Purchase of Former Doraville GM Plant Complete

After months of wheeling and dealing, Atlanta-based developer Egbert Perry has finally purchased the 167-acre site of the former GM Doraville Assembly Plant.

According to Atlanta Business Chronicle, the money, estimated to be around $60 million dollars, changed hands on Wednesday. Now that the property is under Perry’s control, he and his partners plan to demolish the plant and salvage any materials left behind from the old factories. This process should take about eight months.

Patch reported in April that Doraville Mayor Donna Pittman had confirmed that Perry and GM had entered into a contract to transfer ownership of the site. It was reported at the time that closing was expected to take place during the summer.

Atlanta Business Chronicle reports that Perry’s The Integral Group LLC and partner Consolidated Asset Management Systems (CAMS) recently entered into an agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to put the site in the agency’s Brownfields Program.

The program offers incentives to organizations and individuals which choose to sanitize and redevelop property that has been contaminated by pollutants or was formerly used for industrial purposes.

The level of environmental cleanup needed at the site, which operated for 60 years as an automobile plant, was the final major hurdle to the deal. The Saporta Report wrote about the environmental hazards facing any future development on the ite in a September 2012 article. “Until you get in there, you don’t know what you’re going to find,” then DeKalb County CEO Burrell Ellis said.

Once the site is cleaned of pollutants like benzene and the GM-era structures are demolished, the site will be transformed into a cutting-edge, 20 block mixed use development featuring office space, retail, space, and living space.