This Atlanta tower wasn’t supposed to sit empty. Now it’s owned by the bank.

“Build it and they will come” often acts as a slogan among optimists in commercial real estate.

But what happens if they don’t come?

Without enough tenants paying rent to help pay off a project’s debt, however, developers will often hand over the keys to cut their losses on an underperforming project. That appears to be what happened to a new office tower in West Midtown after it sat empty for more than 18 months.

Bank OZK recently acquired the 1050 Brickworks office building for $47.5 million, according to property records. The 14-story building off Marietta Street was developed by Asana Partners and Sterling Bay using an $85.5 million loan through the Arkansas-based bank.

Pedestrians walk past 1050 Brickworks on Tuesday, July 14, 2026, in Atlanta. (Hyosub Shin/AJC)

The June 30 sale was a deed-in-lieu-of-foreclosure transaction, meaning it was a negotiated agreement to settle the outstanding debt and to avoid the time-consuming foreclosure process. Asana Partners and Bank OZK declined to comment, while Sterling Bay did not respond to requests for comment.

The transaction highlights the gap between the building’s expected value if it filled with office users and what it’s currently worth while empty and struggling to attract tenants.

Speculative development is common in Atlanta and involves starting construction without specific tenants on board, aiming to capitalize on demand when the building debuts. Often the gambles pay off in Atlanta, a Sun Belt market that has enjoyed growth for decades. But sometimes they don’t.

The 1050 Brickworks project was among the last wave of office towers to join Atlanta’s skyline without any signed tenants in tow, anticipating a hot market ready to pay top dollar for new workspace. But the COVID-19 pandemic upended commercial real estate, and many of those buildings, especially in the emerging and revitalizing West Midtown area, have only succeeded at adding to Atlanta’s post-pandemic glut of vacant office space.

“West Midtown had a lot of vacant speculative deliveries over the last few years,” said Jonathan Koes, who leads the Atlanta research team at real estate services firm Colliers. “Those are still sitting vacant, so that’s really elevating the overall (vacancy) number.”

Ryan Walsh, principal of acquisitions for Sterling Bay, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution at 1050 Brickworks’ groundbreaking ceremony in November 2022 that the team believed in that strategy.

“One of the key advantages a project can give itself is to go spec,” Walsh said at the time. “ … We think you do the project right from inception and people will need the space and they’ll need it quickly.”

Workers construct 1050 Brickworks in West Midtown on Tuesday, March 28, 2023. (John Spink/AJC 2023)

The building opened two years later, coinciding with metro Atlanta’s office construction pipeline slowing to a drip. The pandemic led many companies to cut back on office space because many workers have held on to remote work, at least some of the time.

At the end of June this year, no speculative office construction was taking place across metro Atlanta, according to real estate services firm CBRE.

The 225,000-square-foot tower is one of the largest vacant buildings in metro Atlanta. The region ended June with about 30% of its office space either empty or available to sublease, according to CBRE.

A lot of that vacancy is clustered in West Midtown, a collection of former industrial neighborhoods that have seen unprecedented investment because of the Beltline and real estate interest from companies like Microsoft. But new buildings cost more to construct and need higher rents to justify those investments, which has led to issues, said Alan Wexler, CEO of real estate information firm DataBank.

“The ask-for rents are way above what people are willing to pay or have the ability to pay,” he said. “The lender went along with this (expectation of) big growth, and everybody got caught up in it.

“Now it’s coming to reality that you can’t get those high rents to justify the loans they made,” he continued.

Many properties have managed to find success on Atlanta’s Westside, such as Allen Morris Co.’s Star Metals campus and Selig Enterprises’ The Works, both of which are undergoing new development phases and expansions. The Brickworks business park, which is owned by Asana Partners and adjacent to 1050 Brickworks, is also fully leased.

The Atlanta skyline is seen behind the 1050 Brickworks building on Tuesday, July 14, 2026. (Hyosub Shin/AJC)

To further illustrate the boom-bust cycle of Atlanta real estate, some developers are planning new office towers in some of the city’s most desirable neighborhoods. And chances are, 1050 Brickworks, without such substantial debt, will be a competitive property with its new owners able to offer more affordable rents.