Office tower, apartments proposed for Church at Wieuca property

North Carolina-based developer Crescent Communities has announced plans to build more than 300 apartments and a 21-story office tower at the corner of Peachtree and Wieuca roads, in what is the latest iteration of plans for a long-watched development site near Phipps Plaza.

The site is part of the Church at Wieuca, which has long considered ways to transform its 12-acre property in the heart of Buckhead. The church will not go away; rather, new development will spring around it.

In a news release, the church’s lead pastor, Kevin Head, calls the plans a “significant step forward in our campus redevelopment and our long-term vision for the site.”

The 2.4 acres from the church are under contract and will close at a later date, according to a spokesperson for Crescent.

The new development, which has been dubbed 3600 Peachtree, will stretch across 2.4 acres and calls for street-level food and beverage space. It will also incorporate sustainability standards. Early design concepts call for indoor-outdoor environments, interiors emphasizing natural light and landscaped spaces. The office tower will include an elevated 19,000-square-foot outdoor terrace overlooking Buckhead, and the apartments will have a similar space.

The office component is especially significant. It is the first tower of this scale developers have proposed in the city in the last few years, trailing behind Rockefeller Group’s 60-story tower at 1072 West Peachtree St., which was proposed in 2021 and is set to hit completion this quarter. Office construction reached a historic low in 2025, according to data from real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield.

Its proposal also comes during a period of sluggish leasing activity in Atlanta’s office market. In 2025, leasing dipped nearly 11% compared with the prior year, according to Cushman & Wakefield. But office lease renewals more than doubled in the fourth quarter of the year compared with the third quarter, indicating companies are recommitting to their space rather than downsizing or relocating entirely.

Office towers take a long time to get out of the ground, and it will likely deliver in a different real estate cycle than the one the Atlanta market is facing currently.

In an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Crescent managing director Sagar Rathie said a few factors led the firm to pursue the construction of a new office tower: a lack of new supply, a material increase in tenant demand, especially tenants of size, and a more encouraging capital markets environment.

“We have always felt like there was going to be a right time and opportunity, and we have just been waiting for that,” Rathie said.

Iterations of plans to redevelop the site have been in motion for more than five years. In 2021, church members voted to sell a portion of their campus with plans to keep its main church building and sanctuary intact, but began considering different uses for the property as early as 10 years ago.

Atlanta City Council rezoned the property that same year. The decision was controversial, facing opposition from residents in nearby buildings and condos worrying new development would worsen traffic. Then-Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms vetoed the rezoning, after which the City Council took the rare step of overturning it. Still, the condominium association for nearby Ritz-Carlton Residences at 3630 Peachtree Road contested the zoning in a lawsuit, but a judge ruled in favor of the church.