, after he targeted political adversary U.S. John Lewis in his latest Twitter tirade .
"Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results," Trump tweeted after Lewis said he believes Russia President Vladimir Putin helped elect Trump.
Trump's Atlanta project, coincidentally enough, would have been located in Lewis' district. We attended the exclusive reception held to launch the project.
About 200 local notables sipped "Trump-tinis" at Trump Towers' Atlanta sales gallery that night in late 2007. Trump himself didn't attend but sent his children, Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump, to meet and greet. Ivanka arrived wearing pieces from her jewelry collection. At the time the development said it had "80 firm contracts in place already."
It didn't happen.
"The two curved and mirrored glass high-rises — one 47-story tower next to a 38-story one — would soar above a lobby emblazoned with a giant Trump logo," the AJC's political writer Greg Bluestein noted. "An Atlanta-based firm partly owned by music legend Kenny Rogers was hired to design the building's interior, and there were plans for a high-end restaurant and grocer on the ground levels. More than 560 units, topping out at $1.6 million, would be built."
But the project, like may others at the time, fizzled out during the Great Recession, and the 2.5-acre tract in the heart of Midtown sat vacant for years. It's now the site of unrelated construction.
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