The story goes that when Deng Xiaoping first saw the Hyatt Regency Hotel on Peachtree Street, he pointed at it and said, “I want one of those.” Global Atlanta couldn’t verify that these were the exact words, but David Cutting, the honorary consul of Barbados, who was a member of the 20-some Consular Corps group visiting Coda, recalled that while working for Manufacturers Hanover Corp., he was aware that the bank had helped finance the Shanghai Centre, which the Portman companies developed and opened in October 1990. The Chinese leader met with then-President Jimmy Carter in Washington and visited Atlanta, Houston and Seattle. The 1979 historic nine-day visit to the United States of Deng Xiaoping, China’s paramount leader who never held an official office as head of state but led the country through its far-reaching market reforms, was the catalyst for the Portmans’ first Chinese development. For instance, floor-to-glass windows, located in the building’s “collaborative core,” will increase energy efficiency by 25 to 30 percent. There also is to be attention to the materials used in its construction. Mr Portman, who died in 2017, popularized buildings with multi-storied indoor atria, which the Coda building is adopting both indoors for relaxed creative conversations as well as outdoors for a pedestrian friendly space. Portman Jr., the Georgia Tech grad, transformed Atlanta in the 1970s with the Peachtree Center complex that still serves as downtown’s business and tourism anchor. The Portmans’ China connection dates back to the traveling around Asia that Jack Portman, the current chairman and CEO of John Portman & Associates, did during the 1970s. In densely populated cities in China, where the Portmans have been active, parking has to go underground, a lesson applied to the Tech Square project.
Heralded as a game changing structure for Atlanta, it embodies lessons from around the world that the Portman companies have learned as they became global players. With Portman Holdings as the developer and J ohn Portman & Associates, the architect, the complex envisions encouraging pedestrian activity in keeping with its goals of interactive, cooperative learning and sharing ideas. Three years in the making, the complex, which covers two acres between Spring and West Peachtree streets, sits on top of an underground parking garage. Members of the Consular Corps make their way to Coda’s entrance.īy the time that it is officially opened in May, this “smart building” complex is to have an especially high IQ due to the 93,000-square-foot allocation of space for a data center and the commitment to creating an innovation ecosystem that will bring together the educational resources of Georgia Tech with employees of both start-up and Fortune 500 companies. The diplomats visited while the finishing touches were being made on the 645,000 square feet of office space and the 22,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space to be housed by the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Members of the Consular Corps assemble in Coda's piazza following their tour.Ītlanta’s Consular Corps got a preview tour March 20 of the $355 million Coda building, the mother-of-all mixed-used developments in Midtown’s Technology Square.
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