Atlanta’s First Georgia-Grown Mass Timber Project Begins Construction

On Monday (2-27-23), Jamestown, a design-focused real estate investment and management firm, announced the beginning of vertical construction on 619 Ponce, a four-story mass timber loft building located in Atlanta’s Ponce City Market. The building is being constructed with locally grown Georgia timber and is targeting net neutral operational carbon. When completed in 2024, the building will be comprised of 85,000 square feet of office space and 25,000 square feet of retail space.

The developer’s utilization of timber sourced and produced locally is a first for mass timber construction in Georgia. The benefits of local materials are the reduction of the project’s transportation emissions—most mass timber construction materials are sourced in Canada, Austria, or Germany—and the overall environmental impact of construction, maximizing the sustainability benefits of mass timber.

The Jamestown building will have columns, beams, and floor slabs all made of local southern yellow pine sawtimber harvested from Georgia forests, including from timberland Jamestown owns and sustainability manages near Columbus, Georgia. The sawtimber was transported to Georgia-Pacific’s sawmill in Albany, Georgia, where it was converted into lumber. The lumber was then transported to SmartLam’s mass timber plant in Dothan, Alabama, where it was manufactured into cross laminated timber (CLT) panels. The CLT panels will be erected onsite at Ponce City Market by StructureCraft and J.E. Dunn.