Prominent retail developer Ben Carter, a Lovett School graduate and visionary behind several notable Atlanta area developments, died Sept. 15. He was 70 years old.
Locally, Carter envisioned the Streets of Buckhead, a proposed 600,000 square-foot mixed-use luxury district in the heart of Buckhead. Carter’s vision never fully came to fruition due to the Great Recession, but the development later became the Buckhead Village District and delivered on his plan for upscale development in the area.
Ben Carter Enterprises, which Carter founded in the early 1990s, spearheaded several notable retail developments in Georgia and the Southeast, including the 1.7 million-square-foot Mall of Georgia, Tanger Outlets Savannah, and the 1.4 million square-foot St. Johns Town Center in Jacksonville, Florida. He also led a revitalization of Savannah’s Broughton Street.
Imagining the ‘Streets of Buckhead’
Carter grew up in the Brookwood Hills area of Buckhead and was a Lovett School graduate. He turned his attention back to his hometown in the mid-2000s. He aimed to transform the then club scene around the heart of Buckhead into what was dubbed the “Rodeo Drive of the South,” a luxury district teeming with upscale shopping, restaurants and residences. Carter acquired 43 properties across eight blocks on or near East Paces Ferry, Peachtree, and Pharr roads. In 2007, demolition began on several properties at the center of the neighborhood’s infamous party scene.
Due to a legal dispute, the Streets of Buckhead was rebranded to “Buckhead Avenue.”
There were far greater issues on the horizon, however. The Great Recession brought progress on the visionary development to a crawl. Buckhead Avenue was originally slated to open in 2009, but financing delays continued to plague the development. In 2011, Ben Carter Properties elected to sell the properties due to the financial strains of the recession. It was purchased by California-based OliverMcMillan Inc.
“Ben made sure every vendor, lawyer, and contractor was paid at great cost,” according to an obituary published by Carter’s family in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
OliverMcMillan Inc. rebranded the site to “Buckhead Atlanta” and then, a year later, to “The Shops Buckhead Atlanta.” The first retailers and restaurants opened in 2014, maintaining Carter’s upscale vision. He told the AJC in 2014 the district was “substantially what we originally planned.”
OliverMcMillan Inc. sold “The Shops” to Atlanta-based Jamestown in 2019 amid struggles to attract foot traffic. The area, now known as the Buckhead Village District, has since rebounded to serve as a hub in Buckhead’s thriving retail and restaurant scene, including le Bilboquet, Le Colonial, Hermes, Buckhead Art and Co, and other local boutiques.
Carter was ‘vibrant and visionary’
Carter’s notable career began working with his father’s industrial brokerage firm, Carter & Associates. He founded Ben Carter Properties in 1993, creating over five million square feet of mixed-use projects around the Southeast. His obituary calls him “vibrant and visionary” and a pioneer of “lifestyle centers with developments that were created to be open air ‘people places’ in the community.”
Carter was a dedicated quail hunter and designed several bass lakes. He was also an avid traveler with a particular fondness for boats. He circumnavigated the globe three times with his family and friends, his obituary notes.
He founded the Carter Real Estate Center at the College of Charleston and served on the college’s Parent Advisory Council.
Carter was married to his wife, Patricia Reed Carter, for 47 years at the time of his death. He is survived by Patricia, their two children, and two grandchildren.
