Ponce City Market is a

mixed-use development Mixed-use is a kind of urban development, urban design, urban planning and/or a zoning type that blends multiple uses, such as residential, commercial, cultural, institutional, or entertainment, into one space, where those functions are to some ...

located in a former Sears catalogue facility in

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...

, with national and local retail anchors, restaurants, a food hall, boutiques and offices, and residential units. It is located adjacent to the intersection of the

BeltLine The Atlanta BeltLine (also Beltline or Belt Line) is a open and planned loop of multi-use trail and light rail transit system on a former railway corridor around the core of Atlanta, Georgia. The Atlanta BeltLine is designed to reconnect neig ...

with

Ponce de Leon Avenue Ponce de Leon Avenue ( ), often simply called Ponce, provides a link between Atlanta, Decatur, Clarkston, and Stone Mountain, Georgia. It was named for Ponce de Leon Springs, in turn from explorer Juan Ponce de León, but is not pronounced ...

in the

Old Fourth Ward The Old Fourth Ward, often abbreviated O4W, is an intown neighborhood on the eastside of Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The neighborhood is best known as the location of the Martin Luther King Jr. historic site. Geography The Old Fourth Wa ...

near

Virginia Highland Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth are s ...

, Poncey-Highland and Midtown neighborhoods. The building, one of the largest by volume in the Southeast United States, was used by

Sears Sears, Roebuck and Co. ( ), commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began a ...

, Roebuck and Co. from 1926–1987 and later by the City of Atlanta as "City Hall East". The building's lot covers . Ponce City Market officially opened on August 25, 2014."Ponce City Market is Now Open", What Now Atlanta
/ref> It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 2016.

Occupants

The complex contains offices, apartments, a gourmet food hall, retail stores, educational facilities, and a rooftop amusement park. Larger retail stores include

Anthropologie Anthropologie is an American clothing retailer with approximately 200 stores across the U.S., Canada, and the UK that offers an assortment of clothing, jewelry, home furniture, decoration, beauty products, and gifts. Anthropologie is part of ...

, Citizen Supply,

J. Crew J.Crew Group, Inc., is an American multi-brand, multi-channel, specialty retailer. The company offers an assortment of women's, men's, and children's apparel and accessories, including swimwear, outerwear, lounge-wear, bags, sweaters, denim, dr ...

Williams Sonoma Williams Sonoma is an American retailer of cookware, appliances, and home furnishings. It is owned by Williams-Sonoma, Inc. and was founded by Charles E. (Chuck) Williams in 1956. History In 1947, Chuck Williams settled in Sonoma, California ...

, and West Elm. Ponce City Market states that its food hall is similar to the famous

Chelsea Market Chelsea Market is a food hall, shopping mall, office building and television production facility located in the Chelsea neighborhood of the borough of Manhattan, in New York City. The Chelsea Market complex occupies an entire city block with a ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, also owned by Jamestown.

James Beard James Andrews Beard (May 5, 1903 – January 23, 1985) was an American chef, cookbook author, teacher and television personality. He pioneered television cooking shows, taught at The James Beard Cooking School in New York City and Seaside, ...

-awarded chefs with presence in the food hall include

Anne Quatrano Anne Quatrano is a restaurateur in Atlanta, Georgia. Early life and career Quatrano was raised in Fairfield, Connecticut but spent summers on her mother's family farm near Cartersville, Georgia. After graduating from the University of Vermont, ...

of Bacchanalia/Star Provisions, Linton Hopkins of Restaurant Eugene, and

Sean Brock Sean Brock is an American chef specializing in Southern cuisine. Early life and education Brock is originally from Pound in rural southwest Virginia. His father, who owned a trucking fleet that hauled coal, died when Brock was 11, resulting in ...

of Charleston, S.C.'s Husk restaurant. Prominent office occupants include the parent company of the global marketing platform service

MailChimp Mailchimp is a marketing automation platform and email marketing service. "Mailchimp" is the trade name of its operator, Rocket Science Group, an American company founded in 2001 by Ben Chestnut and Mark Armstrong, with Dan Kurzius joining at a l ...

Pinterest Pinterest is an American image sharing and social media service designed to enable saving and discovery of information (specifically "ideas") on the internet using images, and on a smaller scale, animated GIFs and videos, in the form of pinboard ...

, Rocket Science Group, and the educational website

HowStuffWorks HowStuffWorks is an American commercial infotainment website founded by professor and author Marshall Brain, to provide its target audience an insight into the way many things work. The site uses various media to explain complex concepts, termin ...

History

Origins

The building was built on the site of Ponce de Leon Springs, later the

Ponce de Leon amusement park Ponce de Leon Springs was a mineral spring in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The spring was a popular tourist destination from the mid-1800s through the early 1900s. Around the turn of the century, the land surrounding the spring was develop ...

