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bryant, I read your other thread on "Will Roswell be the next ..." and I visited Canton Street (for the first time) a few weeks back. The restaurant scene was nice, and the food where we ate was good.
The problem was that it took barely a half mile north on Canton Street to get to the subdivision type feel. So while there may be a so called urbanization of the subrurb's downtowns, it seems to be very limited. Another thing is looking on a map, Roswell seems almost as north of the perimeter as Johns Creek where I live is.
cool! i'm glad you valued my opinion enough to check it out! did you check out the historic district on mimosa, with bulloch hall, barrington hall, etc? i'm glad you enjoyed it. it's really become a nice little community.
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I would think this will hold true for Alpharetta as well. While they may revitalize downtown, and Avalon having access to such a huge area might develop something nice, the sprawl factor is just "a few blocks" away. Also Alpharetta -driving on North Point / Westside etc. seems to have a lot of office vacancy - am I correct?
Office space wise, I would think Perimeter, Buckhead, and Midtown (not to speak of the competition from other metros) will give Alpharetta and others a tough fight. I wonder about the strategy related to the 14 stories that Avalon is adding as office space.
you do have a point here— after jobs migrating to the suburbs for so long you're starting to see more development in the midtown area. but looking at where the jobs are currently, north fulton clearly outranks almost anywhere else in the metro area for the amount of high-paying jobs. the only comparable areas are midtown, buckhead and cumberland. with the amount of jobs coming into the area, and those projected to come in, i don't really see a problem filling the *office* space in these places. there are plenty of companies moving into alpharetta and the offices seem to be fairly occupied. now, when it comes to *retail* space, the market here has really flooded. we have a lot of new strip malls and similar developments that have had a very hard time filling up. i think it has to do with the fact that many are commuting to alpharetta, but not as many people actually live here. we do have a sizable population, but the amount of people working in the area who commute in probably dwarfs the city population. i think the general goal is to make alpharetta a more urban community with more character, where people actually want to live.
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Regarding MARTA -- to serve this 250K population (100K wage earners), we would need an incredible amount of infrastructure to be built. With people's interest in keeping taxes low, I dont see how this area will become anything different than what it is today.
Not sure how long you have lived in Alpharetta, but it seems the more one is able to enjoy Alpharetta etc. for what it currently is, the happier one will be. If one is looking for high density, energy, VaHi vibe up in Alpharetta area, I think one may end up dissatisfied.
Also, to take the case of Suwanee which has about the best "downtown" in the northern suburbs.
While their center is nice, and the first line of stores there seem to be doing well -- yougurt place, smoothie place, pizza and comfort food -- one just has to take a turn into the immediate side road to see the vacancies. Forget about some of the stores a minute's walk away to see severe vacancies. I dont know how the condos atop these shops are doing.
My point is, while it is nice to see a good downtown in the burbs, and I will end up visiting these, I dont think these suburbs are going to become anything different than what they currently are.
i see your point— i was driving through ansley park the other day and i was talking to my dad. i said "you know, no matter what they do to alpharetta it's never going to be like this."
the amount of historic homes, the proximity to intown areas, diversity, population density, etc., it's just not possible for alpharetta to ever be "urban".
but what i think *is* happening, is that— well, let me start with an example.
streetcar suburbs began to develop in the late 1800s in areas that were previously not accessible to town— before streetcars it would take a similar amount of time to get to virginia-highland from downtown, as it would to get from alpharetta from downtown by car today. as time has gone on, these streetcar suburbs developed as dense urban areas with less dense areas in between them.
i think we are sort of going to see a macrocosm of that, with car and train suburbs that are farther out, individually developing as more dense, urban style areas while less dense areas in between will still exist. now because of practicality, it won't ever be dense all the way out to alpharetta, there's just not that kind of exponential growth. but i think what you will see is that there will be individual neighbourhoods further out from the city, that individually are more densely populated and diverse, with less densely populated suburbs in between.
for some reason, this is the way atlanta has developed. when i explain our city to people who don't live here, i say atlanta is like mold on a piece of bread— you've got patches here and there of dense areas with more sparse population in between. look at our current city centers, midtown, buckhead, perimeter, cumberland— all very far apart from each other with not much infill in between. look between cumberland and buckhead, you've got neighbourhoods with mansions that are pretty much suburbs between two densely populated areas. for some reason our city seems to have developed like this and i kind of see that continuing into the future.
as for the suburbs continuing out, somehow i don't see them extending much further than dawsonville, loganville, etc. with the crime level having gone down in the atlanta area and the move to more a more urban living style again, i think most future development is probably going to be infill— there comes a point where if people move any farther out, atlanta is simply not accessible anymore.
South downtown is set up to be the next big thing. There are plenty of surface lots just waiting to be developed and there are already many awesome historic buildings. The Biggist issue is the city jail. A city jail in my mind has no business being in the central business district, i would move it out by the Federal prision.
