New Georgia Tech executive says school's expanding footprint is a boon to all of Midtown

Last summer, Georgia Tech hired a new executive vice president for administration and finance (A&F) and chief business officer, Shantay Bolton.

Bolton, whom Midtown Alliance President and CEO Kevin Green called “a real breath of fresh air,” reports directly to the university’s president, Angel Cabrera. She has a massive job that includes overseeing some 1,500 A&F staff. In the announcement of her hire, her job description took up an entire paragraph; in short, Bolton is responsible for pushing forward Georgia Tech’s strategic plan by directing facilities planning, design, construction, maintenance, operations, IT, real estate development and more.

Previously executive vice chancellor for administration and chief administrative officer at Washington University in St. Louis, Bolton said she is energized by her new position.

“What inspired me the most is President Cabrera’s vision around Georgia Tech being an ecosystem for innovation and technology, the mayor’s vision for wanting to create Atlanta as the next tech hub for this country and the world, and how those two things could come together as it related to the operations and administration of the institution,” she told the Chronicle.

One especially meaningful contribution from Georgia Tech is its expansion plans. Its $1 billion, 18-acre Science Square is set for completion in March, with Venture capital company Portal Innovations building out 33,000 square feet of lab and office space, the Chronicle reported in December. 

“It’s very expensive for startup research companies to be able to have the commercial space needed or lab space needed to really build and mature their intellectual property or their inventions. This is what I think the big vision is for Science Square,” she said. “It is a real opportunity for us to build a model of how we can scale going forward, where you’re bringing researchers, business leaders, entrepreneurs together across multiple industries [such as] health care, manufacturing, technology ... how we may take this and replicate it in other parts of Atlanta potentially.”

The Chronicle reported on a filing with the state’s Developments of Regional Impact program that featured over 1,000 apartments and dormitories, 250,000 square feet of office and a 300-room hotel. 

According to the filing, the project would span 7 acres at Marietta Street and North Avenue. It could total 2.5 million square feet, according to a rezoning application filed in Atlanta late last year, nearly twice the scale of Bank of America Plaza, the city's tallest skyscraper.

“It’s still conceptual right now,” Bolton said, adding that discussions are happening internally with representatives from Georgia Tech’s Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, its College of Design and its College of Engineering. Arts Square will be student-focused, and combine the arts and technology with events, programming, classes and other initiatives to bring the Georgia Tech, Midtown communities and visitors together.

Georgia Tech’s expanding footprint in Midtown, particularly into West Midtown, means the university feels similar pressures to the district. One of those is housing, for both undergraduate students in dorms and graduate students in apartments.

“It’s very costly to have market [rate] apartments in Midtown. I learned that as a transplant in transitioning here,” said Bolton, who is living in West Midtown. “As we continue to diversify our student body, we have to be mindful of the cost of housing and things of that nature, so looking at and watching our enrollment growth and tying that to student housing and our construction plan is very important to me.”

Bolton said the university anticipates upwards of 20% growth in students by 2035, so Georgia Tech is building a new, modern 850-bed first-year hall on Northside Drive between Eighth and Ninth streets that should be completed by 2026.

All of Georgia Tech’s current and new projects — and its new executive — are part of the fabric of Midtown and metro Atlanta’s business community, Bolton said.

"The business community here is super eager to work with Georgia Tech,” she said. “They want to have conversations. They want our graduates. That’s a great place to be in.”