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A Tour of the Beltline
By Susan Soper, Executive Editor
Editor's Note: Here's one from the vaults. This article originally appeared in our December,
2005 print edition. With the publication of the Driving Tour of the Beltline booklet, we thought we
would publish the project brainchild's favorite spots along the route.
Ryan Gravel hopped out of his black Toyota truck to be a narrating passenger for a recent tour of the Beltline. Even though it was a week before the City Council's November vote approving (12 to three) the special tax allocation district, his enthusiasm - if not optimism -- was clear.
Gravel, in case you've been hiding out in the Krog Street tunnel, is the guy who came up with the idea of using the 22 miles of mostly abandoned track circling the city to create a beltline connecting communities in all quadrants.
Now, at 33, he is an city planner/architect working fulltime for the BeltLine Partnership which hopes to make his thesis a reality. Two other cities - Minneapolis and St. Louis - have similar rails-and-trails efforts afoot.
Although he's hiked parts of the BeltLine dozens of times and done the driving tour several dozens of times, his energy and excitement remain fresh for much of the tour. The self-described "nerd" for railroads ("I've always tried to live near a railroad ever since I was a student at Georgia Tech"), maps and Atlanta history, even hiked the whole BeltLine in one day.
When we set out, it was one of those October afternoons when the sky is bluer than any other time of the year. And we were ahead of the late afternoon traffic that can clog each quadrant of the city.
"It's clear the city is growing, with or without the BeltLine," he said. "There will be a gold rush for developers if it passes."
The project still faces hurdles in the Fulton County Commission and the
While the most predominant feature along the tracks seems to be kudzu, there were clearly those Gravel has a special affinity for. "What's cool about the BeltLine to me," he said, "is that it's got all this interesting, industrial infrastructure stuff which Atlanta doesn't have a whole lot of."
Here are a dozen of his favorites.
The New Schools of Carver at 55 McDonough Blvd. are housed in the former George Washington Carver High and offer five small schools each with a college prep curriculum in targeted industries including: health, arts, entrepreneurship and technology. The school property, Gravel said, goes right up to the railroad corridor.
Hill Street Lofts, at 1195 Milton Ter., are new development started in 2002 in Chosewood -- "one of those neighborhoods you never heard of before Grant Park started taking off," Gravel said. He said when he started his thesis on the BeltLine, the hilltop here was covered with old tractor trailors, just being stored there. Now, he said, "This is the best view of the city skyline. It's like the emerald city."
The Atlanta & West Point RR Depot on Memorial Drive in Reynoldstown may be boarded up and abandoned now, but Gravels called it "a beautiful little old train depot." Developer-investors George Rohrig and Gary Shirley thought so, too, bought the building in 2004 and are working with the group that owns Vickery's, Highland Tap, SGrouphouse Lounge and Fontaine's to develop a casual dining stop.
The Krog Street Tunnel, leading into Cabbagetown, doesn't appeal to everyone, Gravel said, but added, "I like it because it's ugly and dark and it looks scary, but when you walk through it it's not nearly as scary. Those kinds of things are what make a neighborhood recognizable ." Gravel said the BeltLine could end up going right over the tunnel.
Excelsior Mill The home of the old Masquerade is one of Atlanta's most historic structures. The City of Atlanta denied a permit to raze the building to make way for a 200-unit condo development, and the owner is now negotiating with a local restaurateur interested in preserving and renovating the mill. "If you do all that new development and tear everything down," Gravel said, "you've lost a lot of that historic identify of these Intown places."
Magnolia trees (historic feature) behind what was the pitchers mound at the old Atlanta Crackers Stadium. "When I was in college, I was just looking at old pictures and wishing the Cracker Stadium was still there," Gravel said. "Somebody goes out there periodically and pulls the kudzu off of the trees to keep them from being overgrown."
Tanyard Creek at Collier and Walthall roads in Collier Hills is one "beautiful" park with "disgusting" water in the creek running through it. "The BeltLine going through that area would bring some attention to it and maybe fix it," Gravel said. The 14.5 acre-park has historic markers and hosts neighborhood ball games, picnics and walkers.
Carver's Country Kitchen, 1118 West Marietta St., (404) 794-4410 is becoming a trendy lunch spot just past King Plow and on the fringe of the Howell Station neighborhood. Gravel said he likes the meatloaf, collards and mashed potatoes of the part restaurant-part grocery.
Washington Park (green space): What Gravel likes about this spot (bordered by Ashby, Simpson and Martin Luther King Jr. streets) is how it "blends together a lot of different concepts of the BeltLine: MARTA goes underneath; there is new development with nice housing along one side of the park, but it's in a neighborhood could use other revitalization.And it's an area that a lot of people are not familiar with." The park was built in 1919 and was the first built for African Americans. It started out as 6.5 acres but grew to 25 when completed in 1928.
Westview Commercial District at the intersection of Ralph David Abernathy and Lucille Avenue features renovated storefronts - "East Atlanta 15 years ago," Gravel said. "I think it's kind of cool because, like, several of these little commercial districts, it's not anything nice now but will be eventually."
Enota Park at three-tenths of an acre on Enota Place at Sells Avenue,is as three house lots, Gravel said, but it would grow to seven acres with the BeltLine with the addition of a tract of land owned by the Georgia Department of Transportation.
Couer d'Allene Studios "This is a nice, little small scale loft development and definitely in an untried, untested industrial area," Gravel said. He especially likes the "funky" wrought iron trim.
Crogman School on West Avenue and Pittsburgh is a former high school converted to affordable housing. "This old high school, in a historically black neighborhood, had every pain of glass broken out of it when I did my project. It was totally abandoned." The Pittsburgh community has gotten a boost from the $11 million project that turned the abandoned elementary school - built about 1923 - into the 43 units (classrooms) of the Crogman School Apartments, with another 62 units in a new building nearby. The project has attracted accolades and more new development.
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