David Cummings founded Atlanta Tech Village (ATV), a coworking-entrepreneur-startup space in Buckhead, in 2013 and is CEO of Atlanta Ventures, which invests in and supports entrepreneurs. His latest venture: Atlanta Tech Village Downtown, a campus that includes ATV Mason’s and ATV Sylvan, both named after businesses in the buildings they used to inhabit. Cummings and his partners envision a “startup city” where investors can walk from one startup to another, all in Atlanta’s historic downtown. These are edited highlights from an interview.
What makes Atlanta a good place for entrepreneurs?
Atlanta really has a can-do attitude. … It’s this idea that people genuinely want to help each other [and] pay it forward [and] get to know you as a person. You combine that with all the big city amenities, like the world’s busiest airport; you combine it with a reasonable cost of living. You add in the tech talent from Georgia Tech and [other] colleges and universities within a five-hour drive. An area that isn’t covered enough is the importance of sales and marketing [to startups]. You could build the best mousetrap in the world, but if people don’t know about it, it’s not going to matter. Atlanta has been the sales and marketing capital of the South. Startups really need the technical talent to build the product, and they really need the sales talent to sell and market the product. Atlanta has both.
Tell us about the new space you’re developing in South Downtown Atlanta, after other investors have tried and failed to revitalize this area.
It’s such an amazing and unusual part of Atlanta. It’s got the largest collection of historic buildings that are still intact. The average age of the buildings there is well over 100 years old. South Downtown is literally the neighborhood where Atlanta was founded.
[It] is super walkable. We’re a five-minute walk from multiple MARTA stations. We have the most bike lanes of anywhere in Atlanta.
Tell us what you have done to date.
We’ve bought 89 properties, including 56 buildings and 11 parking lots. [They’re] almost all completely empty. We have a coffee shop [Spiller Park Coffee] that we opened. We have a Thai restaurant [Tyde Tate Kitchen] that the previous developers had opened. There are a handful of businesses in there.
We opened Atlanta Tech Village Mason’s [where Mason Furniture Company once was] about 1,000 square feet [in what] was the previous developer’s marketing office. We turned it into a little coworking space. We filed for permits with the city of Atlanta to take one of the coolest historic buildings, which used to be called Hotel Sylvan, and we’re turning it into the full-blown [Atlanta] Tech Village Downtown. The building is… a 1909 hotel with cool, exposed brick and wood and tons of character, neat tile flooring and lots of history.
What else will be at South Downtown?
One of the great things about having a whole campus is that we’re going to build Tech Village outposts throughout the neighborhood. We’re calling the whole neighborhood a startup district. It represents 10 contiguous city blocks. We’re going to take some of the old department stores, an old bank building, and we’re going to turn those into cool loft apartments. We’re going to take some of the old stores and turn them into cool restaurants and bars. [Others will] become new stores. Almost all of these buildings are time capsules. … It’s going to take a lot of work to bring them back online, but the character and the history and the stories they have are spectacular.
It’s an interesting juxtaposition of high-tech and history.
People want to go someplace that has great amenities and great character and history. People love college campuses, because of their walkability, and variety of entertainment and activities – we’re going to create that same college campus experience for entrepreneurs. They want a place that they can dedicate themselves to, for the ultimate reason of achieving their entrepreneurial goals. They want to build a business that grows and thrives and succeeds. We’re big proponents of entrepreneurs being around entrepreneurs, for the purposes of sharing ideas and best practices and helping each other. We believe that doing it across 86 properties, across 1 million square feet, across 10 city blocks, we’re going to be able to unlock even more founder potential. – Karen Kirkpatrick 
