Developer of Midtown’s naked tower says work could soon restart

At Peachtree and 14th streets — what might as well be Atlanta’s Main and Main, it’s stood there, all 20-something stories of its insides visible for the world to see.

Now after years of languishing, Midtown’s landmark Campanile building might soon see progress. Again.

Longtime owner John Dewberry told real estate publication Bisnow he has resumed construction work on the inside of the office building at 1155 Peachtree St NE, including planting pilings at the base of the tower to prepare for an expansion. In January, he said his crews plan to start installing steel beams.

“We’ll still be inside the building just for the next two months or three months,” he said in a rare interview with the media. “Nobody sees that either.”

The saga of Campanile and Dewberry’s ownership of the Midtown landmark stretches back some 15 years when he bought the largely empty tower for a song. But few have sung Dewberry’s praises over the tower lately since his plans to add floors to the top of the building ground to a halt.

Campanile has sat empty, its stone and glass exterior removed, for years as corporate investment in Midtown surged.

In the Bisnow article, Dewberry also said he has negotiated leases with three companies from outside of Georgia that would occupy about 135,000 square feet at the tower, which he said he recently renamed “The Midtowne.” He did not identify the tenants, but he said the tenant agreements started with relationships he developed with executives of companies who stayed at his luxury hotel in Charleston, The Dewberry.

Dewberry did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The 21-story tower once served as the headquarters of BellSouth before its merger with AT&T. But since the project stalled, it has been called the antithesis of the progress Midtown has made over the last 30 years by then-Atlanta City Councilman Amir Farokhi in 2024. Farokhi declined to comment for this story.

Meanwhile, Midtown became a hot spot for major companies both landing or relocating their headquarters or major offices in Atlanta, including tech heavyweights like Google, Microsoft and Cisco, all while progress stalled on Dewberry’s project. During the pandemic, Midtown remained a bright spot in the mixed picture of metro Atlanta’s office market.

Other projects have risen or been renovated around the tower in the years since, including North American Properties’ redevelopment of Colony Square just across 14th Street.

Incremental work has been completed on the exterior of the tower. Brittney McKinnon has seen it out of her window for years, in all of its barren, stripped glory.

She works as a sales representative at Visa, which anchors the recently-renovated Promenade Central office building on Peachtree Street, and can see it from the ninth floor. But prior to joining Visa, she worked even closer to the empty tower, in its neighboring 1175 Peachtree.

“I used to hear people building, but there was no progress,” McKinnon said. “It’s been more than a year now, and now I’m curious. What’s really taking so long?”

In 2021, the city’s Office of Buildings filed an abandoned project complaint against the structure, which Dewberry said he resolved. At a May 2022 meeting before Midtown’s Development Review Committee, representatives for Dewberry’s firm said its goal is to complete the tower in the next two years.

Kevin Green, the CEO of Midtown Alliance, said the long-stalled progress on the building has been frustrating for everyone. Just a few blocks away from Dewberry’s building, Midtown Alliance plans to transform a 4-acre undeveloped lot into a public park.