The Edgewood Retail District

Like many somewhat orthodox New Urbanists I have deeply conflicted feelings about big box retail, such as Targets, Lowes's and Krogers.  On the one hand I have a great deal of fond memories of the old downtown department stores, particularly Rich's, which provided a shopping experience of dignity and
social interaction in a beautiful building which was in a street setting of other beautiful buildings.  On the other hand I know that modern retail is carried on in a different manner, and that if I want a package of socks or underwear of reasonable quality at a decent price, I'm likelier to find it in a Targets than in any of the corner stores around here, and there is no downtown Rich's anymore.

A couple of days ago the Target in The Edgewood Retail District quietly opened  and word spread quickly by mouth and internet.  The excitement in the neighborhoods of southeast Atlanta has reached an almost ideological pitch, and for very good reason.  We've been a severely underserved community, and the prospect of buying a package of socks without travelling across town is a genuinely exciting situation.

So I'm consequently very excited about the opening of the Target, and view the ERD as a very significant practical amenity for the people living  in southeast Atlanta or along the MARTA East/West train line.

But there are other aspects of this development which are interesting too, which go beyond just the practical retail needs of the community.  The Edgewood Retail District is one of the newest hybrids between conventional big box shopping and New Urbanist principals.  For this reason I think it's very important that both people in the neighborhoods surrounding the district,  and the architects, planners, developers, retailers, and city officials  who are involved in the technical details of the project need to draw lessons from this development about how to fit mixed use (including big box retail) into urban neighborhoods.

I've taken a fairly random group of photos of the Edgewood Retail District as it looks now:  Click
here to view the photo albums.

I'm also posting a link to forum in which Caleb Racicot posted a presentation he had put together on the ERD for the Congress for a New Urbanism.  It includes a set of renderings of the built out development.  Click here for a link to the presentation.

Also, here is a link to a PDF document on the development from Sembler's own site.  Click here to view Sembler's document.

And finally, no set of links on this development would be complete without an article from a local weekly on the ERD

and the Sembler company's response to that article.

Comments

[Dave]

Thanks for posting the photos Larry.

I cannot tell you how disappointed I am to see that they appear to be adding deceleration lanes to Moreland Ave. at the two main entrances. From a pedestrian standpoint, this is the equivalent of widening Moreland, which Sembler explicitly stated it would not do in its letter to CL.

I am still optimistic about how Caroline St. will turn out, but between the blank brick walls and the decel lanes in particular, I'm afraid Moreland may be a lost cause.

This problem (accel/decel lanes in inappropriate settings) is a serious issue throughout the city.. Peachtree (north of Pershing Point) and Ponce de Leon are littered with them and that is one of the main reasons, if not *the* biggest reason, these streets are such hostile places for walking.

The sad thing is, I thought we had beaten this problem... I've been told, for instance, that the Brookwood Place (Kroger/Borders) development on Peachtree originally called for decel lanes but they were eliminated due to pedestrian concerns. And as someone who walks around that particular area on a near-daily basis, I cannot overstate how big of a difference that has made. It is very distressing to see that we apparently have taken a big step back on this issue.

[Larry Felton Johnson]

Couldn't agree with you more, and I'm trying to come up with an effective set of means to display appropriately targetted displeasure at those shortcomings. The deceleration lanes had an almost amusing effect on my ability to take photographs. Since only part of the twisty sidewalks are fininshed, I couldn't just walk straight back into the development, but had to walk all the way around Hardee Street.

And the blank walls!!!! Ughhh!!! an ugly and insulting slap at the community, and the two retailers who insisted on it should be publicly taken to task for it.

[Anthony]

Well it certainly is a baby step in the right direction. I am curious as to how much traffic will get bottlenecked onto Caroline Street and the amount exhaust fumes that will circulate around the neighbourhood with all of those SUVs.

It is certainly amazing to see how everything is designed almost exclusively for cars with the assumption that the U.S. will always be and always has been a rich country with the same low tax rates.

It is very interesting to see how machines are worshipped in the North American landscape. Humans almost seem to be the servant of the machine. No human on the planet gets a free place to park their carcasse. So it is amazingly to see the amount of space dedicated to the usage of a four-wheeled machine that has almost exhausted the entire economic base it depends on.

[Larry Felton Johnson]

Anthony,

True in general. As overall connectedness goes the ERD is a bit better than average, so Caroline Street will be on about equal footing with Hardee with respect to thorugh traffic (and probably a bit better off than Moreland in that respect). The surrounding
neighborhoods probably have more residents who will come in on foot than the average Atlanta neighborhood would (at least the average Atlanta neighborhood where this particular cluster of retailers would locate).

The ability to come in by foot is pretty good too. The decel lanes which have been mentioned are the worst feature in terms of respect for pedestrians.

[DecaturGuy]

I drove through there this weekend when I heard the Target had opened. I had no idea how far they had come along!

The Target is exactly 2.5 miles from my house in Oakhurst. Overall it looks like a good project. Seemed to me to be a lot of surface parking, but noticed the underground lot as well. However, once the Kroger opens up next door, it may not seem like too much parking.

I'm excited to see how the Caroline Street "Main Street" turns out!

I will be riding my bike up there this spring and summer. But, you know, if I'm going on a big shopping trip, you just have to drive.

[Godric]

Hi Larry -- great post! Alas, you beat me to the punch, but I still plan to blog a response to this. (That reminds me, I need to have you update both a link and a name for me, unless you can guess it already.)

