Office tenant leases space in 45-story Tower Square, a building empty since 2020 when vacated by AT&T.
A Tower Square signature logo now sits atop what was the old AT&T building at 675 West Peachtree St. in Midtown Atlanta. (John Spink/AJC 2020)
Clad in concrete and dotted with rectangular windows, the building now known as Tower Square has been a fixture of Atlanta’s skyline for decades.
It’s also been empty since 2020, leaving the 45-story behemoth as the city’s largest vacant office building at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic was wreaking havoc on the office market. Doubts began to swirl over whether a traditional office user would ever reoccupy the building.
That answer came this week as medical imaging technology company Oxos announced it signed a 40,000-square-foot lease to move its headquarters to Tower Square in Midtown. The company, which develops portable X-ray scanners, is the first to sign a lease at the tower since it lost AT&T as a tenant. The building used to be AT&T’s regional headquarters in the Southeast.
The lease signing sheds some light on the future of one of Atlanta’s 10 tallest skyscrapers, and it highlights how well-located — but aging — buildings can be repositioned to find new tenants.
“Tower Square stood out as a long-term home for our team,” Evan Ruff, CEO and co-founder of Oxos, said in a news release. “The combination of location, transit access and the overall environment made it clear this was the right move.”
Built in 1982 for AT&T’s predecessor, BellSouth Telecommunications, the tower at 675 West Peachtree St. was known as AT&T Tower until the company’s departure. It subsequently rebranded to Tower Square with a “TS” logo plastered atop the structure.
October 16, 2020 Atlanta: A Tower Square signature logo now sits atop what was the old AT&T building at 675 West Peachtree St. in Midtown Atlanta. (John Spink / John.Spink@ajc.com)
It’s located in a bustling part of Midtown, surrounded by other high-rises bearing Fortune 500 logos and blocks from the Fox Theatre and The Varsity restaurant. The tower has direct access to the North Avenue MARTA station and a 75,000-square-foot retail center called The Exchange.
But it was also widely seen as a building past its prime that hit the leasing market at a time when few companies were taking on new space — let alone anything close to the tower’s 1.3 million square feet.
Those market conditions prompted real estate services firm Avison Young, which was tasked with leasing the tower in 2023, to evaluate converting it into something else.
“We are studying Tower Square as a potential conversion,” Kirk Rich, principal of agency leasing for Avison Young, said in November 2023 during a panel at the Metro Atlanta Redevelopment Summit. “You’re going to see a lot of that creativity start all over the country, but people will have to unlock it.”
That potential never materialized, with fellow real estate services firm CBRE picking up the effort to lease the office space. Jessica Doyle, senior vice president at CBRE, said the tower just needed a little bit of TLC, adding that it underwent a comprehensive repositioning that included a renovated lobby and a refreshed plaza.
“The investment at Tower Square has meaningfully repositioned the building and broadened its appeal to today’s tenants,” Doyle said in the news release.
The exterior of Tower Square, the second-tallest tower in Atlanta, connects directly to a MARTA station in Midtown. (Courtesy of CBRE)
“Companies are being more selective about where and how they occupy space,” she continued. “And this lease reflects the demand we are seeing for well‑located buildings that combine scale, connectivity and a comprehensive amenity offering in Midtown.”
Doyle and her colleague Graham Little, who represented Tower Square’s ownership, declined to release lease terms, but they said Oxos’ commitment was long-term. Cecil & Campbell Advisors represented Oxos.
The building is owned by Florida-based Icahn Enterprises, a holding company controlled by billionaire investor Carl Icahn. Even with the new lease signing, most of the building is on the market, representing more than 1.2 million square feet of vacant workspace.
Oxos will relocate from its current 22,760-square-foot headquarters at 1100 Peachtree St. at an undisclosed future date. The move represents a more than 75% increase to the company’s office footprint.
“It gives us a space that reflects who we are as a company and supports how we continue to grow,” Ruff said.
Zachary Hansen, a Georgia native, covers economic development and commercial real estate for the AJC. He’s been with the newspaper since 2018 and enjoys diving into complex stories that affect people’s lives.
