Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta recently got the green light to build an up to 8-story hotel, or Ronald McDonald House, on its North Druid Hills campus. The facility will provide a place for families to stay for a short amount of time while their children are being treated at CHOA.
The Brookhaven City Council approved the rezoning of the nearly 4-acre property at 2580 Briarcliff Road at the North Druid Hills road intersection from RM-85 (multi-family residential) to industrial (M) at its Feb. 26 meeting. The Executive Park Apartments were on this site before CHOA purchased the property in 2017 and demolished the buildings after residents moved out.
The Ronald McDonald House will be up to eight stories with a maximum of 40,000 square feet per floor, for a total of 320,000 square feet. There would be 150 rooms in the hotel and 150 parking spaces to meet the one space per room requirement. The parking would be divided with 50 spaces onsite and 100 offsite, according to zoning documents.
CHOA is being required to build a 5-foot sidewalk along frontage or Briarcliff Road and a minimum 5-foot sidewalk along the street frontage of the private roadway that will become a primary access point to enter the medical campus.
The residents of Executive Park Apartments successfully petitioned to be annexed into Brookhaven in 2016 along with residents of the adjacent Executive Parkview Townhomes on Woodcliff Drive, Executive Park Condominiums on Executive Park Lane and two single-family homes at 1705 and 1721 Woodcliff Drive NE.
CHOA has purchased the two single family homes on Woodcliff Drive and the building at 1749 Tullie Circle where EPI Breads is currently located. The bread company makes various sandwich breads and other breads for chain restaurants. The building will eventually be torn down to become part of the CHOA campus.
CHOA officials have said they purchased the Woodcliff Drive homes to prevent a potential townhome development at the site.
The City Council also approved CHOA’s request to rezone nearly 2 acres at what is now 2222 North Druid Hills Road where Piccadilly Cafeteria was once located from C-2 (general commercial) to M (industrial). CHOA plans to transform the lot into a primary vehicular access point into the CHOA medical campus.
Two eight-story administrative “support” buildings and a seven-story parking deck are now under construction along the Northeast Expressway. The office buildings would house employees now working out of one-story buildings in CHOA’s office park on Tullie Road and Tullie Circle.
Construction of a new $1.3 billion hospital on the site of the old office complex is slated to start in 2020. The new hospital will have 446 beds in two patient towers expected to be between 16 and 19 stories tall. The new hospital will replace the 235-bed Egleston Hospital, located on Clifton Road near Emory University. Future plans for Egleston have not been determined, according to CHOA officials.
CHOA recently opened its new Advanced Center for Pediatrics at the campus.