Atlanta, renowned as the “city in a forest,” is about to have its namesake opera building join it among the trees.
Atlanta Opera held a groundbreaking ceremony Monday afternoon to kick off its $64 million effort to turn the historic Bobby Jones Golf Course clubhouse into a new arts center. Mayor Andre Dickens and other Atlanta dignitaries christened the start of the project, which includes administrative offices, rehearsal areas, a theater, a 200-seat recital hall and education spaces.
“It is fitting that this entire site is being restored and reimagined as a place that gives opportunity for all Atlantans to come together … for music, for storytelling and for live performances,” Dickens said.
Main-stage productions will continue to take place at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre. But the move to Buckhead, including selecting a site near the Beltline, is intended to bring one of Atlanta’s largest performing arts organizations closer to nature, said Tomer Zvulun, Atlanta Opera’s general and artistic director.
“The idea behind it is that art and music are connected to nature,” he told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “This complex really embraces it.”
The opera announced the project in fall 2024, laying out a broader $110 million fundraising campaign that included raising funds for the arts center. Zvulun said the campaign has already raised more than $100 million, including one donation that gave the new center its name.
Credit: Courtesy of Atlanta Opera
Credit: Courtesy of Atlanta Opera
The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation in December 2024 donated $27.5 million to the opera’s fundraising campaign. Arthur Blank, the co-founder of The Home Depot and owner of the Atlanta Falcons, chose to name the opera’s project after his mother, Molly Blank.
“My mother, an artist herself, believed in the power of the arts to bring joy and healing,” Arthur Blank said in a news release at the time. “As a sculptor and dancer, she loved attending concerts, theater and opera in Atlanta and New York.”
The project, now called the Molly Blank Center for Opera, will incorporate the existing historic Bobby Jones Clubhouse that opened in 1941. Changes to the surrounding golf course and the abandonment of the clubhouse led to it being listed on the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation’s list of “places in peril” in 2016.
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
“For years, it stood there falling apart, being an eyesore in one of the most spectacular places in Atlanta,” Zvulun said.
Over the years, the Atlanta City Council gave the Haynes Manor Recital Hall Foundation approval to renovate the former golf clubhouse into a community-centric concert hall and music education center. The city also entered into an agreement to swap ownership of the Bobby Jones Golf Course with the state of Georgia. Opera leaders said their search for a new home converged with the Haynes Manor Recital Hall Foundation’s plans, and they will collaborate to bring the new arts center to fruition.
The clubhouse structure will comprise less than a third of the new 63,000-square-foot arts center. It will feature two stages: The Atlanta Opera Coca-Cola Theatre for rehearsals and chamber performances, along with Rosemary Hall, the 200-seat recital hall.
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Zvulun said the stages represent the opera’s mission broadening over the years beyond one type of performance.
“This new facility is the embodiment of this principle of breaking the boundaries of opera,” he said, adding that it’ll feature two intimate theaters for various performances.
The opera’s current back-end operations are based out of the Atlanta Technology Center along Northside Drive, but that leased space will be vacated upon the new arts center’s completion.
The opera’s fundraising campaign isn’t finished, with Zvulun calling it “a big project that requires a lot of funds.” The center’s construction is expected to finish in fall 2027.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated with details from the groundbreaking event.
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