As Sears, Roebuck

* From 1926 to 1979, it was a

, Roebuck and Co. retail store, warehouse and regional office. The Atlanta regional headquarters was closely linked to Sears' efforts to capture the market of Southern farmers through the Sears Agricultural Foundation: **From August 1926 until October 1928, the Foundation hosted a radio show, broadcast from the Atlanta Sears tower called "Dinner Bell R.F.D.". R.F.D. stood for the club "Radio Farmers' Democracy. The show aired on WSB radio between noon and 1 pm three times a week, featuring old-time musicians and string bandsJerry R. Hancock, Jr., ''Dixie Progress: Sears, Roebuck & Co. and How it became an Icon in Southern Culture'', Georgia State University
/ref> **Sears held a farmer's market at the back of the property starting in May 1930 through New Year's Day 1947 **In 1939, the market hosted the First Georgia Clay Products Show, which garnered an audience of 5,000 **The market established partnerships with local 4-H Clubs and

Future Farmers of America National FFA Organization is an American 501(c)(3) youth organization, specifically a career and technical student organization, based on middle and high school classes that promote and support agricultural education. It was founded in 1925 at Vi ...

clubs * In 1979, the retail store closed but the building continue operating as a Sears regional office until 1987.

As City Hall East

* In May 1990, the city of Atlanta bought the building for $12 million, with plans to place 2,000 police and fire employees there, and later rent space out to county, state, and federal agencies. The city subsequently moved the central offices of its police department and fire department into the building. A city-funded

art gallery An art gallery is a room or a building in which visual art is displayed. In Western cultures from the mid-15th century, a gallery was any long, narrow covered passage along a wall, first used in the sense of a place for art in the 1590s. The lon ...

was also established on the first floor. * From 1995 to 1999, the

Southeastern Flower Show The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, Radius, radially arrayed compass directions (or Azimuth#In navigation, azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east ...

was held here. * The building was closed to the public on March 29, 2010.

As Ponce City Market

Ponce City Market large neon sign Midtown, Atlanta, GA

The City sold the property for $27 million to Jamestown, a private-equity group, on July 11, 2011. Jamestown, which also invested in the redevelopment of the White Provision retail and restaurant complex in

West Midtown West Midtown, also known as Westside, is a colloquial area, comprising many historical neighborhoods located in Atlanta, Georgia. Once largely industrial, West Midtown is now the location of urban lofts, art galleries, live music venues, retail ...

, bankrolled the 180-million-dollar plans by developer Green Street Properties to convert it into a mixed-use development In a July 2011 interview, Michael Phillips, managing director of Jamestown, said that Jamestown is focused on Ponce City Market becoming the fourth nationally relevant food hall in the U.S., alongside Pike Place in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

, the Ferry Building in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, and Jamestown's own

. Jamestown also plans rooftop gardens where local restaurants can grow food. Jamestown planned to complete renovations by early 2015 and then have the building added to the

. It was hoped that the new development, along with the new adjacent

trail and

Historic Fourth Ward Park Historic Fourth Ward Park is a park built on the site of the old Ponce de Leon amusement park, in the Old Fourth Ward of Atlanta, just south of Ponce City Market and just west of the BeltLine Eastside Trail. Currently the park covers in two sepa ...

, would stitch together the four neighborhoods that meet where it is located and revitalize the

corridor. In August 2012, a coffee house, Dancing Goats, opened in a temporary location at the southwest corner of the site in the renovated Sears auto service center building, which also houses the Jamestown offices."Ponce City Market to welcome first tenant"
''Atlanta Business Chronicle'', Amy Wenk, August 9, 2012 Ponce City Market officially opened on August 25, 2014 with "Binders, General Assembly, and the Suzuki School join ngDancing Goats Coffee Bar as the first tenants; the plans at that time being that on September 22,

athenahealth Athenahealth (stylized as athenahealth) is a private American company that provides network-enabled services for healthcare and point-of-care mobile apps in the United States. The company was founded in 1997 in San Diego and is now headquarte ...

, the building's first office tenant, would move 200 employees into the space and food trucks would also be on site starting that day, and residents of the Flats at Ponce would move in October through January."

History

Old pictures of the Sears building

"Largest Building in the South Opens on Ponce de Leon Avenue" "This Day in History" series, PBA (Public Broadcasting Atlanta) Online, orig. broadcast August 2, 2011

Jerry R. Hancock, Jr., ''Dixie Progress: Sears, Roebuck & Co. and How it became an Icon in Southern Culture'', Georgia State University
- Photos of Sears Farmers' Market 1931 (see p. 61)
"Living History"
- video remembrances of the historic building by local residents

Redevelopment

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', August 16, 2011
"The lost world of City Hall East: the mysteries inside Atlanta’s largest abandoned building", ''Creative Loafing'', April 19, 2010
- slideshow of pictures inside the City Hall East of April 2010
Nick Kahler, "Ponce City: An Arcological Hierapolis for the Fountain of Youth," GA Tech Masters in Architecture Thesis, Spring 2012
A Theoretical Architectural Proposal for the Redevelopment of the Sears Building as a City within the City of Atlanta

References

External links

Official website
{{Authority control Buildings and structures in Atlanta Sears Holdings buildings and structures City halls in Georgia (U.S. state) Retail buildings in Georgia (U.S. state) Mixed-use developments in Georgia (U.S. state) Commercial buildings completed in 1926 Food markets in the United States Old Fourth Ward National Register of Historic Places in Fulton County, Georgia Industrial buildings and structures in Georgia (U.S. state) Adaptive reuse of industrial structures in Atlanta Market halls Food retailers New Urbanism communities