atlantalarry

Glenwood Park photos for March 2008

Y'all may have noticed that I haven't posted a lot of photos of Atlanta neighborhoods lately.  My old digital camera bit the dust about ten months ago, and I've been shopping in my penny pinching and lethargic manner since then.  I finally settled on a camera and purchased it.

Since Glenwood Park is the neighborhood I cover which is of most general interest (as manifested by page clicks on my photo albums) near my house, I've tested the camera by doing a walkthrough of Glenwood Park. 

I haven't yet done editing or captioning of the photos, but there has been a great deal of new construction since my last album.  Also bear in mind that I took these photos at about three pm midweek, on a cool and drizzly day, so not many people were on the streets.

Click here to enter the photo album.

New Glenwood Park photos

I finally replaced my defunct digital camera.  To test it out I wandered down to Glenwood Park, about a half mile from my house.  There's always interesting  stuff going on there, and this afternoon I got to watch a little of a bocce game on Brasfield Square.  Click here to enter the album.

AJC: Atlantic Station opens

I haven't been following the schedule for Atlantic Station lately, but here's an update from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Atlantic Station opens | ajc.com.

Brasfield Square at Glenwood Park

Some of you may have noticed that I haven't updated in a few weeks.  In addition to being overbooked on a number of neighborhood activities, I needed a vacation from the frequent updates I had been doing.  To jump back into the water I'm posting a photo album I did of Brasfied Square in Glenwood Park a couple of months ago (Click here to enter the album).  This little square is one of the nicest features of Glenwood Park (at least from the point of view of a nearby neighbor).  Assuming the plan is still in place Dawn and Al of Joe's Coffee will be opening a coffee shop on the edge of the square, which I suspect will make this small public space one of the nicest places in Atlanta to hang out for an evening.

Coffee Shop, Restaurant at Glenwood Park

I received the following press release about the first commercial tenants at  Glenwood Park.  I'm particularly happy that  the owners of Joe's are opening a new coffee shop there.  I'm a firm believer in the rule of thumb that one criterion for an urban area is that residents can leave their home on foot and be served a good cup of coffee within five minutes of their door.

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Glenwood Park signs first retail tenants;

Babalu, Perk add to mix of uses at landmark new urbanism project

ATLANTA (March 29, 2005) – Glenwood Park, the new urbanism development rising two miles east of downtown Atlanta, has signed a Latin restaurant and a coffeehouse as its first retail tenants.

The restaurant, Babalu, and coffeehouse, Perk, are scheduled to open June 1 in buildings overlooking Glenwood Park’s Brasfield Square, the community’s town center. Perk is owned by the same people who operate Joe’s East Atlanta Coffee Shop, and Babalu is owned by Atlanta restaurateur Hilton Joseph.

Babalu, a new restaurant that will feature Latin food, an international bar and tapas, and Perk will be the first of many unique neighborhood retailers and restaurants in Glenwood Park’s town center. Green Street Properties, the primary developer of Glenwood Park, is working to ensure that the environmentally friendly project maintains a human scale with a quality mix of residences, offices and retail shops that will not only serve the needs of the residents, but also those of visitors and the surrounding communities.

Glenwood Park is a 28-acre mixed-use project just off I-20 at Glenwood Avenue and Bill Kennedy Way (formerly the Glenwood-Memorial Connector) in Atlanta. Construction began on the first single-family homes, townhouses and retail at Glenwood Park in 2004. When completed, Glenwood Park will comprise 325-360 residences, 20,000 square feet of office condominiums and 50,000 square feet of retail, as well as parks and green spaces.

“The addition of the restaurant and coffeehouse enhances the wonderful mix of uses at Glenwood Park,” said Katharine Kelley, president of Green Street Properties. “Our retail development partner is The Meddin Co., which brings incredible strength to the project.” The Meddin Co. is known for its role in developing the retail mix in Atlanta’s Virginia-Highland neighborhood.

“We have been very particular in making sure we bring the right mix of retailers and restaurants into the neighborhood, and Babalu and Perk fit perfectly,” said Ann Mijanovich, a broker at The Meddin Co. She and fellow Meddin broker John Graham are marketing the retail space at Glenwood Park.

Glenwood Park is emerging as a walkable, lovable, tree-lined community where different uses are being intertwined to enable people to stroll from one end of the project to the other, enjoying the shops, parks and scenery along the way.

The first residents moved into Glenwood Park in October. More residents will move in when the first phase of condominiums and townhouses are completed this spring. To date, nearly 70 percent of the Glenwood Park condominiums released in phase I have been sold.

