The Alpharetta City Council voted 4-3 this week to rezone nearly 100 acres, including North Point Mall, to allow a 20,000-seat hockey arena anchoring a mixed-use development. The project also includes 1,385 apartment units, a 4,000-seat music hall and performing arts center, 650 hotel rooms and a 35,000-square-foot conference center, 750,000 square feet of office space, 565,000 square feet of retail, and 20 acres of public parks, plazas and trails.
The National Hockey League has not announced any planned expansion team or identified Atlanta as a target city. The project is contingent on landing an NHL team.
New York Life Insurance Co. owns the mall. Jamestown, which developed and owns Ponce City Market, and Machete Group are spearheading the redevelopment, though neither has a financial stake in the property.
A portion of the rezoning that would permit for-rent housing would be revoked if developers fail to break ground or the NHL does not approve a new hockey team at the project by Aug. 24, 2031, according to the master development plan approved by the city. Local opposition to rental apartments contributed to the split vote and led to the rejection of a previous redevelopment plan for the mall.
The development partners are pushing forward on refining the design and plans, as well as furthering discussions with potential ownership groups that would be able to provide the billions required to bring an expansion NHL team to Atlanta, Machete Group Managing Partner David Carlock told Bisnow. The arena alone could cost upward of $1.5 billion, Carlock said, though he declined to disclose a total cost for the mixed-use development.
"We're in discussions with a handful of folks who have expressed interest and have the means to be part of the group," Carlock said in a phone interview Wednesday. "We're optimistic. Getting through the vote on Monday has now put us in place" to prioritize those efforts, he added, while noting that there is no timetable set.
The approval "positions North Point to become a regional, year-round destination for professional sports, entertainment, and mixed-use experiences, while bringing substantial investment, economic impact, and community benefit," Jamestown Chief Investment Officer Tim Perry said in a statement.
The North Point Mall project is one of two competing local visions for an NHL-based mixed-use destination. Forsyth County in June approved a plan led by car dealership owner Vernon Krause for a $3 billion mixed-use project with an 18,500-seat, NHL-ready stadium in the southern portion of the county.
Carlock said North Point is better positioned to host the arena because it is closer to Atlanta's core while being situated in an area that already has a sizable corporate presence and more population density. He added that North Point has more ingress and egress points and two existing parking decks that could save the developers around $100 million in costs.
Atlanta has been home to two previous NHL teams, the Flames and the Thrashers, both of which decamped to other cities. NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly told The Hockey News last week that the league was in "serious discussions" with an ownership group that would bring an NHL team to Houston or Austin. NHL sports reporter Elliotte Friedman said on a podcast this week that the NHL will announce two expansion teams before the league's TV deal expires in two years, pegging Houston and Atlanta as the favorites.
A new owner would likely have to pay a roughly $2 billion expansion fee to become the league's 33rd or 34th team, Perry told the Atlanta Business Chronicle earlier this month. The property was developed by Homart Development Co., a subsidiary of Sears, in 1993. Rather than pay off the $202 million loan tied to North Point Mall in 2021, Brookfield Property Partners handed it over to its lender, New York Life, in a deed-in-lieu-of-foreclosure transaction.