The Related Group filed four building permits with Brookhaven on July 22 for the apartment component of its Manor Druid Hills project, 6.7 acres at North Druid Hills and Briarcliff roads across from Children's Healthcare of Atlanta's Arthur M. Blank Hospital. They cover three phases of apartments and a seven-level parking deck, 641,457 square feet, and all four permits are in review comments.
The project behind the abatement had three parts: 381 apartments, a fifth of them affordable or workforce, a 140-room hotel with long-stay suites for CHOA patient families, and 55,000 square feet of medical office. Related's pitch put its 270 jobs, at an average salary of $136,000, in the hotel and the offices. Related's sale flyer, the Transwestern listing for the medical office pad, now describes "the potential for a 140-room hotel" and markets the pad, 0.67 acres construction-ready for a 59,900-square-foot building, with the 10-year abatement for the buyer.
Phase 1A is a 216,304 SF precast parking deck. Phases 1B, 2 and 3 are five, five and four stories of residential over concrete podiums, about 425,000 square feet together, matching the building in the land disturbance permit Brookhaven accepted last October. Contractor and valuation are blank on all four until Related signs a builder.
The corner is still the Briarcliff Station strip center, Cafe Bombay and Tin Roof Cantina among the tenants. After 18 years in operation, Tin Roof told customers in January 2025 that its landlord had sold the property and it was cutting back to three nights a week.
Decide DeKalb, the county's development authority, approved a $15 million tax break in 2023. In this abatement, the authority takes title and leases the land back to Related while simultaneously issuing bonds for Related to buy. Since the project is owned by a governmental entity, the project pays no property tax and instead a pre-negotiated rate. That amount starts at 5 percent of what a full bill would be and climbs to about 90 percent by year ten. Related's pitch was that the site would still pay about $4 million a year over the decade against the $130,000 the strip center paid. Related bought the parcel for $18.75 million in December 2024.
Related pursued the abatement for three years against some local opposition. Brookhaven annexed the corner in October 2020 after a state panel ruled Related could build under city zoning, which allowed density the county's did not. Commissioner Jeff Rader called the tax break an attack on the school system, the school board's chair wrote that a developer in an area CHOA and Emory were already reshaping could pay its own way, Commissioner Michelle Long Spears pointed to Bryn House, 337 units on the far side of Target built without an abatement. Despite the pushback, Decide DeKalb approved it 5-1.
The county has been under a federal Clean Water Act consent decree since 2011 that rations new sewer connections until it proves capacity, so DeKalb will build the sewer upgrades the site needs and Related will reimburse $922,500 on completion, under an agreement the commission approved in April.
Jorge Pérez founded Related in Miami in 1979, and it built its two previous Georgia towers with outside contractors, Balfour Beatty on Icon Midtown and Gilbane on Icon Buckhead. Its chief executive, JP Pérez, started the Manor rental brand with a 200-unit project in 2012. Rule Joy Trammell + Rubio is the architect. Ed Allen, executive vice president of development, has fronted the project since 2021 and said in 2022 that Related was looking for more opportunities in DeKalb.
The original plan called for permits 90 days after the December 2024 closing and the parking deck finished by August 2026. Since Related filed the permits in July, the project is well over a year behind schedule. The site still has roles to win: general contractor, lender, demolition contractor and hotel developer. Two other hotel projects in the corridor have approvals and nothing built: the 350-key hotel at Northbend, Third & Urban and HighBrook's district one interchange up I-85, and the 3.8 acres Asbury Automotive set aside for a hotel in its Nalley BMW campus on North Druid Hills.
Status: Under review · Filed: four building permits July 22, 2026 · Site: 6.7 acres, 2601 Briarcliff Road, Brookhaven · Program: 381 apartments, seven-level deck, 641,457 square feet · Land: $18.75 million, December 2024, title with the Development Authority of DeKalb County · Next: review comments on the four permits, then a demolition permit · The complete permit set, the sewer agreement, the abatement schedule and the people attached to the project are in CityScout.