Creative minds have been transforming The CTR into an arts hub — it’s just the beginning

The CTR, formerly the 1.2 million-square-foot CNN Center, is becoming a hub again — this time not for news or media but rather for local art and food.

Since it was acquired in 2021 by CP Group, a commercial real estate firm, creatives and developers have teamed up to drastically revitalize the former CNN headquarters and fill it with local, non-chain restaurants, art installations and murals by Atlanta’s finest. Neda Abghari has largely spearheaded the artistic endeavors.

Abghari is the founder of both The Creatives Project, a nonprofit that supports the creative class through affordable housing programs, and ASHA Advisory, a community-focused arts and culture advisory firm. In February 2024, after an introduction by her friend and colleague Bern Joiner, she was approached by CP Group to commission two exterior murals to meet Downtown Atlanta Inc.’s Arts and Entertainment District requirements for billboard placement.

“They wanted someone local who could bring authentic Atlanta talent into that vision,” remembered Abghari. “That’s where I came in, as an independent art adviser and curator for the project.”

As the relationship developed, Abghari remembers, she found a real alignment in values, a shared passion for honoring the building’s legacy and a vision for what the property could become.

“I advocated for something bigger than a couple of murals: an asset-wide art collection with cultural programming behind it,” she said. “And that’s what grew into CTR Culture.”

The budget, Abgharis said in an email, went from $175,000 to $1 million for phase one alone, with phase two coming online this fall.

For Abghari, The CTR is the project of a lifetime.

“Being so inspired by the history and iconic stature of the CNN Center, I’ve been conceptualizing and dreaming up the placement of art in this space,” she said. “… Artists are our alchemists. They take a feeling, a memory, a history and turn it into something you can stand in front of and feel back … My vision starts with how a space makes you feel the moment you walk in.”

In the case of The CTR, even before one walks in.

Just outside The CTR’s south lobby entrance, visitors are greeted by a sumptuously trippy, two-story outdoor mural by Atlanta-based Fabian “Occasional Superstar” Williams. With baroque richness, the mural shows off the DNA of Atlanta by centering iconic local figures, landmarks and a double helix that twists down the center like lasers from a UFO carrying “ATLiens” (The piece is called Close Encounters, after all). Painted in fluorescent shades, the vibrant colors pop at night while illuminated from black lights above. The piece is an ode to Atlanta’s art and nightlife scene — another component of the city’s genetics.

Just as Fabian’s Close Encounters outside reflects Atlanta’s DNA, Abghari hopes to infuse the interior, too, with the artistic DNA of a city known for its street art and murals. She’s accomplished this by featuring artists who’ve traditionally not been shown in gallery spaces. To that point, The CTR lobby recently unveiled one of its newest additions, a mini exhibition of four new paintings by legendary graffiti artist Dr. Dax. The exhibition includes his largest stretched canvas work yet, a school bus-long painting called All We’re. In signature Dax style, All We’re contains a (slightly) subliminal message in organic, shape-shifty letters spilling, stretching and overlapping each other across the whole canvas and spelling, according to Dax: “Time is all we’re allotted in this life. Make it count.”

Dr. Dax’s canvas is flanked by a beautiful mural on the upper atrium wall of nature-inspired imagery and nocturnal colors by Charity Hamidullah called Revival.

Beyond the south entrance lobby, visitors will find themselves surrounded by not just nearly a dozen dining options in The CTR’s Food Works but also by original artworks by respected Georgia artists, including Mr. Fangs, HENSE, Michi Meko and John Tindel. Each piece was installed in the last year-and-a-half. The artworks are scattered and tucked away around the expansive Food Works floor plan, inviting those who work in the building and hungry passersby alike to wander the space and appreciate the cultural landscape of Atlanta distilled in a central place.

Some other highlights spotted at The CTR: Discordant Structure is an intimate, large-scale, black-and-white photography series of young athletes by Jill Frank. The Feeling Beyond Our Gaze is a wall-sized painting by Michi Meko in the north lobby that portrays what seems to be a firefly show or alien invasion at night along a marshy Georgia coast. John Tindel has two works, including one of the artist’s signature neon-light installations that spells “ATL” in tasty, lurid red.

All this might be enough for most art curators — but not Abghari. Just four weeks ago, she also opened a pop-up space called Gallery FC. It is currently the only street-facing storefront at The CTR. The newly renovated, black-walled space launched with a bang, featuring an exhibition of more Dr. Dax works called “Love Was …”, which was a companion show to the four Dax creations in The CTR’s South Lobby called “Love Is …”

The name — Gallery FC — is both a nod to Atlanta’s soccer team (Atlanta United FC) and an acronym for “For Community.” Abghari co-manages Gallery FC with A.R. “Coop” Cooper, a fellow cultural architect and one of her partners at ASHA.

“We want this to be a space where anybody can come and feel welcome,” said Cooper. “Neda’s Iranian American. I’m Dominican, Haitian, Cuban and African American. We just want people to come and feel like they’re welcomed.”

Cooper knows a thing or two about bringing community and art together to revive places. He’s also the founder of Art In The Paint, a creative nonprofit that beautifies and revitalizes public spaces, including formerly neglected basketball courts around Metro Atlanta and sites in other countries such as Nigeria and the Dominican Republic. As a former pro basketball player, Cooper believes it is vital for neighborhoods to have crossover between arts, sports and culture.

“The [gallery’s] black walls are [symbolic] to being a former pro athlete and going into art — I oftentimes felt like I was blackballed,” Cooper said. But he brushes it off his shoulder. “You’re not an outcast if you’re in the space of [all] black balls.”

In addition to the extensive art collection, The CTR has become home to several programs, including CTR Culture Studios, a creative incubator program and studio residency for artists and digital creators. Fulton County’s Public Art Futures Lab is now located at The CTR, as is T.Lang Dance.

“We’re getting ready to announce the first cohort of artists [in residency] soon, and we’re still accepting proposals from nonprofits, presenters and community organizers through the Presentation Pop-Up, which gives them a platform to bring short-term programming and activations to life at The CTR,” Abghar said. “What started as a couple of murals is now a full creative ecosystem inside the building.”

All this is only the first phase of a bigger plan that Abghari and Cooper have for The CTR’s artistic renaissance.

Phase two, which is just beginning, will include three permanent, monumental public works on the building’s Centennial Olympic Park Drive façade. The building’s exterior will also house a new system to platform a rotation of semipermanent artworks so the collection will never stay still.

“This isn’t a one-and-done rollout. It’s an ongoing commitment,” said Abghari. “As phase two comes online, you’ll keep seeing new names, new walls and new work, because investing in Atlanta’s creative community isn’t just a moment for The CTR. It’s the whole point.”

ArtsATL’s podcast, The ATL Arts Collective, hosted by Kim Drobes, recently aired an episode discussing the creative vision behind The CTR. Listen here.

Jeff Dingler is an Atlanta-based author and entertainer. A graduate of Skidmore College with an MFA in creative writing from Hollins University, he’s written for New York Magazine, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Tiny Love, Newsweek, WIRED, Salmagundi and Flash Fiction Magazine. More information at jeffdingler.org.