Columbus leaders gather for grand reopening of Ralston Towers

COLUMBUS, Ga. (WTVM) - New life was brought back to Columbus’s Historic Ralston Towers with the grand unveiling on Aug. 31.

$10 million later, the historic Ralston Towers completely gutted during the two year project tackled by Infinity Capital Partners out of Atlanta, who also bought the property.

“It’s certainly the most complicated deal we’ve ever done,” said the CIO of Infinity Capital Partners, Greg Jones.

You may remember, the former subsidized housing building was deemed unlivable due to multiple HUD violations back in 2019, ultimately a resident losing his life due to the poor conditions.

CONGRESSMAN DREW FERGUSON/ GA (R) 3RD DISTRICT:

“I was sad, shocked.” said Congress Drew Ferguson. “But I know Congressman Bishop will share this one with me as well. There was anger. Anger that owners of this property for way too long had left our fellow Americans suffer. The previous owners kept men and women that had served this country and defended our freedoms living in squallum.”

Now, the renovated 269 unit building will serve lower income residents, mostly the sick and elderly.

Jones explained the price for cleaning up and demolishing the inside alone came with a $1 million price tag.

“We had to remediate mold, and then we had to bring climate control into the property. Again, you heard a lot of discussion today about the death of Mr. Hart in 2017, and the reasoning behind that was poor air-conditioning in just a 100 degree room because his air conditioning specifically didn’t work,” Jones said.

Columbus Mayor Skip Henderson, praised all of the partnerships it took to make the transformation possible.

“These folks not only took undertook a massive, massive endeavor, but they did it in the teeth of a pandemic. They did it with rising cost of materials, rising cost of man power and still delivered a total transformation and rebirth of this incredible facility,” Henderson said.

The first three levels of the living quarters are complete. So some residents will be moving in in the next month.

The entire project is slated to be finished by the end of this year.

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