AT&T sells Atlanta’s landmark CNN Center

FILE - This Jan. 17, 2001 file photo shows people entering CNN Center, the headquarters for CNN, in downtown Atlanta. Numerous websites were unavailable on Tuesday June 8, 2021, after an apparent widespread outage at cloud service company Fastly. Dozens of high-traffic websites including the New York Times, CNN, Twitch and the U.K. government's home page, could not be reached. (AP Photo/Ric Feld, File) FILE - This Jan. 17, 2001 file photo shows people entering CNN Center, the headquarters for CNN, in downtown Atlanta. Numerous websites were unavailable on Tuesday June 8, 2021, after an apparent widespread outage at cloud service company Fastly. Dozens of high-traffic websites including the New York Times, CNN, Twitch and the U.K. government's home page, could not be reached. (AP Photo/Ric Feld, File)

By Michael E. Kanell / The Atlanta Journal-Constitution July 2, 2021 2 min read

A Florida-based real estate company has purchased the iconic CNN Center in downtown Atlanta, but its current occupants are staying put.

CP Group, which is based in Boca Raton, announced late Thursday that it has reached a deal to buy the complex next to Centennial Olympic Park.

AT&T, which owns CNN as a result of its 2018 acquisition of Time Warner, will lease the building from its new owners for a “a number of years.”

The deal comes as AT&T prepares to spin off WarnerMedia, whose holdings include CNN, and combine it with Discovery and its stable of networks.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported last month that long-range plans call for many if not most CNN employees to move from the downtown site to buildings near Georgia Tech that were recently renovated. Those offices already house TNT, Cartoon Network and other WarnerMedia networks.