FDA to head south, leaving behind prime Peachtree Street property in Midtown

As first speculated in 2017, the Midtown office of the Food & Drug Administration has indeed given notice it will relocate.

The FDA will move 350 employees to the southside, where they’ll set up operations at the Fort McPherson facility in the former forces command, or FORSCOM, office building, the AJC reports.

One of 13 FDA field labs, this particular location will serve as the Atlanta district office as well as the FDA’s Southeast Food and Feed and Southeast Tobacco labs.

The new facility joins Tyler Perry Studios, which bought approximately 330 acres of the former military base from the McPherson Implementing Local Redevelopment Authority, or Fort Mac LRA. The latter group purchased the decommissioned post in 2015.

However, in the wake of this move, the FDA leaves behind its low-slung, nondescript building on the corner of 8th and Peachtree in Midtown, and, in doing so, opens the door to redevelopment for a property more in line with the neighborhood’s burgeoning cityscape.

With new high-rise apartments, office towers, and mixed-use developments already in the works, logic says this could be a site for Midtown’s next big idea.

That all depends on what the property owners decide to do, of course, now that their government tenant has moved south.