Bawag, CP Group Eye Atlanta’s Distressed Piedmont Center

An Austrian lender is circling one of Buckhead’s biggest distressed properties.

Bawag Group and Boca Raton, Florida-based CP Group are emerging as potential buyers of Piedmont Center, Buckhead’s largest office complex, just days before it’s slated for foreclosure, the Atlanta Business Chronicle reported.

The 2.2 million-square-foot office complex, which includes 14 buildings spread across a 46-acre wooded site along Piedmont Road, has struggled to compete with Buckhead’s newer, amenity-packed towers.

Ardent Companies, which spent five years assembling and modernizing the complex, defaulted on its $330.8 million loan, prompting Morgan Stanley to file foreclosure proceedings earlier this year. The loan amount comes to $150 per square foot. A public auction is scheduled for Tuesday.

Bawag and CP Group, one of Atlanta’s largest office landlords, are working on a potential deal, according to sources familiar with the matter. Neither have commented on the negotiations.

A sale would mark a dramatic reshaping of a property long seen as a relic of Buckhead’s suburban-era office boom. JLL, which is marketing the site, has called Piedmont Center a “generational redevelopment opportunity.” Real Estate Alert previously estimated the complex could trade for as much as 70 percent below its 2021 valuation.

CP Group has a track record of repositioning aging Atlanta properties. It previously owned Prominence, a tower at Piedmont and Lenox roads, where it sold off parcels for apartments and a hotel.

More recently, CP Group acquired the city’s tallest tower, Bank of America Plaza, in a joint venture, launching a capital improvement program that attracted major tenants like law firm Eversheds Sutherland. CP Group has also begun transforming the former CNN Center downtown, rebranded as The Center.

If Bawag and CP Group finalize a deal, the acquisition could revitalize a key swath of Buckhead real estate, even as Atlanta’s broader office market grapples with rising vacancies and value declines. Industry observers see distressed sales like Piedmont Center’s as part of a larger wave of challenged properties moving through the financial system, with deep-pocketed investors poised to scoop up discounted assets and remake them for a post-pandemic era.

— Judah Duke