Project Person // Profile #9

_{Subscribe here to receive Project Person each Friday morning.}

Meet April Stammel // Project Person #9

What project are you currently working on? Working with an amazing team of humans who are passionate about Atlanta and are working every day to revitalize the historic part of the neighborhood, South Downtown, where Atlanta began.

What’s your most impressive or favorite stat? 100% of people who attend a tour leave with a better appreciation of the history, a better understanding of the challenges, a clearer picture of the progress happening every day, and way more optimism for the future. 

What’s something that never would have happened for you without this project? I would have never fallen so in love with our city. I mean I love Atlanta—I love my neighborhood East Atlanta and so many other areas of the city. But I can’t say I loved downtown. Now, I’m completely fan-girl about all of downtown but especially South Downtown. It’s changed the way I feel about our city as a whole, and I can’t wait to help others get there. 

What keeps you up at night? The realization of how many people still doubt downtown will ever be something they are proud of, a place that people seek out to go and explore. And even more so, that they aren’t even open to have hope.

What are some of your other projects? Raising my girls to love downtown, too! (Callie edit: April formerly led business development for Sixthman and operations for Son & Sons and founded Serve to Rock, a project combining her love of volunteerism with concerts!)

You know that feeling you get when you hear a shockingly great singer at some small venue and think to yourself, “They’re going to be big…” 

That’s how April Stammel felt walking the streets of an abandoned section of downtown Atlanta in 2017, eating pizza with the US president of a European real estate investment company—Newport—hearing all about his vision for the neighborhood. 

This area will be restored and vibrant again, some of it even in time for the 2026 World Cup. 

At that point, Newport had already purchased twenty buildings and was in the process of purchasing dozens more. 

It was the largest collection of historic commercial buildings under one ownership, ever, in the city of Atlanta. 

To Newport’s European investors, this forgotten part of one of America’s fastest-growing cities was teeming with opportunity. 

The location was just minutes from Mercedes-Benz Stadium and State Farm Arena, Georgia State, AUCC and Georgia Tech, the Georgia World Congress Center and the hub to Atlanta’s rapid-transit system: the Five-Points MARTA station. The historic buildings were intricate, unique, and surprisingly, mostly still in-tact. There was just so much potential. 

April was enraptured by the plans, and she could see it—and believe it—too. 

Newport was looking to hire someone to lead marketing for this gigantic development project, and April had been recommended by a mutual friend. 

While she had plenty of experience growing both communities and companies in previous roles, she had exactly zero experience in commercial real estate. 

But after seeing the buildings and hearing the vision, she just couldn’t stop thinking about what it could mean for Atlanta if this neighborhood could actually thrive again. 

She met with more of the team, including the German CEO Olaf, and they seemed intrigued by her because she wasn’t from the industry. 

The project was just so different from any other traditional real estate project at the time, and Newport recognized the need to think differently. They didn’t need someone to just come in with a tried-and-true playbook; they needed someone to come in with fresh ideas and new approaches and ask, “Why not?!”  

April and Newport took a risk on one another, and she joined the small team as their Head of Marketing. 

“What sold you on this role that was so different from what you had done before?” I asked her in our interview. 

She smiled and shrugged her shoulders. “I wanted to bring the heart of the city back to life.”

April quickly challenged the standard B2B approach of just making fancy pitch decks for potential investors and tenants, and instead, began to focus on B2C efforts: creating a place that Atlantans would care about. 

For example, one of April’s earliest projects was helping define the development’s brand. They first received a quote for something like $5,000 for twenty logos in two weeks, but April took a stance, saying that was the wrong approach. 

“This needed to be deep-rooted and have a solid foundation, and we needed to create a place and champion a name that Atlantans would embrace.” 

With the help of a different agency, they landed on a few key decisions:

1. embracing the name of the neighborhood already being used by residents and workers, South Downtown

2. creating a brand strategy that was rooted in “beginnings” (which can happen over and over again), and 

3. creating a beautiful brand built upon assets from the neighborhood and a vision of four core values: walkable, liveable, inclusive, and connected. 

April also pushed for the early creation of a social media account, one that told stories and planted the seeds for future residents and tenants. They hired B.T. Harman (Project Person #2!) and created @southdowntownatl, an Instagram handle with unbelievable stories and engagement that now boasts this tagline: 

Every great city has a vibrant downtown—it’s Atlanta’s turn.

Their efforts became focused on adaptive reuse, historic preservation, and the idea that this is where downtown Atlanta began. 

In early 2019, April met with friend and mentor Jeff Shinabarger from Plywood People, who encouraged her to “show Atlanta a glimpse of what’s to come.” 

As Historic Hotel Row was being emptied to prepare for renovations, they decided to create an activation of pop-up stores before construction began, granting eight local businesses free rent for a few months. 

