What happened at Allen Plaza, plus an ARC transportation “wish list” database

18 Apr
W and 12 hotel and residence buildings

An undeveloped parcel of land on Ivan Allen Boulevard sits in the shadow of Allen Plazas W hotel and condominium tower and Novares Twelve Centennial Park

Rachel Tobin wrote a brief but through history of downtown’s troubled Allen Plaza development for Friday’s AJC.

Developer Hal Barry summarized the events leading up to the recent foreclosure of one of the project’s buildings. It’s a story that’s become all too familiar in the last few years:

“We did well and made a lot of money…[a]nd we turned around, as risk-taker developers do, and reinvested a lot of it in operating expenses and project investments. And then the market hits you broadside.”

Also on Friday, the AJC published an overview of the Atlanta Regional Commission’s transportation “wish list,” with a database of all the prospective projects on the region’s list .

Among the items MARTA requested are a variable regional fare system (sometimes referred to as “zone fares”) , on-board security cameras for all buses, trains and paratransit vehicles, an advertising system for the agency’s 10 miles of tunnels and the establishment of a cloud computing system to assist in post-disaster recovery and service continuity.

The 436-item list, with projects totaling about $29 billion, will be pared down first by the GDOT’s planning director, then by the 21 members of the Atlanta Regional Roundtable. Voters in each of the state’s 12 regions will decide during primary elections in 2012 whether to approve a new one percent sales tax to fund their regions’ projects.

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History of the Future

13 Apr
Atlanta downtown 1919

Image: The Big Map Blog

From the Big Map Blog, an interactive 1919 city map in which Atlanta’s oldest downtown buildings appear in their original context and the city’s core isn’t yet incised by the Connector.

The Flatiron Building, the Imperial Hotel, Candler Building, Hurt Building, the Capital City Club and the Healy Building, now dwarfed by their neighbors, are prominent landmarks in 92-year-old map.

Try the full-screen option, then zoom in for a much better view. H/T to AtlUrbanist.

Also, check out Atlanta’s 1946 “Highway and Transportation Plan” from Georgia Tech’s College of City and Regional Planning.  The plan  (PDF – 97 pages) is divided into sections related to increasing the efficiency of auto traffic,  improvement of parking facilities, enhancing the transit system and even the need for a passenger rail terminal downtown.

In the opening of the plan section titled “Improvement of the Transit System,” the authors wrote that 

Highway and transportation plan cover
Image: Georgia Tech Library and Information Center

“Public transportation improvements were integrated with all other phases of the study so that the large number of Atlantans using this form of travel might enjoy benefits comparable to those envisioned for motorists.”  But just a few paragraphs later comes this: “Substitution of motor or trolley buses for essentially all streetcars in Atlanta was planned by the Georgia Power Company prior to the start of our study. We have checked this policy against probable future traffic and find it wholly sound.”

Buses had proven “particularly popular with the riding public in Atlanta,” the authors wrote, “and are especially appropriate for this city because of low power costs and the hilly terrain encountered.” They also estimated that a transition from streetcars to trolley buses or motor buses would result in a 20 to 25 percent increase in transit ridership, “other factors remaining constant.”

Even with such “modernization” as switching from electric trolleys to electric or gas-powered buses, the authors were certain that “Atlanta and its traffic will grow to such proportions that subways…not only will be desirable but almost imperative.”

But the subways they envisioned weren’t steel-wheeled vehicles traveling on steel rails:  “These subways would be designed to accommodate trolley buses but otherwise would have all the characteristics of urban rapid transit subways … It is probable that by the time these subways are built it will be practicable to accommodate motor buses in them, if necessary, without excessive cost for the control of fumes.”

Finally, the planners discussed the need for a central terminal to serve the high volume of passenger rail traffic Atlanta was then known for. One of the proposed sites for the terminal was approximately where the downtown railroad gulch now lies. The authors had an ambitious vision for the proposed terminal. “The station could have 10 or more tracks,” they wrote, “with capacity for 18 to 20 passenger cars each.”

Cost projections for the terminal illustrate just how much things have changed : “The cost of the property needed for the proposed station would be approximately $150,000. The construction cost including all track work would be about $4,500,000.”  For comparison, the price tag for a proposed new Amtrak station near Atlantic Station is $39 million.

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In the Wind

7 Apr

Still some lingering damage downtown from the storm Monday.

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Weekly Reader

5 Apr

Suntrust towers on Peachtree and Peachtree Center Ave.

Ever read so much you nearly forget to write about it?

  • From What Now, Atlanta? : The acres of chainlink and gravel on Clifton Road north of the CDC are scheduled to re-start becoming a mixed-use project in June. “Urbanist,” a frequent WNA commenter suggested that ready-made communities like this one diminish the prospects for development in existing neighborhoods in the city. He’s suggested in the past, for example, that if the concentrated development in Atlantic Station had been spread throughout Midtown, we wouldn’t still be wondering when the vision of the “Midtown Mile” is going to come to fruition.

But putting vacant spaces in already high-density areas into service can be risky because those neighborhoods don’t offer much parking. Or, maybe not. This 2008 post from the Urbanophile suggests that parking is oversold as an obstacle to successful retail development.

