Cousins buys Atlanta towers, part of strategy shift

Cousins also is buying the Fifth Third Center, a tower in Charlotte, for $215 million.

The transactions will be paid for in part by a recent offering of stock and the sale of properties in other cities, including office buildings in Fort Worth and Birmingham and shopping centers in Tennessee and Florida.

In Atlanta, Cousins said it will seek a joint venture partner to invest in 191 Peachtree Street, a downtown building that was nearly empty when Cousins acquired it a few years ago and is now 86 percent leased.

“When these transactions are complete, our property portfolio will be located exclusively in our five targeted Sunbelt markets,” Cousins CEO Larry Gellerstedt said in a news release, referring to Atlanta, Dallas, Austin, Charlotte and Houston.

Cousins shifted some of its investment activities to Texas and North Carolina as Atlanta suffered through a prolonged hangover from the Great Recession. But the company has stepped up its interests here, buoyed by five years of slow but steady job growth.

Gellerstedt recently told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that his company’s investment interest in its hometown has grown, and its strategy is to commit resources to transit-linked projects. Major companies that might lease in its office towers are demanding transit options to compete for talent and combat traffic congestion.

Separately, Cousins, Ackerman & Co and H.J. Russell & Co. have teamed on a mixed-use office and retail complex at Abernathy Road and Ga. 400 that would be less than a half-mile from the Sandy Springs MARTA station.