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Originally Posted by cqholt
I think South Downtown will be the next hot-spot. Of course the city will have to do something about the homeless population, but the area is rip for redevelopment with cheap land values. Already served by 2 MARTA stations. Also agree with development of Lindbergh Center. Once the new Emory Line and BeltLine is built it will be a large transit hub.
i really hope so. the south downtown area has a lot of beautiful historic architecture. the problem is that so much of it was torn down in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s, and what's left is a lot of blight— parking lots and empty space.
for some reason development hasn't moved south from the downtown area and i've always found that weird. downtown is the oldest part of atlanta, but what, 8 miles north you've still got skyscrapers. what's 8 miles south— hapeville? i like hapeville but by the time you get down there you feel like you're out of town already, even so with neighbourhoods like capitol view and adair park, you feel removed. i think it would be nice if the south downtown was redeveloped, but the plans i've seen so far don't appeal to me.
it's not quite "south" downtown but it's in the northern section of that area that's currently blighted. they're hoping to build a large transit hub, taking the place of five points, that could accommodate commuter trains in addition to marta trains, streetcars, etc.
the current picture they've got, although i like the idea, i don't like the execution. they tear down too many historic buildings to build this thing that looks like a late 90s sci-fi movie (specifically minority report. i saw this a couple of months ago, and while i liked the movie the first thing that struck me was how incredibly dated the "future" looked. back on topic).
if they're going to develop the downtown area it needs to reflect the history of the area, and it needs to have plenty of trees and walking space.
look at what they tore down in the 70s— atlanta's terminal station, a big beautiful station with that weird spanish/asian influence that so many historic structures have in atlanta:
look at what they tore down in the 70s— atlanta's terminal station, a big beautiful station with that weird spanish/asian influence that so many historic structures have in atlanta:
One of my favorite things to do while traveling is take pictures of train stations. It's amazing how many architectural elements carry over across borders and continents.
Atlanta's apparently had a lot of similar elements to the station in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia:
Atlanta's other station is also cool, and I love the dozens of old depots around, but nothing that can compare to this.
Wasn't it replaced by that white government building across form the post office? Yuck...
it's not quite "south" downtown but it's in the northern section of that area that's currently blighted. they're hoping to build a large transit hub, taking the place of five points, that could accommodate commuter trains in addition to marta trains, streetcars, etc.
the current picture they've got, although i like the idea, i don't like the execution. they tear down too many historic buildings to build this thing that looks like a late 90s sci-fi movie (specifically minority report. i saw this a couple of months ago, and while i liked the movie the first thing that struck me was how incredibly dated the "future" looked. back on topic).
if they're going to develop the downtown area it needs to reflect the history of the area, and it needs to have plenty of trees and walking space.
look at what they tore down in the 70s— atlanta's terminal station, a big beautiful station with that weird spanish/asian influence that so many historic structures have in atlanta:
Agreed, the new Multi-modal terminal station needs to be developed to resemble the old Terminal Station. It will become the Grand Central of Atlanta!
Also, dense infill development will happen along the BeltLine once the transit starts being developed.
as for the suburbs continuing out, somehow i don't see them extending much further than dawsonville, loganville, etc. with the crime level having gone down in the atlanta area and the move to more a more urban living style again, i think most future development is probably going to be infill— there comes a point where if people move any farther out, atlanta is simply not accessible anymore.
I sure hope so, and I think it will be so. There is too much to fill, to keep growing to new areas.
However, I also dont think things like MARTA are going to come to Alpharetta.
A better Alpharetta downtown: yes. New concepts in the suburbs: yes. These are going to stay disjointed, and car dependent: yes.
They need to make Downtown and Midtown more dense before starting elsewhere seriously. Downtown is pretty dense, but I would love to see development west of the Centennial olympic part so that there are skyscrapers surrounding the park and it would resemble Central park in Manhattan.
I would also love to see more development in southern Downtown and in parts of Midtown. This would make Atlanta become a world class city center IMO. After these areas are dense, we can begin building other areas nearby.
We've still got a long way to go fill out Midtown, Buckhead and downtown. There's plenty of room for decades of intensive development in these areas.
My guess is that there will continued infill on the west side, in Brookhaven/Chamblee and around Perimeter. Nearly all the suburbs will continue to grow and urbanize.
This is the largest proposed project, High Street. Directly across from the Dunwoody train station at Hammond & Perimeter Center West, this will be tranformative. Welcome to High Street
It was supposed to be underway in 2009, now they are aiming for this year or 2013.
This makes me really, really excited! Especially if it's going to be near a MARTA station, which I think will be crucial for urban development.
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Especially if it's going to be near a MARTA station, which I think will be crucial for urban development.
