Mercedes-Benz opens $34M ‘playground for engineers’ in Atlanta
It’s an office building, auto shop and car proving ground all rolled into one.
Mercedes-Benz on Wednesday debuted its Atlanta Technology Center in west Midtown, a facility designed to consolidate the automaker’s North American back-end and testing operations in one place. The $34 million facility in Atlanta’s Northyards industrial district spans 60,000 square feet and will grow to include about 160 employees.
Jason Hoff, CEO of Mercedes-Benz North America, described the center as “a playground for engineers,” aiming to solve problems unique to the German auto giant’s American fleet.
“Almost all of our vehicle testing in the U.S. will be done here in the future,” he told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The opening of the facility coincides with the automaker’s plan to expand its U.S. headquarters in Sandy Springs into its North American headquarters, which involves relocating up to 500 jobs to the Atlanta area. The dual initiatives bolster Mercedes-Benz’s investment and corporate presence in metro Atlanta and accelerate Georgia’s fast-growing auto industry.
“We called it project gravity,” John Lipa, vice president of test operations for Mercedes-Benz’s research and development division in America, said at the center’s ribbon cutting ceremony.
“Basically everything was being pulled toward Atlanta,” he continued.
Hoff said the thought of coalescing operations in the Southeast began about two years ago. He said Northyards, a former railroad roundhouse near North Avenue and Northside Drive, immediately stood out.
The 60,000-square-foot center is spread across two buildings: one focused on traditional office space and the other as a mechanical workshop. A parking area in between is being converted into an outdoor car testing area.
The offices have all the trappings of modern workspaces, ranging from an army of sit-stand desks to a variety of meeting spaces named after Atlanta neighborhoods. Walls are plastered with the three-pointed star emblazoned within Mercedes-Benz’s logo.
The office building’s largest glass windows peer directly into the workshop, which Hoff said is the point of the whole center’s design. The company’s sales, marketing and customer support teams in the office building are always a short walk from the engineers and product testers when questions and problems arise.
“This facility here is all specialized in U.S.-specific products,” Thomas Grycz, the automaker’s senior manager for product technical support, said. “It might be developed in Germany, (but) they don’t test it in the same parameters as a U.S. customer.”
The center will slowly absorb Mercedes-Benz teams relocating from other facilities across the U.S. — including from Southern California, Michigan and Florida. Hoff said it will result in about 97% of Mercedes-Benz’s 10,000 North American employees being based between the automaker’s factories in Alabama and South Carolina.
“It’s really going to help up optimize and improve how we work together,” he said.
The U.S. also joins China and Germany as the only countries where Mercedes-Benz has its entire value chain — spanning from vehicle manufacturing to back-end operations.
Beyond Mercedes-Benz’s office presence, its name is also plastered on one of downtown Atlanta’s most recognizable structures: Mercedes-Benz Stadium — even if it’s temporarily been renamed “Atlanta Stadium” during the World Cup for sponsorship reasons.
Since 2018, Mercedes-Benz has operated its U.S. headquarters near Abernathy Road and Ga. 400, currently housing about 800 employees. In 2015, state and local leaders offered Mercedes-Benz an incentive package of up to $27 million to move its U.S. headquarters from New Jersey to metro Atlanta, including a grant and certain tax breaks.
Mercedes-Benz will receive a $3.5 million grant to help offset some of the research and development equipment costs at its new technology center, the Georgia Department of Economic Development said. The company will also likely qualify for tax credits for newly created jobs.
Jordan Camarena, senior manager of field technical services for Mercedes-Benz, said many employees got into the auto industry to peer under hoods rather than sitting solely at desks. The new technology center brings those into balance.
“I’ve spent a lot of time in an office behind a computer, so being able to be in the shop — it’s where I came from and where I belong,” he said.