It takes 16 minutes for a southern yellow pine sawtimber to grow. This is a fact that Jamestown Principal, President and Chairman Michael Phillips said during the ribbon cutting on Atlanta’s newest development, 619 Ponce, earlier this week.
619 Ponce is located in the heart of Old Fourth Ward on Ponce De Leon Avenue. A mass timber loft office, 619 has been in the works for 5 years, according to Phillips and is the first mass timber project to use locally sourced timber wood.
The four-story building has a rooftop with floral bedding and a white space where a conjoined mural will go. The ground floor of the building is occupied by Pottery Barn and the other space will be taken up by Sage, a Lawrenceville-based software company, which is expected to move in early 2025.
“It’s not a big building, but it’s a big footprint,” Phillips said of 619.
The ribbon cutting began with an opening by Phillips who explained the initial logistical and economic advice he was given to build 619 Ponce with imported timber from Eastern Germany or Eastern Europe due to cost-effectiveness. However, he and the firm decided to focus on a solution that was better for the carbon footprint, sourcing timber from local forests in Georgia and Alabama, processing it locally, and transporting it within less than a 100 miles to the construction site.
Andres Villegas, president and CEO of the Georgia Forestry Association and Georgia Forestry Foundation, was in attendance and gave his remarks on the newest development to the Ponce City market area. Villegas expressed his pride in the new building, highlighting its role as a beacon of sustainability within the state.
“This is probably the most sustainable building in the state of Georgia,” Villegas stated, emphasizing its construction from locally grown resources. “This is really the opportunity for those 140,000 people in our state that depend on forestry for their job, to see that coming into that urban environment in a new way we’ve never been able to do before.”
Villegas further pointed out that while other buildings in the state have used wood sourced from outside Georgia or even internationally, the use of Georgia-grown wood makes this project uniquely valuable. “This is the first one that’s Georgia Grown and that’s ultimately what makes it so special,” Villegas told.
Mandy Mahoney, the director of building technologies for the US Department of Energy, was also in attendance to give her remarks. Formerly the city of Atlanta’s first sustainability director, Mahoney was also the first to conduct the city’s first climate action plan brought her own perspective to the local achievement, “You are actually halfway towards your goal of greenhouse gas emissions reductions in the US,” Mahoney stated, “I can’t imagine the blood sweat and tears that went that you went through to build the first building of this time in the southeast”.
Alexandra Kirk, Vice President of Real Estate Development at Jamestown, who provided an insightful glimpse into the creation and unique aspects of Georgia’s latest mass timber building.
Kirk, who has been involved in the project from its conceptual phase during its first year into development, highlighted several key features designed to enhance both the aesthetic and functionality of the building. One of which being the development of a “microclimate” aimed at improving air quality and reducing operational costs. “We are really testing but we do believe that if you create an area where the air intake is actually getting preconditioned through kind of an intensive green space, you’ll have a reduction in your operating costs, and cleaner air in the interior, because you’re not having to filter as much,” Kirk explained.
The building not only utilizes innovative environmental technologies but also focuses on community integration. Kirk is particularly proud of the ground-floor retail space, a feature not commonly found in mass timber buildings, which allows the public to engage directly with the space.
When asked about the significance of the building for Georgians, Kirk was optimistic. She believes that the accessibility and visibility of mass timber in such a prominent location will encourage more developers to consider sustainable materials like Southern Yellow Pine in their projects. “I do believe that more people will build mass timber projects,” she stated, indicating a positive trend towards sustainability influenced by changing building codes and greater recognition of the environmental benefits of mass timber, “It’s amazing to see everyone live through what we believed would happen—that people would love it, that people would want to be here,” Kirk told.
619 is a part of a new phase for Ponce City Market which includes Scout Hospitality offering bedroom units and Signal House a residential building.