Longhorn Hits 11 on the Silly Dial
Longhorn Steaks closed their original location and moved to Lindbergh Center.
You’d think this would be great! New steakhouse right on a MARTA line, but once again stupidity overtakes our lives at an amazing rate. Not only did Longhorn build their own building, rather than use the ample retail space already available, they took 3 Floors of the City Centre Parking Deck so that people could drive there.
What’s the point of being on MARTA if you’re not going to encourage people to get to your restaurant by taking MARTA?
But wait! It gets worse! To promote their new location, Longhorn put up a billboard as close as they could. The problem is that when you see where the billboard is located, you realize that no new construction was needed at all. There was a perfectly good Lindbergh location available that is empty and has both parking and a kitchen.
They simply should have taken over the space previously occupied by… the Gold Club.
August 10th, 2005 at 7:59 pm
Not to burst your bubble but… the 3 levels of parking in the City Center deck will be for ALL of the retail moving into the Lindbergh development. There are two open plots by Longhorn, two others in front of the BellSouth building, and numerous storefronts along Main Street. Even though it has taken a long time to get retail at Lindbergh in the first place… I think once the whole plan is realized, it will be worth it. The Gold Club space was probably too big of a space for Longhorn to take over… I heard that area had plans for a high rise.
August 11th, 2005 at 7:43 am
That may be the case that (hopefully) more retail is coming to those spaces.
It’s still the case that as of right now, only one retail space is open, and there are three levels of parking deck reserved for it. It also remains the case that said retail space is in a standalone building, which is an awfully wasteful use of that land. There is no good reason why something much taller can’t be built there.
August 11th, 2005 at 12:38 pm
Between the massive oversupply of parking and stuff like the single-story Longhorns, that whole Lindbergh project has been pretty disappointing. Which is really sad, since that was supposed to be our big, bold venture into master-planned transit-oriented development (”TOD”).
We need to get some zoning for that corridor in place ASAP that will *require* multi-story mixed-use development for any future projects on the remaining parcels. There is just no excuse for single-story, standalone buildings in any kind of “TOD” environment.
August 11th, 2005 at 5:15 pm
They are currently constructing high-rise residential apartments… condos to come later. And I do know for a fact that a number of leases have been signed to the area. As far as your single-story stand alone building theory… variety is the spice of life… there will be high rises -all around- Longhorn… IMHO too many high rises is just as bad as too many single story buildings. The single story buildings along Piedmont were in the TOD project from the beginning. They have zoned the area so that there are no drive thrus, with Chik-fil-a grandfathered in… (I don’t know the boundary of the zoning area). Please don’t bash the project and lose hope just because you don’t know much about it. The reason it has taken so long to get going -is- because it is one of the firsts of its kind in Atlanta.