An 18-story luxury senior housing tower is proposed for a Buckhead site across Peachtree Road from the Shepherd Center. The plan, which also involves renovating an existing 10-story medical office tower on the site, joins a boom in Buckhead-area senior residential projects.

Dubbed “Heartis Buckhead,” the senior housing is proposed by Caddis, a Texas-based real estate firm specializing in healthcare-related properties. The 213-unit, 278,000-square-foot building would stand at 2045 Peachtree at the intersection with Peachtree Valley Road. Caddis aims to open the building in 2021, but is still in the permitting phase, according to a spokesperson.

An illustration of the Heartis Buckhead luxury senior housing tower proposed for the intersection of Peachtree Road and Peachtree Valley Road. (Special)

“This will be the first luxury high-rise senior living community Caddis has developed and it will be one of the most sumptuous is the country,” Caddis CEO Jason L. Signor said in a press release. “There’s a growing trend of offering high-end, resort-style senior high rises in major metro areas of the country.”

It’s a trend in Buckhead as well, with the long-planned Peachtree Hills Place development and another major luxury senior residential community recently announced on a Howell Mill Road site. Caddis says it will offer independent living, assisted living and memory care apartments units, a mix that allows residents to stay long-term. Canterbury Court and Lenbrook, two operators that have long run complexes on Peachtree Road with that mix of housing types, are planning major expansions.

Heartis Buckhead would have a variety of on-site amenities, such as a game room and beauty parlor, and aims to tout the neighborhood as well. “Heartis Buckhead will offer all of this in a sought-after, vibrant area of Atlanta where people want to live. Local residents will find that Heartis Buckhead takes senior living to new heights – no pun intended,” Signor said in the press release.

The 2045 Peachtree Road site as seen on Google Maps. The office tower would remain and undergo renovation. The new building and parking structure would replace the existing parking areas.

The development would involve demolishing an existing two-story parking structure on the site and replacing it with another two-story structure to serve both the senior residences and the existing office tower. A “landscaped plaza” is also proposed, according to the press release.

The project site is next door to the historic Darlington Apartments, which has its own renovation underway amid controversy.

John Ruch is an Atlanta-based journalist. Previously, he was Managing Editor of Reporter Newspapers.