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Atlanta Business Chronicle - March 6, 2006
http://atlanta.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2006/03/06/focus6.html

Best in Atlanta Real Estate

Terminus may be start of new era in Buckhead
Office Honorable Mention

Atlanta Business Chronicle - March 3, 2006
by Terrell Johnson
Contributing Writer

Though it is still a work in progress, Cousins Properties Inc.'s Terminus promises to play a major role in what many observers expect will help to transform Buckhead into a live-work-play mecca.

The building, a 27-story project with 580,000 square feet of office space slated for a spring 2007 completion, received honorable mention in the office category in Atlanta Business Chronicle's Best in Atlanta Real Estate Awards.

"What we're trying to do with Terminus is make it so much more than an office building," said Cousins Senior Vice President John Goff, who heads the company's Terminus development team. "Buckhead has traditionally had great office buildings, but they're just singular buildings. What we're trying to do with Terminus is make it a different place."

In the project's first phase, called Terminus 100, the office floors will be joined by 65,000 square feet of street-level retail space that Cousins expects to fill with clothing stores, coffee and sandwich shops and a health club, in addition to three restaurants that will occupy an adjacent building.

Between the office tower and the parking garage will be a planned outdoor pavilion, which by day will be used as a lunchtime gathering place, and by night as an outdoor amphitheater for concerts and special events.

"We really wanted to do an integrated and connected environment, as opposed to one building on an island with a parking lot on Peachtree Street," Goff said.

Later phases are expected to bring the construction of a second building, Terminus 200, which will include a planned 700 condominium units and about 35,000 square feet of additional retail space at the street level, as part of an effort to foster a 24-hour environment for living, working and playing.

The project comes at a pivotal time for the area, Goff said.

"Buckhead is at a moment in time where it can become ... gridlocked with traffic, or it can turn the corner and do what Midtown has successfully done, and become a true pedestrian-friendly environment," he said.

Larry Gellerstedt, president of Cousins' division for office and multifamily development, said he thinks the project will fill a need that hasn't yet been met in Buckhead.

"As the Atlanta area continues to have greater and greater density, people want to have an option out there where they can live and work and play in a location that doesn't require them to be in their car for an hour," he said.

Terminus also will be Cousins' new corporate headquarters.

Other firms are finding Terminus attractive as well.

As of mid-February, five companies had signed leases to occupy more than 230,000 square feet of Terminus 100, including HSBC Premier Global bank (57,000 square feet); Salomon Smith Barney Inc. (57,000 square feet); Boston-based consultant Bain & Company Inc. (50,000 square feet), CB Richard Ellis Inc. (50,000 square feet) and St. Paul, Minn.-based medical device-maker Synovis Life Technologies Inc. (24,000 square feet).

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