John Dewberry

John Dewberry is a former starting quarterback for the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets football team from 1983 to 1985. He graduated from Milton High School. He played for the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League (CFL) before starting his first company in 1989. He is an Atlanta-based real estate developer and founder of Dewberry Capital, now known as Dewberry Group.

Football career After the 1981 season, John Dewberry left the University of Georgia football team due to lack of playing time, and he transferred to Georgia Tech. Dewberry helped Georgia Tech defeat Georgia in two straight games. Dewberry also initiated the tradition of Georgia Tech players taking pieces of the Hedges after a Tech football win in Athens.

Real estate career After graduating from Georgia Tech in 1986, Dewberry played briefly for the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League before returning to Atlanta, where he began his real estate career under developer Kim King, a fellow Georgia Tech alumnus. In 1989, he founded Dewberry Capital with $5,000 of his own money, and secured a $4 million loan to develop a shopping center in North Charleston, South Carolina, as his first project. Harvard Business School published a case study on Dewberry Capital examining his approach to land acquisition and long-term holding.

Dewberry also encountered setbacks during this period. He lost the Hotel Midtown — the former Wyndham property at 125 10th Street — to foreclosure in 2011 after defaulting on a $26 million loan. Dewberry intended to complete the project as the second hotel in his self-titled portfolio but redirected much of his staff toward the Charleston hotel, whose completion took longer than he had anticipated; he had previously stated he would not begin work in Charlottesville until the Charleston project was underway.

The Midtowne In 2010, Dewberry purchased the Campanile, a 21-story office tower at 1155 Peachtree Street NE in Midtown Atlanta, for $36 million in a distressed sale. The building had served as BellSouth's corporate headquarters before the company vacated it following its merger with AT&T. By 2017, the tower was approximately half-vacant. That year, Dewberry also secured a tax abatement from the Development Authority of Fulton County estimated at $5.7 million over a decade, contingent on a promised $125 million investment projected to create about 1,350 jobs. According to the Development Authority, Dewberry had not received any portion of the abatement as of 2026 because the building had not obtained a certificate of occupancy. As of 2026, the exterior of the building remained visibly incomplete, with a construction crane that had been inactive for years. In May 2026, the City of Atlanta issued an "unsafe" citation for the site. Dewberry declined to comment on the citation; his wife, Jaimie Brown Dewberry, told the AJC the site was active and secure.

Trademark litigation In 2006, Dewberry Engineers, a Virginia-based engineering firm unrelated to Dewberry Capital, sued Dewberry for trademark infringement. The parties settled in 2007. When Dewberry rebranded his firm as Dewberry Group in 2020, Dewberry Engineers filed a second suit. A federal district court ruled in the plaintiffs' favor and awarded $43 million in damages. Dewberry appealed, and in February 2025 the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously reversed the judgment in Dewberry Group v. Dewberry Engineers.