The Peachtree Road Race and Real Estate
By Bill Adams, President, MBA, CCIM, CRB, ALC
This past July 4th, I finished Atlanta’s famous 10K race, the Peachtree Road Race. By finishing, I kept a consecutive streak alive that dates to 1975.
On July 4, 1975, as a 26-year-old, I ran my first Peachtree which was also my first 10K race. The race had about 1,100 participants and started in Buckhead at the intersection of Peachtree Road and West Paces Ferry Road. The finish line was at what is now called Woodruff Park at Five Points in Downtown Atlanta. Over the years, the course has changed multiple times and now begins about a mile east of the original starting line at Lenox Square and finishes on 10th Street next to Atlanta’s Piedmont Park.
As a real estate broker, I always use the race as an opportunity to observe new projects that have been developed along the racecourse. In 1975 and for a few years afterwards, the race started in the parking lot of a Sears Roebuck store in Buckhead. That location is now the site of two high rise office buildings and a hotel. The first two miles of the current course had three high rise office buildings in 1975 and two high rise apartments. That part of the course is now a canyon of high-rise office buildings, hotels, and multifamily properties. Miles two to four are less dense than the first two miles and still have its share of tall buildings. Runners will cross over a part of the Northwest segment of the Atlanta Beltline Multiuse trail. When the runners are about halfway up the biggest hill on the course, they pass the world class Shepard Rehabilitation Center with new buildings that were not there on my first run down Peachtree Road. Piedmont Hospital is at the crest of the hill. The hospital’s campus has added multiple mid-rise and high-rise medical buildings since 1975. As you pass the Piedmont campus, a new high-rise building with 160 apartments for families with family members being treated at the Shepard Center has just been completed. The rest of the course leading up to the four-mile mark is a mixture of mid-rise office buildings, a couple of which were built before 1975, and an upscale retail center. The upscale retail replaced a neighborhood bar, a gas station, and a diner.
The last two miles of the course through Midtown Atlanta are the most transformed stretch of the course. Runners pass the Atlanta campus of the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) which now occupies the former Equifax corporate headquarters. After you run through Pershing Point you enter another canyon of high-rise buildings, a mixture of office, residential, and hotel properties. Along this part of the course the runners pass the Federal Home Loan Bank and the Woodruff Arts Center which was built in 1965. The Arts center is the home of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Alliance Theater, and the High Museum of Art, whose new building was completed in 1983. Several of the high-rise buildings in this neighborhood, most notably Colony Square, existed in 1975. Fifty years ago, this section of the course consisted mostly of one-story retail properties and old apartment buildings.
In the last half mile of the race, you will pass by the headquarters of the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank which relocated from Downtown Atlanta in 2001. The race ends on 10th Street and as you approach the finish, on the right, the gentrified Midtown residential neighborhood looks much as it did 50 years ago with a mix of single-family homes and small apartments. On the left is Piedmont Park, which is Atlanta’s version of New York City’s Central Park. The Piedmont Park Conservancy has turned this wonderful greenspace into a world class park, and it is a great place to finish the race.
As mentioned earlier, the original racecourse continued through Midtown to Downtown Atlanta. At Pershing Point, the race headed south on West Peachtree Street. In 1975, West Peachtree was a mixture of one- or two-story office and retail buildings. Today the street is a series of high-rise office and residential properties. The Georgia Tech campus has crossed over I-75/85 and Tech Square is Atlanta’s high-tech hub. As you approach the old finish line you will pass new high-rise office buildings and run past historic office properties that have been converted into hotels and residences. The old finish line at what was called Central City Park is now Woodruff Park. The park has been expanded and is now virtually surrounded by the campus of Georgia State University.
Finally, most of today’s Peachtree participants get to the starting line and return home using MARTA Rail. In 1975, the MARTA rail system had been approved by the residents of Fulton and DeKalb Counties and was in the planning and early construction stages. The first rail line opened in 1979. For that first Peachtree, I parked in the old Sears parking lot at the start and had a friend drive me back to my car in Buckhead after I finished. I cannot imagine where the Peachtree Road Race with more than 50,000 participants would be without MARTA.
I am looking forward to discovering new real estate projects along the course when I run the 2026 Peachtree Road Race.