A residential tower featuring a first-of-its-kind car elevator that travels the building’s 60 stories at 800 ft per minute. A project that lifted an entire South Florida neighborhood to higher ground. Two projects—one in Alabama, another in Florida—built to support the mission of human space flight. An ultra-challenging museum project featuring a 500,000-gallon saltwater aquarium that’s viewable from underneath. These and dozens of other impressive projects comprise this year’s Southeast Best Projects award winners.
Rising above even those stellar accomplishments, according to our judges, is this year’s Southeast Project of the Year: SunTrust Park. The $500-million home of Major League Baseball’s Atlanta Braves, the ballpark marks not simply the latest major sports facility to be erected. Instead of standing as a potential spur to future development, SunTrust stands as the centerpiece of an economic revitalization that includes the Atlanta Braves’ concurrent development of an adjacent mixed-use complex. Even so, our judges decided that SunTrust Park stood alone for the challenges faced and the results achieved.