Coke will move 500 employees from suburbs back to Atlanta

June 24,2015

By Douglas Sams

Coke is moving another 500 employees from the Atlanta suburbs back to the city where the world’s largest beverage company got its start almost 130 years ago.

The Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE: KO) plans to relocate the employees from 2500 Windy Ridge, a 16-story building in Cobb County’s Wildwood Office Park. The move will leave the building empty.

It continues Coke's migration back to the urban core, where it’s carrying out a modernization of its 35-acre campus on North Avenue.

Just two years ago, Coke consolidated several metro Atlanta offices into a new information technology division in downtown’s SunTrust Plaza Garden Offices. About half the employees had been working in Wildwood Office Park.

Coke plans to move the Cobb County employees to the headquarters campus and the Garden Offices.

“As announced in 2013 we are undertaking a multi-year effort to consolidate more of our people downtown to increase the efficiency of our real estate footprint,” Coke officials said in a statement.

“More than 2,000 workers have already relocated to our downtown locations. Through these efforts we have gained greater efficiency in our real estate footprint and now maintain underutilized space at the 2500 Windy Ridge location.”

It gives the Los-Angeles based owner of 2500 Windy Ridge, Griffin Capital Corp., a chance to court another big tenant. The real estate investment company has hired Stream Realty to market the building for lease.