Prices for the remaining condos range from the $170,000s to the high $200,000s. The one- and two-bedroom units feature bamboo floors, 9- and 10-foot ceilings, granite countertops, stainless steel appliances and large windows. All are being built using the EarthCraft House program, which will ensure that the homes are energy efficient and environmentally friendly.

“The condominiums provide the opportunity to live in an exciting Main Street environment that overlooks retail stores and shops and a beautiful park reminiscent of the squares in Savannah,” Kelley said.

Glenwood Park’s town center ultimately will contain 50 condominiums in four buildings around Brasfield Square. The buildings will include 50,000 square feet of retail shops and restaurants, including Babalu and Perk.

 

Green Street Properties is the primary developer of Glenwood Park, a lively new city neighborhood being created two miles from the center of downtown. Green Street was formed in the summer of 2001 when Charles Brewer, Katharine Kelley and Walter Brown joined forces to help create walkable, interesting, and environmentally friendly neighborhoods.

Atlantic Station -- Sunday March 27

I wandered around 17th Street and its cross streets Sunday afternoon and took some updated photos (click here to view them), including a few of the IKEA (the blue and yellow building in the shots), which has so many people excited around here.  Since I've never been in an IKEA I don't at the moment share the excitement, but I was at least curious about what the building would look like and how it relates to the rest of the development.  My initial observation is that unless I'm missing something which is pending in the construction, not much effort was made to encourage foot traffic from the condos, which are located very close to the IKEA.  There is a sidewalk in front of the building, but it's currently seperated from the front entrance by both a dropoff on the edge of the parking area, and the front surface parking lot itself.  As a practical matter for pedestrians entering from the east it isn't insurmountable (one just steps off the sidewalk and walks across the parking lot, as usual for a big box), but it is rude.  Maybe when it's finished there'll be some better pedestrian connectivity of which I'm not aware, but I'm not optimistic.

I also took a few more shots of the ducks in the pond.  I was afraid they'd left the area, but either the original ducks or some relatives came back.

New York Daily News - Boroughs - Drive-thru plan gets driven out

I recently ran a post on a bank branch planned for the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn and a followup correction  based on information I recieved from one of the people involved in the issue.  Both posts involved a branch which was expected to be built to a suburban cookie cutter model not appropriate to Brooklyn. 

It seems there is good news.  Due to the uproar in the community Commerce Bank has agreed to build a branch more in keeping with the urban character of the neighborhood.

Here is the the New York Daily News article describing the outcome, posted by Jym in the comments section here.

Here is the link sent by Mike Flynn to an article in Curbed.

Here is a link to Aaron Naparstek's blog summarizing the outcome.

Credit should be given to both  Aaron Naparstek and the people working with him from the neighborhood for raising this issue, and the Commerce Bank for showing flexibility and good faith in the face of neighborhood opposition.

Lindbergh City Center

Periodically someone will ask me about the Lindbergh City Center development around the Lindbergh MARTA station, and I usually have to plead ignorance.  It was among the earliest "Smart Growth" projects in Atlanta, so early in the development I followed events closely, particularly the negotiations with the various neighborhood groups.  The project began with a great deal of fanfare as Bellsouth announced that it was going to begin moving its offices to more central locations around the MARTA stations, and that facilitating mixed use around the Lindbergh MARTA station was one of its objectives.

Since then we've had the more fast tracked Smart Growth of Atlantic Station, the more consistent New Urbanism of Glenwood Park, and the interesting high profile hybrid the Edgewood Retail District.  Consequently I lost track of the progress around Lindbergh City Center.

On one of the email forums associated with New Urbanism Lee Sobel of the EPA posted a link to an article in the online commercial real estate newsletter The Slatin Report entitled Smart Growth, Slowly (click here to go to the article) which provides a good succinct summary of the progress since I last paid any attention to the Lindbergh City Center.

Here are a few other links to information about Lindbergh City Center:

CarterNet's executive summary on the project.

CarterNet's master plan  (with a link to a PDF document with further details)

American Public Transit Association's announcement of the ribbon cutting ceremony for phase I

A few photos of the MARTA station itself, from  world.nycsubway.org a site I've just discovered
which seems to be devoted to subway systems, and which has a lot of good photos.

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.

Friends of the Beltline

I've been interested in the progress of the Beltline light rail proposal here in Atlanta, particularly as the path of the beltline is only about six blocks from my house.  The Friends of the Beltline have been very active in promoting this proposal, and have a web site that seems frequently updated on its progress.

The belt line is a ring of unused or underutilized track surrounding downtown, which once served as the backbone of the local freight and industrial goods distribution for the city.  Click here to view their website.