Buckhead Church Buys $16.9M Office Tower, Eyes 2,500-Seat Sanctuary

Christ Covenant Church has closed on a 94,000-square-foot, four-story office building at 3520 Piedmont Road NE in Buckhead, paying $16.9 million for a property it plans to eventually turn into a permanent home with a 2,500-seat sanctuary. The purchase gives the rapidly growing congregation, which now counts more than 2,000 members across three metro Atlanta campuses, the physical campus it has been chasing since its founding in 2017.

The deal, first reported by Connect CRE, closed at $179 per square foot for Piedmont Place, a Class A building constructed in 1983. Christ Covenant acquired the property from Hall Capital, with brokerage firm Transwestern handling the transaction; the firm also plans to provide agency leasing and asset services for the building going forward. Bradley Fulkerson and Austin Hibbard represented the church in the deal, according to the same report.

This is not the first time Transwestern has helped Christ Covenant hunt for real estate in Buckhead. The firm previously served as the church's commercial real estate advisor during a 2021 site search, according to WhatNow Atlanta, which reported that Christ Covenant had pursued a $15 million project that year to buy and convert a 50,000-square-foot industrial building at 221 Armour Drive NE in the Armour Yards district into an 880-seat worship center with coworking space. That earlier deal never materialized into the church's current Buckhead home.

From 16 Founding Members to a Multi-Campus Church

Senior Pastor Jason Dees founded Christ Covenant Church in 2017 with a core group of just 16 people. By June 2021, the congregation had already swelled to more than 800 worshippers, meeting in rented school auditoriums and event spaces without a building of its own, according to The Christian Index. The church's footprint expanded further in October 2023, when it merged with First Baptist Church of Sandy Springs, a congregation that had experienced declining attendance and sought a partner to revitalize its ministry, per the same outlet's reporting. That merger established the multi-campus structure the church operates today, with active locations in Sandy Springs and Buckhead.

A Bargain by Buckhead Standards

The $179-per-square-foot price tag for Piedmont Place lands below several major 2024 Buckhead office sales, including Ameris Center I & II at $152.50 per square foot and Live Oak Square at $132.20 per square foot, according to a submarket report from Lincoln Property Company. Still, it sits above the metro-wide average; CommercialCafe reports that Metro Atlanta office sales totaled $1.2 billion across 50 transactions in 2025, averaging just $131.17 per square foot across all asset classes, reflecting Buckhead's location premium over the broader region.

Buckhead's office market has struggled since the pandemic reshaped corporate space needs. The submarket's commercial office vacancy rate hit 28.8% in the second quarter of 2026, even as Class A asking rents climbed to $41.40 per square foot, according to data compiled by Marietta CRE. That combination of high vacancy and stubbornly high rents has opened the door for non-traditional buyers like religious institutions to acquire multi-tenant office assets that corporate tenants no longer want. Roughly 5 million square feet of obsolete or underutilized office space across Metro Atlanta had been targeted for adaptive reuse or conversion as of late 2025, per Lincoln Property Company's regional tracking, making Christ Covenant's purchase part of a broader wave of buildings finding new life outside traditional office use.

Zoning and Tax Hurdles Still Ahead

Christ Covenant's plan unfolds in two phases: operate Piedmont Place as a multi-tenant office building in the short term, while working toward the long-term goal of developing a campus on the site anchored by a 2,500-seat sanctuary. That transition will not be simple. The City of Atlanta requires property owners to secure Special Administrative Permits for major exterior or footprint changes, and Special Use Permits when a proposed use like a large sanctuary is not permitted by right in a given zoning district, according to guidance from ATL311, the city's citizen information service.

There are tax implications to the interim office-leasing strategy as well. Georgia law generally reserves local ad valorem property tax exemptions for property used exclusively for religious worship, meaning churches that lease space to third-party commercial tenants risk losing exemptions on the portion of a building used for revenue-generating purposes, according to guidance published by Ministry Pacific. How that plays out for Piedmont Place as the church transitions from landlord to congregation remains to be seen.