A new nine-story research and teaching tower. A new baseball stadium. Ongoing work to turn the campus into a “College Town Downtown.”
Georgia State University is starting the fall 2026 semester at full speed, completing and continuing progress on projects that elevate the university in both style and substance. From its recently opened Research Tower along Decatur Street and the underway Panthers baseball park in the Summerhill community to the work to connect the Campus Greenway to Hurt Park, forming the new Panther Quad, the university continues a legacy of impact on and transformation within Atlanta’s downtown.
Coming online this fall is Georgia State’s 155,000-square-foot Research Tower, which completes a three-building science park at the intersection of Piedmont Avenue and Decatur Street on the Atlanta Campus.
With modern teaching facilities, flexible research spaces and state-of-the-art laboratories, the Research Tower delivers on Georgia State’s strategic commitment to research and innovation. And with the science park’s interior courtyard also surrounded by the Petit Science Center and Research Science Center, the $100 million Research Tower completes a triumvirate of advanced facilities situated on a single parcel of land.
“Adding this building is a crucial step in our work to generate new, life-changing discoveries in the hard sciences,” says Georgia State President M. Brian Blake. “It establishes a critical mass of research facilities in the heart of Atlanta that will have a global impact on disease research, the health of our communities and our understanding of the natural world. It moves forward our strategic priority of innovating research, scholarship and creative activity, but it also delivers on another commitment, and that is to identity, placemaking and belonging, by providing our renowned research community with the resources they need to make the world a better place.”
ATHLETICS NEIGHBORHOOD
Also enhancing Georgia State’s sense of place and identity is the new Chastain Childers Field at Bill and Susan Reeves Stadium.
Being completed this fall, ahead of the spring 2027 baseball season, Childers Field at Reeves Stadium is built atop the footprint of the old Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, where Hank Aaron famously broke Babe Ruth’s homerun record, smacking his 715th career dinger April 8, 1974.
The Atlanta Braves called Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium home from their debut in the city in 1966 until 1996, when they took over the stadium built for the Centennial Olympic Games, which became Turner Field. Georgia State took over Turner Field and 65 acres of surrounding property in 2017, converting the stadium into a football venue for the Panthers and collaborating with the private development firm Carter to reinvigorate the Summerhill community around it with new restaurants, retail and residences. In 2020, the home of Panthers football became known as Center Parc Credit Union Stadium.
The new Panthers baseball stadium, which will seat about 1,000 fans and feature an artificial turf field along with concessions, restrooms and a press box, brings baseball back to Summerhill for the first time in a decade.
And along with the Convocation Center completed in 2022 to host basketball, commencement, first-year convocation and other events, the three facilities create another critical mass of activity, allowing Georgia State students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends to share Panther pride alongside community members.
“Having three top-tier sporting facilities that serve not only our athletes but our larger community concentrated here in Summerhill is an invaluable resource,” says Charlie Cobb, Georgia State’s athletics director. “We not only can have activity nearly year-round — baseball in the spring, football in the fall and basketball in the winter — we can bring that excitement to the community, invite them in to celebrate our student-athletes with us and have a meaningful impact in the neighborhood.”
PANTHER QUAD
Back in the heart of Georgia State’s Atlanta Campus downtown, the impact continues as the university makes progress on its $107 million “College Town Downtown” projects, a slate of initiatives that reimagine the core spaces serving students, faculty and community members.
Supported by an $80 million gift from the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation, the projects entail improving and defining Georgia State’s footprint from Hurt Park to Woodruff Park, ensuring a consistent look, feel and functionality along one of the university’s main arteries.
Much of the ongoing work is centered around Hurt Park, where the adjacent Sparks Hall was removed earlier this year to clear the way to connect Georgia State’s existing Campus Greenway to the park across Gilmer Street.
What will come to be known as the Panther Quad will include improved walkways and open spaces, a vegetated buffer along Courtland Street and a tribute to Sparks Hall — Georgia State’s first purpose-built building — and the man it was named for, the university’s first president, George M. Sparks.
The Sparks Column will be constructed of some of the original marble panels that once clad Sparks Hall and will overlook the expansive plaza, a testament to Georgia State’s enduring spirit of reinvention and the ethos that knowledge has the power to change lives and communities.
Similar Panther Quads are planned at each of the university’s five Perimeter College campuses, with the Clarkston Campus’ already completed in April. A Bronzie statue, a replica of the bronze mascot overlooking the Atlanta Campus Student Center, will soon be installed there.
“The Panther Quads on the Atlanta Campus and our Perimeter campuses will redefine and connect our campuses in ways that no other piece of infrastructure can,” says Executive Vice President and COO L. Jared Abramson. “Giving our students, faculty, staff and community spaces for collaboration, creation and celebration only accelerates the placemaking ideals of our GSU family.”
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