My wife visited the Target today and came back with glowing reports. But like most of your readers, I've been feeling rather glum about the project just in seeing it grow from Moreland over the last year. It's great that they observed two of David Sucher's Three Rules and built to the street for the most part, but those blank walls are a clear violation of Rule #3 ("make surfaces permeable"), and an insult to Reynoldstown across the street as well.

However, I was extremely glad to read Caleb's report -- apparently there's more going for the project than I was aware of.

Is it not true that the widening/decel lane issues are more to do with GDOT than Sembler? (Ah, the GDOT, always sodomizing neighborhoods with traffic sewers. Whatever you may say about them, you can't accuse them of inconsistency!)

[Larry Felton Johnson]

Yep, it was the GDOT plain and simple. The followup
posts on the skyscraperpage goes into the details a bit. And the retailers flatly threatened to pull out if they had to create decent walls facing Moreland. I'm trying to think of some small way to express to the retailers that this has a significantly negative effect on the neighborhood. I'm coming to the conclusion that some sort of sustained full frontal assault needs to be mounted on the GDOT's ability to be the final word on state highways in urban neighborhoods.

[Godric]

Good. However, I've always had this nagging question: why are there state highways in urban areas at all??

[Larry Felton Johnson]

My impression is that it's funding.

[Godric]

That funding comes with some nasty strings attached, doesn't it?

[Richard Layman]

Maybe the photos don't do it justice, and it's certainly better than cinderblock, but the design is nothing to write home about. The blank walls, well we all get them, but we should never be satisfied with 'em.

[scott partee]

I think we are all on the same page here. I love having a close-by Target (and other stuff), but the blank walls facing Moreland and Hardee are BRUTAL. What is more, from the look and feel of it (I was in there 2 weekends ago), a pedestrian is going ot have to endure this development rather than enjoy it. But I will say this: The Target was the cleanest, best-run Target I've ever been in. It was refreshing to experience young, eager, well-trained employees. I feel this is a direct reflection of the, to me, primary positive reason to bring developments into areas like this: a local resident workforce in need of decent options.

I lived in Inman Park for years, and always thought that a lot of the more activist neigbhors, while heroic versus the GDOT in the old days and urban pioneers of the highest order, had now taken a disappointing NIMBY and "as long as it's good for ME" attitude. When the neighborhood initially opposed the development, I thought that it was typical of people who had already seen their homes appreciate in value by multiple hundreds of percent and felt that adjacent neigbhoroods deserved no other breaks (Inman Park borders Edgewood). The Inman Parkers spelled out a scenario of doom and gloom: traffic, parking lots, blank walls, widening Moreland. Listening to the developer, adn trusting them, I discounted the Inman Parker as "wing nuts" of the highest order -- similar to the people who instantly assumed Bush was lying about the WMD claim in Iraq.

I hate it when the wing nuts are right, but they called it in both cases.

The Georgia Department of Transportation has a vested interest in building more roads. That is their reason to exist, so they will always want more pavement, given the decision. It is vital that Atlanta take that decision power away from GDOT within Atlanta. I live a few houses of Memorial Drive in the 3-lane section, and while they claim there is no plan to widen it (I even had a board memeber tell me this eye-to-eye), I have seen much evidence to suggest the contrary. This would be devastating to the East Lake neighborhood -- cleaving it in half and destroying any hope for the neighborhood to feel cohesive.

[Larry Felton Johnson]

Yeah, Memorial Drive should be a grand avenue bor the benefit of the neighborhood instead of a fastmoving thoroughfare. Since I-20 parallels it there really isn't any excuse to continue mangling it for through traffic. Any driver wanting more lanes should shift to 20.

[Matt]

Is Sembler still going to establish a shuttle? Hopefully it will have a decent frequency and be nothing like the Tech Stinger (where is it often faster to walk.)

I cannot believe I will be able to go to a Best Buy without driving. I think it's the first one ITP which strikes me as very odd. Athens has had one for years...

[JIm]

Is the Target that opened up a nice, modern Tar'get like the one in Buckhead or is it a regular store that looks like a Walmart?

From your pix, it looks like there are apartments or townhouses there. Personally I think it would stink to live right on the edge of a major shopping complex - despite the minor conveniences. Im reminded of Bhead where the Bed Bath Beyond and Old Navy are - You have a luxury highrise condo building with your view being Toys R Us.

Does anyone know if there will be a Publix opening up in the immediate area. I know there's one on Ponce & one on East Lake but wish there was one closer I find Publix so much better than Kroger.

I would like to see what Glenwood Park will be like in a year. Is it going to be bustling? Will it bring in a good element from other parts of town or is it going to cater mostly to the people who live there and at Glenwood Green and East Atlanta?. I hope the park will be nice - we wont have to drive to Piedmont.

[Jessica]

In response to Jim's query: I went a couple days ago, and hot damn, but that's a nice Target. It is even nicer than the North Druid Hills Target, and (right now, while it's all squeaky clean) nicer than the Lenox Target.

I'm hoping that Target keeps it up; the North Druid Hills Target has definitely deteriorated since opening in late '02.

[jennifer]

Who was/is the general contractor on this project? Anyone know?

[Woodrow]

Good morning. There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.
I am from Islands and learning to speak English, tell me right I wrote the following sentence: "The popular function scooterers are used closer to the fans to take formation."

:P Thanks in advance. Woodrow.