Just prior to announcing today that he was one of many recently to have tested positive for Covid-19, Atlanta Mayor-elect Andre Dickens was in attendance recently for the opening of the Center for Global Health Innovation (CGHI) in Midtown Atlanta. Officially opening next year, the CGHI will feature an innovation center, collaborative office and lab space.
“This will attract new investments and businesses to come and work, incredible organizations, and life sciences is one of the fastest growing sectors in this country,” Dickens said. “I stand here today as Atlanta shows itself again to be a leader on the global stage.”
The center is in what was formerly the AT&T Building, currently empty and will use 75,000 square feet of space in an adjacent building as a conference center. In the beginning, the center will only occupy four floors of the 47 story building with planned expansion over time into the additional floors.
“You can’t just wave a magic wand and make a building appear, but in this case it’s almost like we did, because sitting right there at the intersection of Tech Square moving south and ‘health square’ marching north is a vacant 47-story tower complex,” said Clark Dean, executive managing director at Transwestern In Atlanta. “It had the perfect space for a world-class conference facility, and had infrastructure that could be converted to laboratory floors and office space in a cost-effective way, enabling a business model for the Center that meets the needs of the community and generates sustainable surplus that will be used to reinvest in global health, workforce training, and economic development programs.”
An initial investment from Transwestern, Sharecare and a west coast-based foundation helped to fund the launch of the center. The goal is for the center to become an intersection of global health, health technology and life sciences. Atlanta is one of the country’s foremost health innovation cities, thanks to the location of the Centers for Disease Control, the American Cancer Society, the Carter Center and its global health program, numerous hospitals on the cutting edge of care and a strong private healthcare industry. Georgia Tech’s adjacent location will also mutually benefit – with engineering students utilizing technology to develop new strategies for healthcare.
City Councilperson Amir Farokhi also attended. The Midtown area of Farokhi’s district has seen tremendous growth over the past few years, adding some 30,000 jobs since 2015, with companies expanding or relocating.
“This is a remarkable feather in Midtown’s cap,” Farokhi said of CGHI’s announcement. “This is a neighborhood that is humming and thriving in ways that few urban areas in the country are. It is already the commercial and cultural hub of the South, and I don’t say that lightly. Now with Tech Square I think it is in many ways the innovation hub of the South as well.”
