Ideas for Underground
Once again, the AJC tries to pretend there could be some silver bullet solution to solve the woes of Underground Atlanta. They ask the question in their blog: What’s the solution for Underground?
Well, the nightclub thing didn’t work. What should we try next?
This was my answer:
If you walk through Underground while it’s raining, you’ll find dozens of buckets catching the water leaking through the infrastructure. Fixing the leaks would be a start.Go to the food court and there’s some jerk at a Chinese to-go place yelling at everybody that Underground is unsafe, and by the way, try this orange chicken, hey hey are you deaf. Throwing the jerk out would be another good step.
Walking along Lower Alabama Street, you’re inundated with a huge crowd of carts. I’m not sure which is more difficult — navigating around the carts, or navigating around the other people who are trying to navigate around the carts. Has the fire marshall seen this crowded setup? Get rid of half those carts, and walking through Underground will be a better experience.
Open up the space above the food court to offices — restaurants and retail cannot survive there.
The tunnel between the 5 Points station and Underground looks much bettter than it used to. But as long as those fans are there, I’ll still refer to it as the “ghetto tunnel.” Put in a more subtle ventillation system and that will be an improvement.
There used to be plans to build apartments above Upper Alabama. Scrapping those plans was not a good idea. I don’t care what they think the market looked like at the time. Take a risk, for once, or else nothing will happen except Atlanta re-hashing this issue five years from now.
The surrounding area needs a facelift, but there’s not much Underground can do about that without the help of city officials, developers, and MARTA.
MARTA should take the whole ugly top off the Five Points station and allow a developer to build a couple of mixed-use buildings right there on top of the station. The center of a major transit system should be a center of activity, not an architectural statement of modernist crap.
The plaza between 5 Points station and Marietta Street, aka “Despair Alley,” needs flowers.
There are plenty more things to be done in the area, and there are some good people trying to work out downtown’s issues. The folks at Central Atlanta Progress have a great deal of energy and optimism for downtown. Having once met Dan O’Leary, I can certainly say the same about him.
There are two sad things about downtown that will continue to serve as a drag to the area more than the perception of crime. First, there are not enough people with the same energy and optimism for downtown. To get the perception issue out of the way, Central Atlanta Progress should stop trying to defend downtown and start engaging the public more toward a shared vision of downtown’s future.
The second drag for downtown is the lack of market leaders. There are too many market followers in the development community. Before the Olympics, no developers could be found to build any residential units in the area. The developers believed there was no market for residential units downtown, ignoring the fact there there were hardly any units to speak of in the first place. Naturally, there was no market to live there because there was no supply of housing. With the opening of the Healy, Muse’s, and others, developers began to realize the market potential, which remains unmet. Consider this:
- Sembler keeps building faux-urban crap with huge parking lots in their intown developments.
- Wayne Mason wants to build huge condo buildings in Piedmont Park, and provide 2.5 to 3 parking spaces per unit.
- Atlantic Station is built on top of a huge parking deck, and they gave MARTA trouble for trying to re-route the #10 bus to go through their development. (To their credit, Atlantic Station may be pushing for a “Midtown Loop” when the Atlanta Streetcar is built.)
- Surface parking lots are still in abundance in the downtown area.
My conclusion: Atlanta’s developers remain a bunch of wussy dinosaurs. They joined with a number of prominent local officials and paid the AJC to publish a boldly weak statement on what Atlanta’s future should look like. (The officials were later purchased by the roadbuilding lobby.) Since October 2004 (when the report was published), developers have continued to act in their market-following ways. It’s time to take a risk, my friends: stop building parking lots and start rebuilding downtown. You’ll profit from it, and I’ll be happy for you.
March 9th, 2006 at 11:37 am
“The tunnel between the 5 Points station and Underground looks much bettter than it used to. But as long as those fans are there, I’ll still refer to it as the “ghetto tunnel”
Well that statement tells me more about the “problem” of Underground/downtown than most of the issues you have identified. You may want to look no further than your mirror for some of the solutions.
March 9th, 2006 at 11:54 am
I’m not sure what you mean, but it sounds like you took what I said in a different way than I meant it. Should I define what I mean in more explicit terms, or would you prefer to take what I said even further out of context?
March 9th, 2006 at 12:54 pm
Actually, there have been several Downtown parking lots turned into good building. For example look at 123 Luckie Street, which used to be a parking lot (it’s across Spring Street from Ted’s Montana Grill). And look at the creative renovation of the Glenn Building; less than a decade ago its owners proposed tearing it down because it had no economically viable use. Instead it is opening as a boutique hotel and restaurant. Things are changing, for the better.
Second, I don’t think Atlantic Station being built on top of a parking deck is a bad thing. The automobile isn’t going away; we need to put automobile storage in its proper place. Putting (most) cars below ground, making the area above more pedestrian friendly, is a good step. Atlantic Station is not what it could be (and it’s still 3-5 years away from being what it will be), but contrast it with what would have been built there had the project begun 15 years earlier. It would have been a single use (either a shopping mall, or an office park, or an apartment complex), with an enormous parking lot taking up half the land, and utter hostility to pedestrians. What we are getting is a pedestrian-friendly mixed-use. (I hear the tenant mix will, over time, be less heavy on the chains.)
