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Metro Atlanta developers thinking on their feet
Latest trend: Make new communities walkable by adding shops, cafes
By JULIE B. HAIRSTON
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 11/20/07
Shops, cafes, parks and plazas seem to be cropping up along familiar thoroughfares as well as in unexpected pockets of metro Atlanta these days.
From the recent announcement of an $8 million grant from the Woodruff Foundation for a new 35-acre park in the Old Fourth Ward to spanking new streetscapes in Buckhead, development around the region is forming a whole new ethic aimed at putting Atlantans on their feet.
The buzzword for Atlanta developers in the aughts is walkable.
"When you start thinking about placing high-density projects... you have to think about extending [residents'] life beyond their living rooms," said Mark Randall, Southeast regional director for Wood Partners and one of the developers of the new Trump Towers Atlanta project in Midtown.
Major bucks and brainwaves are being channeled into the belief that an increasingly high-density city must provide accessible, attractive public gathering places for people who will be spending more of their leisure time burning shoe leather instead of rubber.
Developers are spending as much time designing boulevards, public art and street-level commercial nooks as designer kitchens and luxury master suites to make their projects attractive to buyers.
Alan Cablik, president of Cablik Enterprises, is part of a consortium of developers who spearheaded the creation of a new Beltline area park in the Old Fourth Ward at North Avenue and Glen Iris Boulevard. The developers are planning or building a host of projects designed to enhance and populate the park with more than 3,000 housing units and 500,000 square feet of shops and restaurants.
"The way we're doing this can be a symbol for Atlanta," said Cablik, developer of urban townhomes at 795 North Avenue. "It's a future vision of what it means to be an Atlantan."
Markham Smith, principal with Smith Dalia Architects, said developers are devoting countless hours in talks with neighborhood leaders and bordering property owners to create a park that will reflect the Old Fourth Ward's unique past and promising future.
"It's an opportunity to change the city in a way that will never happen again," Smith said.
Torian Priestly, vice president of development for Ambling Development Partners, said retaining the neighborhood's eclectic air has dominated the talks.
"What you have here is a true sense of place, not just in the park, but also in what the developers are doing," said Priestly, whose firm is a partner in Dobbs Landing, a planned townhome development.
Likewise, Lee Hodges, vice president for the Atlanta Division of the Related Group, said the Miami-based company's first Atlanta development, CityPlace Buckhead, will "encourage people to get out and walk around because they have something to look at."
The company also spent months in talks with city and neighborhood leaders to establish Buckhead neighborhood design parameters for CityPlace, including a wide central boulevard with art in its median, thousands of feet of sidewalks, natural elements and shaded benches.
Hodges said Related officials were inspired by the first phase of the Buckhead Community Improvement District pedestrian improvements, which added wider sidewalks, streetscapes, medians and turn lanes to a stretch of Peachtree Street just north of its intersection with Piedmont Road.
"We're going to try to take that and run with it," Hodges said.
That was the whole idea, said Buckhead CID Executive Director Scotty Greene, who has shepherded the pedestrian improvements through years of transportation's complex maze of planning and funding.
Greene said the Buckhead business community created the CID primarily to make its public spaces more inviting.
Although Greene stops short of saying that Buckhead's development boom was inspired by the promise of a more walkable community, he is the first to point out the difference the first phase of construction has made in a key stretch of Peachtree where a crop of luxury condo towers has sprouted.
"To say these things wouldn't have happened is a bit of a stretch," Greene said, "but if you walk up by the [Lenox] mall now, where traffic counts are up around 55,000 [per day], you have a very different feeling than you get if you're walking down below Maggianos."
Sally Flocks, executive director of PEDS and metro Atlanta's most ardent pedestrian advocate, said the region's changing needs and tastes have spurred developers to adapt their offerings for a new kind of buyer.
"The market is there and developers are responding to it," Flocks said.
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