As construction continued, April then began hosting community tours, taking small groups of people on detailed story-telling walking tours through the properties, often in hardhats. 

“I wanted to give as many people as possible that ‘I was there when…’ feeling,” she said. 

(I was one of those people, and it’s true; I now feel this unique connection to this city and truly believe this is something so special.) 

Newport navigated their way through COVID, and by 2022, Historic Hotel Row had leases signed for a flower shop, coffee shop, Thai restaurant, high end Southern restaurant, and two office tenants. 

222 Mitchell, the monstrous building across from Hotel Row, had 60% of its retail leased, including an amazing rooftop operator and ground-floor entertainment use. 

And, Newport had two high-rise residential buildings permitted and ready to build!

But—capital was becoming an issue. 

Interest rates had skyrocketed post-COVID, and there were no other projects to point to as a proof of concept for the neighborhood to give banks and lenders confidence in the investment opportunity. The pressure was mounting for new capital to be infused in the neighborhood, but there were not many answers. 

And so the delays continued. 

Late that March, April and the rest of the local team was told that Newport’s investors would be pulling out of the project completely. 

They barreled towards foreclosure and told everyone on the team to go look for jobs.

April was devastated. 

But she and the last few team members were not ready to give up. They began running their own RFPs to look for a new buyer. They thought they had one—a local developer that signed on to take it all over—but then that buyer terminated their contract at the end of September, one week before the end of due diligence. 

At that point, April and her coworker Kevin became the violinists on a sinking ship. Even as her family became impacted and her mentors were encouraging her to “dismount the dead horse” (the literal phrase the mentor used!), they tried their best to wrap up the project well, even trying to steward assets individually. We must find the best owner for this parking lot, that office chair, our Instagram account!

“I just needed to make sure I did everything possible,” April said when I asked her why she didn’t …dismount. “Even if only three buildings ended up in good hands at that point, I would have been okay with that.” 

Her biggest learning, she says, was that she should have asked more questions, not fearing being told it was none of her business. 

Because in truth (this is Callie speaking as April’s mama-bear friend and cheerleader), it was her business. Even though she was not the owner nor the investor, she had become the face of the South Downtown project. She was the one courting tenants, assuring residents, leading the “Ask April” segments on the Instagram account…

An entrepreneur may be the one who starts the business, often taking on the majority of the risk. But intrapraneurs—those who start something within an existing business—are not without risk themselves. 

I remember sitting at lunch with April around this time, and this sweet friend of mine who was always so full of vision and possibility was just so deflated. “What if my career is over?” she wondered aloud.

I knew she’d find a great new opportunity (“Everyone needs an April!” I had told her), but the disappointment was completely warranted; this project really was something special. 

And then, just days before the big neighborhood Closing Party where she would thank the residents and divvy up their remaining South Downtown swag, a well-known Atlanta entrepreneur came by for a tour. 

April was used to fielding nosy questions by that point, but something about this “potential buyer” felt different. He kept bringing people by, asking different types of questions. 

And then he (“he” being David Cummings, a tech entrepreneur and investor widely known for creating the Atlanta Tech Village) purchased the entire portfolio of buildings. 

All 53 of them. 

(!!!)

Located just north of Downtown Atlanta in Buckhead, Atlanta Tech Village had created 10,000 jobs, $10.6B in enterprise value, and $3.2B in investment. 

And after getting to know South Downtown, David found himself asking, “But what could be possible in the heart of our city?” 

April’s job with Newport officially ended on December 1, 2023; she started with David and CEO Jon Birdsong the following Monday. 

The job description was the same, but the job felt entirely different. April went from working for a large European investment firm to, essentially, a startup. 

April says it took an outsider like German-based Newport coming in to be bullish about this part of Atlanta, seeing the opportunity for all of its future potential and for the beauty in its history. 

But now she couldn’t be happier to have a local investor and leaders who call Atlanta home.

Potential tenants apparently felt the same. The taco stand that April had long tried to engage as a potential tenant for the area, for example, suddenly wanted in.

The South Downtown team is now hyper-focused on opening as much of phase one as possible in time for the 2026 World Cup.

April remembers playing in Underground Atlanta as a child as her mom worked at a nearby sports bar. Now a mother herself, April hopes her girls will have memories doing the same. “I dream of the day where it’s normal for them to take MARTA to go grab a bite to eat there,” she said wistfully. 

And this is exactly what South Downtown is about. 

A century (plus) of entrepreneurs like David and Jon, intrapreneurs like April, and countless other residents, tenants, and patrons have left their mark on these buildings and the streets that cross between them. 

With undying belief in the vibrancy of this particular place, April has been that bridge, that linchpin, between the generations before and the ones to come, ensuring that “our” is real and inclusive and true: Our city. Our turn.

-Callie

Next week, I’ll share thoughts from intrapreneurs I admire on how to build within an organization. Stay tuned!