For a first rate example of what a good developer can do, check out Glenwood Park. That’s Atlanta’s future.
March 9th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
LEAVE UNDERGROUND ALONE
>
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> Why do we continue to fix Underground Atlanta?
> I say leave it alone for a while and let underground take on its own
personality. If we continue to white wash this urban seed with utopian,
capitalistic makeovers it will never have a chance to blossom into a truely
unique destination.
>
>
> I have always believed that its better to let an existing community paint its
own canvass rather that ramming a foreign concept down its throat. Look at
East Atlanta, Cabbage Town, Krog Street, The Dekalb Farmer’s Market, West End’s
Busy Bee for exapmles of successful lassiez-faire development approaches.
>
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> Even the retail district on Peachtree Street next underground is more
vibriant than Undergorund itself. That retail market was there long before
Underground’s numerous renovations and it thrives today because of the
surrounding diverse, home grown population.
>
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> Invite that mix into Underground. Mesh that energy with the students from
GSU, the street preachers, the fake Rolex peddlers, the bums, the Marta traffic
and the Monday-Friday “white collars” and watch what type of masterpiece is
stroked.
>
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> Underground needs to find it’s MOJO again which sadly left with Piano Red.
Once that happens the right-on mix of businesses, bars, restaurants, studios
and people will show up and hang out for a years to come.
>
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> When you visit other cities do you hang out in the Hotel or Mall? No, you
walk around to experience the local flavor even if it means some unorthodox
encounters with a couple true grit inhabitants. That is what living in the
city is all about. This ain’t no Mall of Georgia people!
>
>
> Todd Semrau
> Urbaneats Restaurant Group
> 404-226-6526
March 9th, 2006 at 9:48 pm
If you want more residents in downtown, then entities like CAP and Underground need to treat the existing residents as something more than window dressing. The whole thing about turning Underground into the state’s largest source of drunk drivers wasn’t run past the neighborhood. They just announced it was going to happen and afterwards formed a token security committee with no power for a couple of residents to serve on… and it was disbanded after a couple of months. The residents were told to just suck it up and get use to having thousands of drunks driving home when the bars closed at 4am.
No one asked the neighborhood how they felt about having all of the Westside TAD money given to NASCAR. Luckily that fell through because that money is suppose to be used for streetscaping, sidewalks and other infrastucture upgrades to make the area more attractive to developers who will be required to meet the new pedestrian friendly building codes.
When the neighborhood association opposed the naming of Ivan Allen Blvd, they were ignored. The details of Allen Plaza wasn’t shared with the neighborhood when making the decision to oppose the renaming. The neighborhood wanted the whole thing named Ralph McGill so that the road wouldn’t change names. But CAP knew about Ivan Allen Plaza and didn’t share that information with the neighborhood. Instead they just took the condensending attitude of “we know what’s best for you”. They’ve also tried renaming other streets only to be rebuffed when the plans leaked out to the residents. They’ve made it clear that downtown is their turf and they’ll do whatever the hell they please.
CAP cares only about the tourism and hospitality industries. Compare them to Midtown Alliance. Midtown has a plan for turning it into a nice place to live and work and it shows. Downtown apparently is only good for hosting drunk conventioneers.
March 10th, 2006 at 9:50 am
Underground has always touted itself as a “party district”. Like it or not, the economic viability of the area is dependant on people coming from around the city to have a good time. It always has been. Sadly, in my opinion, for it to prosper it will need either a casino (gambling) which will bring even more drunks, or more McRestaurants/McClubs to bring in people who would not ordinarily go there.
I think everyone knows that the Nascar Museum wasn’t really a good fit for this city. That’s why the bid seemed half hearted. In addition, the money should be used for the neighborhoods.
Finally, why don’t we put a moratorium on renaming streets/buildings for a while. It makes us look stupid.
March 10th, 2006 at 4:32 pm
How about combining CAP and Midtown Alliance and focusing on combining the economic of the area inside the Beltline to create a solid city center.Take the best practices of both and include the adjacent neighborhoods in the governance and you could maximize the dollars currently being invested in the repective organizations.Of course the question of who would lead could be solved by hiring someone who is collaberator and “retiring” some of the staff deadwood.
Any thoughts on this approach?
March 10th, 2006 at 6:38 pm
Midtown Alliance already suggested a merger with CAP, but CAP wasn’t interested. I suspect it is a power thing. The same folks have been doing pretty much that same thing in that organization since the 1960s and don’t want to change.
Just because Underground in the past has considered itself a party district doesn’t mean that it is the best use of the property. Personally, I think the management just keeps grasping at straws hopeing to eventually find something that works. The real problem is the surrounding area. Time will eventually fix that unless Underground itself perpetuates the low desirability of the area.
March 10th, 2006 at 7:07 pm
You know, as someone who works in the Federal Center, if there were an affordable, safe place to rent that close to my office building? I’d be living in it. The only downside to living there would be lack of access to a good grocery store.