ATLANTA—Underground Atlanta just sold for $34.6 million. WRS, a real estate investment company based in Charleston, SC, plans to redevelop the 12-acre site into a live-work shop community with retail, hospitality, entertainment and residential space. The sale will result in $8 million annual cost savings for the City of Atlanta.

“There were a lot of twists and turns,” Andy Williams, who led the Morris, Manning & Martin legal team for the acquirer, WRS, tells GlobeSt.com. “The challenges included the historic nature of the property, including the history of its ownership. It's honeycombed by rights of way and interests owned by third parties. Because of its configuration, there were a lot of challenges to a real estate lawyer you wouldn't typically see in an individual deal—or even dozens of deals—that had to be addressed in this deal.”

Any multifamily development at Underground Atlanta will include 10 or 15% units at 60 or 80% AMI. WRS has developed over 30 anchored shopping centers covering 7 million square feet of retail space and has also aided in the development of more than 100 additional retail projects spanning more than 10 million square feet of retail space. The Horizon District in South Carolina, an urban research district that will contain over 2.5 million square feet of mixed-used space with street-level retail, restaurant and office space, and workforce housing, as well as retail-anchored projects for nationally known corporations including Belk, Staples, Kohl's, and Dick's Sporting Goods, are in the company's portfolio.