The perfect city building? I think so.
I love this building at Peachtree and Fifth.
It adheres to the classic city architecture form that includes retail on the ground floor and residential on the upper floors.
It’s stately, and given the controversy over building plans at 10th and Monroe, it’s really not too tall. I mean, does this building offend or worry anyone?
I think it would be pretty cool to walk downstairs and slip into a chic bistro (Eno) for dinner or just a drink.
Look at the afternoon sunlight streaming in the windows!
And when you’re returning home from errands, you can pat yourself on the back that you live in a building that adds to the richness of the neighborhood, instead of detracting.
So what am I getting at?
Well if you have something that works — and I don’t think this building has gone into foreclosure and I looked at property records for residents and I don’t see a lot of foreclosure notices — why not replicate it?
To be sure, there are other buildings of a similar size in the city. This one, for example, which houses Utrecht art supply on the ground floor:
But, well, how about some more?
Gosh I see empty lots all over Atlanta and I wonder if people are thinking a little too big. On the other hand, I like that the folks who built this building understood this is a city; one and two-story buildings need not apply. At the same time, it’s not so large that neighborhood groups begin to agitate when the developers make the proposal.
The perfect city building, no?
One more Beltline walk pic — an important one
I took the photo above last month during a tour of the Beltline’s Northeastern section with Angel Poventud, the uber-activist.
What do we see in the photo? A high-rise at the corner of 10th and Monroe.
As Linda Richman used to say, talk amongst yourselves, and see a personal disclosure after the jump.
And while you talk amongst yourselves, let me add my two cents — albeit a bit late — about a recent decision by the NPU-F to reject the Beltline’s plan to allow up to an eight-story building near the corner of 10th and Monroe in Midtown Atlanta. (See here for a great overview by Creative Loafing’s Thomas Wheatly).
Cent one: How did the building in the photo above get there? (Clearly the Beltline folks need to do whatever that guy did).
Cent two: Now that it’s there, why can’t there be other buildings of that size in the area? Does the neighborhood consider that building a mistake? Are there plans to demolish it?
For the rest of this post, and to see comments from readers, please follow the link to My Green ATL.
SaportaReport interview with new Beltline CEO
Maria Saporta, as usual, is on the case and has an interesting story about the Beltline’s new CEO, Brian Leary, who worked previously with the group that gave us Atlantic Station.
Leary’s appointment was announced Wednesday; he replaces Terry Montague.
I will share one little nugget of her story that meshes with discussions we’ve had here.
Maria asked Brian about density, and here’s how he responded.
“It’s unfortunate that density in general has been given a bad rap. Density is a more efficient way to use our natural resources. A great deal of the economic model for the BeltLine is tax increment financing. It’s going to have to be densified.”
Density is a more efficient way to use our natural resources. Hmmmm…..
Hope you guys know how to swim. It’s weather for ducks out there!
New Holiday Inn Express downtown/midtown?
I’m guessing by now everyone has spotted the giant Holiday Inn Express banner (above) draped over a building on Peachtree Street that has been vacant since the beginning of time. Feels like that long!
A friend mentioned it to me on Friday, and then I saw it myself over the weekend from the deck of F.A.B. on Ivan Allen Boulevard.
I’ve not had time to snap a picture but it might be worth a detour if the hotel chain is announcing a new location. (Update: PHOTO above)
It appears to be shouting its message from the mountaintops!
I don’t know the history of the building but it’s one of those old haunts on Peachtree, between downtown and Midtown, near Max Lagers, that’s been abandoned for a long time.
I’m sure some astute reader will have some background info for us!
Why would I love it if Holiday Inn built a hotel on that site?
Infill, infill, infill!
(Maybe I could have bumper sticks made, you know like Drill, Baby Drill! Except totally different.)
We’ve built the city; it’s not going away; now let’s finish coloring in the figures we’ve already drawn.
I hope Chinamex chooses a downtown address
A Chinese company will establish a U.S. headquarters in Atlanta, according to a story by the Atlanta Business Chronicle.
AND, the company, Chinamex, is concentrating its search for space on downtown, Midtown and North Fulton County, the ABC said.
Maybe that’s what all companies say, and then they go ahead and move to North Fulton or another suburban area. But I hope city and state officials are pushing hard for a downtown/Midtown location since Chinamex is not a manufacturer (the ABC said the company will establish an incubator; I’ve seen others incubators and unless this one is dramatically different, I would guess a downtown/midtown location would suffice).
I was disappointed last month when NCR announced it would relocate its headquarters to Gwinnett County from Ohio. Any headquarters that moves here should ideally go into an area that’s already established — no earthmovers should be involved in the building of its site.
I know it’s a big win for Gwinnett, and Gwinnett is not going anywhere and is already established. But no one from outside of Atlanta relocates to the “Gwinnett area” or the “Cobb County” area.
Everyone, including myself, relocates to the Atlanta area.
Case in point: there are large multi-national companies located off Powers Ferry Road in Cobb County that successfully lobbied for an Atlanta mailing address when they relocated here.
So a big welcome to the folks at Chinamex; I hope you will help the city of Atlanta reach its full potential by locating downtown or Midtown.
