Story by: Olivia Williams
As the Covid-19 pandemic continued to wreak havoc, Shaneel Lalani, the founder and CEO of Billionaires Funding Group, received a call that would reshape the future of downtown Atlanta. WRS, the South Carolina-based developer who had owned The Underground since 2017, needed a loan. But instead of a loan, Lalani negotiated a complete buyout of the retail, restaurant, and nightlife district from WSR.
Shaneel, who is relatively unknown in Atlanta business and political circles, is now the sole owner of Underground Atlanta, at just 31-years-old.
In the late 1960s and 1970s, the Underground attracted loads of visitors from across the Southeast to party at Dante’s Down the Hatch, Mine Shaft, and other nightlife hot spots.
However, when much of the revelry shifted to uptown in the 1980s, the city abandoned the complex. Despite the subsequent facelift given a few years laters, party-goers only returned to the spot for a short spell and then disappeared.
Since then, the Underground has failed to reinvent itself. In 2017, in a bid to enhance reserves and avoid paying more than $9 million in upkeep and debt payments every year, Mayor Kasim Reed sold the complex for $35 million to WSR.
Hinged with its robust experience, developing Verizon and Walmart stores, in 2017 WSR pitched a $450 million mixed-use hub with office towers, apartments, a budget hotel for millennial travelers, and shops. But we got nothing.
As the new owner, Lalani intends to overhaul the 400,000 square-foot property.
The business mogul is originally from India, and immigrated to Atlanta with his family at just nine years old. Eventually settling in Tucker, the family worked retail and laundry jobs to build savings, and eventually began buying and operating local gas stations.
At 22, Shaneel began buying, developing, and leasing gas stations, medical offices, and retail locations himself.
To revive the Underground, extensive restructuring will have to be done. Even so, Lalani is choosing to retain some of the complex’s original design. He has already hired the same architecture firm (HGOR) that worked on the Battery at Truist Park, to create the master plan.
“We want to basically make sure that the city, the county, and the state – everybody – benefits from this,” says Lalani. To do this, he plans to hold consultations with multiple stakeholders around the city.
Let's hope these stakeholders include Black-owned businesses, and the Black residents who have lived, worked and played in the Underground district for decades.