Remaking an eyesore: Developer lays out vision for abandoned I-285 tower

Cesar Contreras remembers many nights waiting in line to get into Club Europe, a nightclub that opened in the aftermath of Atlanta playing host to the Centennial Olympics Games.

The club was at the ground floor of a uniquely shaped hotel that jutted 14 stories into the sky near Spaghetti Junction. The hotel was already on its second life after closing about 10 years prior. At the time, Contreras had no idea that he’d be working decades later on an effort to revive the building yet again.

“It’s a great building with a lot of history,” said Contreras, a partner at Aramar Investments. “I feel very privileged to be able to write a new chapter and bring this building back to life.”

Aramar Investments this year acquired the former Presidential Hotel in DeKalb County, which has become one of metro Atlanta’s infamous eyesores. The company last month announced a $53.3 million project to turn the abandoned building into 282 apartments.

DeKalb County recently issued a land disturbance permit for the project, and Contreras said he expects a building permit will be approved within the next four months. That opens the door for construction to begin in earnest, with a goal of people once again living in the tall cylindrical tower by 2028.

“Who wouldn’t want to live in such an iconic building?” Contreras said.

The Presidential Hotel at 4001 Presidential Parkway was built in 1973, but it closed in 1987, the same year Spaghetti Junction officially opened. In anticipation of the Olympic Games, the property was reopened as the Ramada Perimeter Northeast hotel, featuring Club Europe on its ground floor that opened in 1997.

A 2010 auction led to a third lease on life as the Presidential Boutique Condotel, attempting a pivot to condominiums. The building shut down two years later amid evictions, unpaid utility bills and safety code violations.

Since then, multiple developers have unveiled plans to convert the tower, but none got off the ground. The tower has remained unoccupied for more than a decade.

Atlanta-based Aramar Investments began to explore converting the abandoned building into apartments about two years ago, Contreras said. The company is also handling the office-to-residential conversion of the 13-story office building at 41 Marietta St., which went through foreclosure in 2024 amid the construction work. That project’s first units are on track to open in November.

Contreras said his firm sees a lot of opportunities in retrofitting struggling buildings into housing. Aramar transformed a former Holiday Inn in Oklahoma City, which Contreras described as an eyesore, into “a pretty cool product that is now stabilized with a wait list of people to move in.”