Downtown’s Historic Olympia Building for Sale

August 8,2013

The Georgia State Properties Commission is putting the historic Olympia building at Five Points up for bid — again.

The bids for the triangular two-story building in the heart of downtown must be submitted by 2 p.m. on Aug. 20, and the process is a request for qualifications — giving the state some leeway in deciding who might end up being the new owner of the building.

This is the third time that the state has put the building up for bid.

The first time, in early 2012, no bidders submitted offers to buy the building so the state went back to the drawing board.

Then in October of last year, just before the bids were scheduled to open, the state halted the process because it had not completed negotiations with The Coca-Cola Co. about extending its lease for the large neon Coca-Cola sign that sits on the building’s roof.

At the time, Paul Melvin, a spokesman for the State Property Office, said it was important for prospective owners to have complete information on what would be included in the bid package and that the information on the Coca-Cola lease would be important to include in bid documents.

According to the bid documents, Coca-Cola’s original 10-year lease to place the sign on the roof expired on July 31, 2012. The lease has since been extended until July 31, 2017, with options to extend the lease for two five-year periods. The base rent is $8,641 a month.

The building also has a second lease with the Atlanta Downtown Improvement District for $1,961 per month.

The Olympia building was constructed between 1935 and 1936 at 23 Peachtree St. at Five Points. In 1995, the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation donated the building to the state just before the 1996 Summer Olympic Games, a gift that then was valued at $3.6 million.

Previously, Melvin has said the building needs a significant amount of renovation, which was one reason the state had decided to sell it.