Atlantic Station is home to thousands
Between 5,000 and 6,000 people now live in Atlantic Station, a 138-acre Midtown Atlanta steel plant site from which nearly 12,000 truckloads of contaminated dirt were removed prior to construction of housing, offices, retail, and entertainment. Removing so much soil created an opportunity to install three levels of parking — more than 7,000 spaces — topped by a mixed-use center. Hussain Moosajee, manager of the development for owner American International Group, notes that the many stairways to parking are stylistically “modeled on a subway station,” each with a prominent number.
The first two hours of parking are free. The rate goes “dramatically higher after six hours,” Moosajee told a CNU tour group. “After 24 hours, you pay an arm and a leg.” The escalating rate deters outsiders from parking at Atlantic Station, riding a free shuttle to a nearby MARTA rail station (whose trains run to Atlanta’s airport), and flying away for days at a time.
“Close to 200,000 people a month ride the shuttle service,” Moosajee said. That has enabled Atlantic Station residents to drive much less than the average person in greater Atlanta. A flaw in Atlantic Station’s walkability is its enormously wide arterial roads — including dedicated lanes on both sides of the street for shuttle buses that run every 15 to 30 minutes — that are intimidating to cross on foot. The shopping and restaurant area has between 100 and 150 on-street spaces.
The shopping and restaurant area — Atlantic Station has 1.3 million sq. ft. of retail — looked busy when New Urban News visited in May. Office towers have begun to be built and occupied, but a glassy residential tower stands empty, having been completed after the economy plunged. It is now owned by Starwood and will be marketed as condominium units.
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How is the development flawed
How is the development flawed regarding the streets being too wide? From the pictures I have seen, most of the streets look just right.
Further, streets need to be wide enough to allow two fire trucks to pass. This has proven to be an issue in some new urbanism communities I have read about.
street widths in Atlantic Station
Some of the streets in Atlantic Station are fine, especially in the town center portion. But there are thoroughfares going through this project that are wider than I have ever seen going through a new urban development. They were so wide I couldn't even pace them off to measure them, because it would have been dangerous. I wish I would have taken a picture but I didn't have a camera. 80 feet from curb to curb, maybe more. These streets made me feel small and insignificant. It's not just the width, but the design. Particularly 17th Street NW — but also a couple of the cross-streets — were built for cars, not people. It looked to me like an appalling and expensive waste of asphalt.
So would you say Atlantic
So would you say Atlantic Station is a failure as a New Urbanism center, or is it generally successful?
I didn't see an endorsement by the CNU, which surprised me.
Atlantic Station
Some aspects of it are successful from a new urban point of view. It has brought a lot of housing and retail into an area that is near downtown. The town center portion, where they have most of the retail, is reasonably good. There are some nice parks. The Millennium Arch is a stunning monument. Generally successful? I guess. But these big artertials brought the project down significantly in my view. To walk through the project you have to cross them and walk along them. They are unavoidable.