Co-founder of a Real Estate Law Firm That's Busy Remaking Atlanta

Looking through enormous windows from the office of Morris, Manning & Martin, one of the firm's deals is hard to miss: Tower Place, a 35-story multi-use development in Buckhead. The firm handled the acquisition for client Regent Partners, which bought and redeveloped the property for residential, office and commercial space.

Closer intown, there's Atlantic Station, the 138-acre neighborhood of residences, retail outlets and office buildings built on the site of the old Atlantic Steel mill. Morris Manning represented Jim Jacoby and AIG in buying, cleaning up and developing the project and in negotiating the 17th Street Bridge connecting it to Midtown.

Just south of Five Points in downtown Atlanta, another client, WRS Inc., is buying Underground Atlanta to create a mixed use development for the students and government workers who dominate the area. The company, based in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, says it will anchor the project with a grocery store—the first one downtown in a decade.

For all the local landmarks Morris Manning has helped create, co-founder John G. “Sonny” Morris says it closes deals throughout the country, growing its services as its clients grow.