  • From the AJC: The Atlanta University Center neighborhood was awarded a $250,000 grant last week by HUD’s Choice Neighborhoods Initiative program. The program’s Web site says the grants’ objective is to “transform distressed neighborhoods and public and assisted projects into viable and sustainable mixed-income neighborhoods by linking housing improvements with appropriate services, schools, public assets, transportation, and access to jobs.”

 

  • From The Architect’s Newspaper: Qatar plans to deploy robo-clouds to provide shade from the desert country’s brutal summer sun during the 2022 World Cup.

 

  • Also from the AJC: A couple on Edgewood Avenue are suing graffiti artists who they say have been doing uncommissioned work on their property for years.

 

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Green means “Go”

28 Mar

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The paper is off the windows, the art is up, the furniture is in and the lights are on at Scene Cafe.

These photos were taken Friday night, just after 11:00.  It looks vastly different from just a couple of weekends ago, when I stopped in and talked to the owner, Samuel, while he was working inside. He said that the work stoppage during the summer was because of a death in the family and that the place was just a few weeks from being ready to open.

When I remarked that the building’s yards of glass had stayed improbably intact during his absence he said that people in the neighborhood knew his father – who owned the store that once occupied the building that is now Scene Cafe – and  “looked out for the place.”

Maybe ruin and wreckage aren’t the rule on Pine Street after all.

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Unexpected Company

25 Mar

 

Before “Jack and Diane” and “Runnin’ on Empty” came thundering from across the street well before sunrise last Sunday, I’d mostly forgotten about the Georgia Marathon.

The music was soon accompanied by a voice with that simultaneously enthusiastic and professional quality cultivated by announcers at big athletic events.

Turns out that the first water station for the race was in front of the Civic Center, which placed it just across from my building.

After about an hour of one-sided banter from the announcer accompanied by more Top 40 hits of the 80s, the first wheelchair racers came flying down the hill along with race volunteers on bikes. Several minutes behind them came the lone leading runner, pursued by several tiny packs of others.

Then the groups of runners got bigger and bigger until they were deep enough and wide enough to fill the block.

Then it was time to go back to sleep.

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Public comment meeting on MMPT proposals is March 30

17 Mar

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Although the Georgia Department of Transportation announced its choice for the development group for the MMPT project Monday, the agency has scheduled a public comment meeting on  March 30 from 4 to 7 p.m. at GDOT headquarters at North Avenue and W. Peachtree Street.

If you can’t make it to the meeting, contact GDOT about the project here.

H/T to Creative Loafing.

If you’d like to see the full presentation the slideshow images were chose from, it’s here [PDF].

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“How much longer?” Technology’s role in retaining new transit users

17 Mar

Implementing real-time travel information technology could go a long way toward mitigating the feeling of loss of autonomy that keeps potential riders from trying transit, according to a study by Next American City and Latitude Research:

“The results of the study indicate that, while users value the freedom and control a car provides, mobile information solutions could replicate this sense of autonomy without needing to own a car—primarily by helping users to make informed, in-the-moment decisions about what’s available near them and the best ways to get around. ‘Real-time and personalized transit information has the ability to make public transit a more flexible, equitable, and enjoyable experience, thus minimizing the perceived experience gap between car ownership and other modes of transit typically thought less convenient or accessible by would-be users,’ explains Marina Miloslavsky, study lead and Senior Research Analyst at Latitude.”

One massive advantage DC’s Metro system has over MARTA is the availability of exactly that kind of information. Metro’s bus and train arrival time information saved me untold episodes of wondering how quickly I needed to make it to a station or whether a long wait for a bus meant I’d missed it or it was late. Metro also has mobile versions of its arrival time and trip-planning services.

While it’s possible – by much pressing of buttons – to get automated MARTA schedule information by phone, and Google Maps features schedule and trip-planning service, people care much less about when something is scheduled to happen as when it will happen.

Having that kind of information readily available is certainly helpful for daily transit users, but this study indicates that it’s especially important in shaping the impressions that new users take away from their experiences. Those experiences can leave new riders with a greater appreciation of all the options available for getting around, or as is often the case with less tech-savvy transit agencies, anxious to get back to their cars.

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Gulch redevelopment proposals: Summing up the summaries (Updated)

16 Mar

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The three development teams short-listed to develop the multi-modal passenger terminal (MMPT) in the downtown “gulch” area have submitted their proposals to the Georgia Department of Transportation staff, the AJC reported Friday. The DOT posted summaries of the proposals in the MMPT section of their Web site.

The summaries are pretty short on details, but I pulled out a few highlights.

Continue reading →

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South Fulton County transportation survey for HB 277

15 Mar

Between e-readers and the availability used books for almost nothing online,  many of us don’t spend much time at public libraries any more. So, you could easily have missed the south Fulton County transportation survey that’s linked from the Atlanta-Fulton County Library home page. The survey’s purpose is to gather residents’ opinions on transportation project  priorities.  (Here’s a link to the PowerPoint presentation that the library’s site mentions.)

The “Transportation Investment Act of 2010,” also known as HB 277, requires each of the state’s 12 regions to vote next year on whether to assess themselves a 1 percent sales tax for 10 years to fund local and regional transportation projects. Residents will vote on the sales tax during the primary election in spring or summer of 2012. If the new tax is passed,  funds should become available for use in 2013.

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