Tag Archives: construction

Forgotten But Not Gone: Old construction webcams

13 Apr

Curbed Atlanta’s Monday post about the new construction webcam for the Ponce City Market project brought to mind the time, just a few years ago, when there were always at least a couple of construction cams online. While the cameras for these completed projects are no longer active, many of the sites are still up. You can flip through the monthly calendar drop-downs or use the “time lapse”  button near the center of the top of the page to watch the buildings go from site work to top-out in just a few minutes.

For example, you can still watch the Twelve Centennial Park hotel and condo project go from this:

Twelve Centennial - Dec 2005

To this:

Twelve Centennial - Aug. 2007

Or the dramatic changes between 10th and 12th on Peachtree that took the area from this:

12th and Midtown: March 2007

To this:

12th & Midtown: Feb. 2010

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MARTA News: Buses and Bridges

17 Jan

Bus stop sign

If you’re already bored with last September’s set of bus route modifications, another round is being proposed to take effect in April. MARTA will hold public meetings Tuesday, Jan. 24 and Thursday, Jan. 26 for input on the proposed changes, which will affect five routes:

  • Route 1 – Centennial Olympic Park /Coronet Way
  • Route 12 – Howell Mill Road / Cumberland
  • Route 32 – Bouldercrest / Georgia Aquarium
  • Route 86 – Fairington Road / McAfee Road
  • Route 115 – Covington Highway / South Hairston Road

Preliminary work is scheduled to get underway today on the new entrance and pedestrian bridges that will link the north end of Buckhead Station with Tower Place. MARTA awarded the contract (PDF) for construction of the project to Archer Western Contractors last October and expects construction to be completed in November 2013.

Edit: See Atlanta Business Chronicle for more, bigger and better renderings of the project. H/T to AtlUrbanist

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The Price of Progress: Buses to be rerouted for streetcar construction

6 Oct

Love it or hate it, the first stage of construction of the Atlanta Streetcar will soon be underway. To make room for the construction, parts of bus routes that pass through the streetcar’s route are being shifted out of the way, beginning this Saturday, Oct. 8. The reroutes are scheduled to be in effect until at least mid-2013.

MARTA bus reroute notice sign

This bus stop at the intersection of Peachtree and Marietta Streets, currently served by routes 3, 16 and 110, will be out of service when construction on the streetcar project begins

Affected routes are:

  • 1 – Centennial Olympic Park / Coronet Way
  • 3 – Martin Luther King, Jr Drive / Auburn Avenue
  • 16 – Noble
  • 99 – Boulevard / Monroe Drive
  • 110 – Peachtree Street “The Peach”
  • 155 – Windsor Street / Lakewood Avenue
  • 186 – Rainbow Drive / South DeKalb

The reroutes will leave some stretches of downtown streets – Peachtree Street between Ellis Street and Five Points Station,  Auburn Avenue between Courtland and Peachtree Streets, and Edgewood Avenue between Courtland and Peachtree Streets, for example – without bus service for the better part of two years.

It will be interesting to see how the new detours, combined with last year’s service reductions, last month’s alignment and schedule changes, and last week’s fare increase go over with riders.

New maps, schedules and other details on the route modifications are at MARTA’s site.

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Signs of life at Scene Cafe

28 Feb
Lights on at Scene Cafe

Work has resumed at Scene Cafe, after abruptly stopping during the summer

The paper covering the windows was back up when I went by tonight, but for the last few weekends, there’s been work going on inside the building that’s eventually to become Scene Cafe (assuming the name hasn’t changed along with the opening date). A November 2010 opening was originally planned for the restaurant/lounge, but the construction workers disappeared mid-summer and the project languished, half-built, until a few weeks ago.

The project appears to have taken a turn into DIY territory, as the only cars to be seen on the lot while work is going on are regular vehicles, no commercial trucks or contractor’s vans. The crescent-shaped window upstairs still doesn’t have glass, but it’s been covered with plywood, and the exterior ground-level area is kept lit at night now. The construction debris container has been taken away, brought back and taken away again.

The brown paper that’s usually over the lower windows was down Saturday night and the downstairs interior was emanating a green glow. It was hard to tell from the outside whether the color was produced by light fixtures or something on the walls. A drink cooler and bakery case could be seen inside about a week ago.

The next time I pass by while people are working inside I’ll get an update on the new projected opening date and find out whether the concept and name will be the same.

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Transit construction costs, MARTA Guide, and transit with poor self-esteem

22 Dec
  • No matter how well-thought out or how badly needed transit projects are, cost is always an issue. For some people it’s a cause for concern that needs to be carefully monitored, for others it’s an all-purpose reason not to undertake a project – any project – at all. (Would anyone else be really happy to never hear the word “boondoggle” again?) Construction and operation costs for the newly-funded downtown streetcar project are a prime, local, recent example.

There’s a really cool discussion of why transit costs are so much higher in the U.S. than the rest of the world going on at Human Transit. It’s really cool in that ideas are flying and the list of possibilities keeps growing, but no one claims to know The Reason.

  • Am I the only person who didn’t know about MARTA Guide? In case you were in the dark with me, MARTA Guide gives quick, clear bus and rail directions to shopping, arts venues and festivals, universities, tourist attractions and a lot of other places. You can search by destination type or by transit station. It’s so through that I might rarely need to tangle with MARTA’s trip planner (which functions as if someone got halfway through building it and said “Pffft. That’s good enough.”) again.
  • Also via Human Transit, take a look at Green Idea Factory’s set of “self-harming” ads found in, on or near transit stations, vehicles or bus stops.

    Flickr photo by Green Idea Factory

    Those “Quick, easy financing!” car lot ads on MARTA’s trains always seemed awfully incongruous, but it turns out that even transit-savvy cities like Prague have the same strange practice going on. Does any other entity accept money to allow a direct competitor to advertise to its clientele?

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