The new face of smart growth? It’s you
It started with porch parties.
But, shoot, porch parties can only take you or, in this case, the Poncey-Highland Neighborhood Association, so far.
Jim McMahel, a president of the association, said he realized the neighborhood desperately needed a master plan about five years ago when developers began to buy up parcels of land and propose ambitious new buildings in that part of Atlanta, which is south of Virginia-Highlands.
In an interview earlier this month, McMahel said, “Here is this tiny little neighborhood that didn’t have a lot of volunteers, trying to deal with someone like Wayne Mason who has $25 million to throw around and hire the best lawyers and planners to push through what he wants. We recognized very quickly if we had a master plan that was recorded with the city that we could reference that and send a developer to that,” in order to preserve the neighborhood’s character.
(By way of explanation, Mason bought land in the P-H area that he later sold to the Beltline; developer Trammell Crow expressed interest in building a 20-story building on the site of the North High Ridge Apartments on Highland, seen in the photo above, McMahel said.)
So McMahel and other residents of Poncey-Highland began to raise money to pay for a master plan, which they believed would cost as much as $40,000.
“I kept saying we need to do something,” McMahel recalled. “We did not have a clue as to how we were going to raise the amount of money. We were raising it through porch parties and socials at restaurants. And we managed to raise $1,000 and set it apart. But we were not getting anywhere with that.” Read more
Cityscape: Ponce
Ponce, near Freedom Parkway
One simple question: Would you walk here for pleasure?
To elaborate, would you stroll here? Would you hang out with friends here, take photos, lollygag?
I’ll answer: NO!
Sure there’s a sidewalk, but that doesn’t make you want to walk there.
As new urbanist Andres Duany said last week when he visited Atlanta, “We made places that were unpleasant for pedestrians.”
A stone’s throw from the heart of the city, it’s classic suburban architecture and streetscaping — buildings pushed way back from the street so the super-attractive parking lot can go out front, revolting store signage and an ATM thrown in the mix for good measure.
Just to add insult to injury, you can see something more attractive — something that actually inspires us as humans — in the distance but trust me: visually, you can’t get there from here (it’s the Bank of America building on North Ave.).
And it’s not as though I chose the one bad spot in that particular stretch of Ponce de Leon. It’s pretty unpleasant from every angle. Let’s take a look!
Read more
Inman Park Properties — what a mess
The great Terminal Station blog links to info on Creative Loafing’s site about foreclosed properties owned by Inman Park Properties, which from most accounts is on the verge of collapsing. CL gets you interested with a Clermont Lounge headline, but I think the other properties are more interesting (including a group of stores on Ponce once anchored by the old Goody’s film developing store). I’m kind of sick of the overcoverage of the Clermont.
Indeed, Ben at Terminal Station mentions the John B. Gordon school in East Atlanta, which sits vacant. I like Ben’s idea that the school could have been a great condo conversion — I say ‘could have been’ because I just don’t know what all would be required to rehab it back into civilization.
It is curious to me that in the supposed heart of Hipster Central, East Atlanta, there aren’t apartments or condos right in the village. I mean hipsters have to have some place to sleep, and given the hours they keep, I’m not sure maintaining a single-family home is in the cards!
There is a developer taking steps to convert a host of properties at the corner of Moreland and Glenwood into a mixed-used development that would have a residential component. (Properties on Glenwood, Moreland and Portland avenues are being converted from the Low Density Residential Land Use Designation to Low Density Commercial). Plans for the project, dubbed “525 Moreland Ave.,” include buildings of varying height (three-story/five-story) and a rooftop garden.
To orient you, the intersection in question is currently home to Buffalo Chicken. Now that’s a classic!
I welcome anything that will remove blight from our neighborhoods and install some density, and I hope to report more on 525 Moreland Avenue later. But I just hope it’s not another case of a company like Inman Park Properties buying up properties and not seeing things through.
“Our abysmal endless commercial strips”
Mike Dobbins, a professor of architecture and planning at Georgia Tech, writes of “our abysmal endless commercial strips” in a column for SaportaReport.
Do you know what he means? Of course you do, if you live in Atlanta. Read more here.
People listen to me!
Last week, I was bemoaning the retail vacancies in Glenwood Park, where a Borders bookstore sign appeared briefly last month, but only because a film company was shooting a movie and I guess the shop was part of the script.
But today I saw a sign that says Snap Fitness is expanding its location there!
Clearly the gym folks saw my post here and thought, ‘We better expand!’
Right?
Ok, no. Not at all. Not even a little.
BUT, what a good omen. The sign announcing the expansion was in a large corner space on Glenwood Ave. (next to the gym’s current location) that appears to have been vacant since it was built (it’s raw inside).
And of course, it’s good news that a business can think about expanding in this economy. In fact, those cheeky Snap Fitness folks wrote on the sign: “We’re expanding so you don’t have to!” Good one!
The gym may be counting on the new apartment complex that’s going up on the opposite corner of Glenwood. More density should mean more businesses and services.
I’ll keep you posted on the comings and goings at Glenwood Park.
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