Sweet Auburn district listed as endangered (Atlanta: hotel, subsidized, renewal)

[Mutiny77]

Originally Posted by bryantm3

it's pretty clear that I-75/85 was put where it was to separate the neighbourhood from downtown as it was such a significant black community.

Precisely. And it was the same story in several other cities across the nation.

[JPD]

Isn't the streetcar maintennance facility supposed to be housed under the connector? Hopefully that will be an improvement. As it is now, most of the underpass is a toilet.

In all this talk of the highway dividing the neighborhood, nobody has mentioned Grant Park. It was, and still is, divided by I-20.

[MathmanMathman]

Originally Posted by bryantm3

it's pretty clear that I-75/85 was put where it was to separate the neighbourhood from downtown as it was such a significant black community.

The black community might have wanted it rather than be left out as it represented progress and business. Like I said, I don't think people back then fully understood what expressways do psychologically.

the biggest problem now is that the interstate is overhead between sweet auburn and downtown, you have this 30 foot high, who knows how many feet wide hulking behemoth in the way of everything. had the separation occured below grade as it was at georgia tech, somehow i don't think the separation would've been as severe.

Below grade is just as bad or possibly worse. The two halves of the city have that rip and are cutoff from one another and develop separately. The west side has a completely different feel from the east. Even bridges don't help. The bridge on 5th Street at GT does help, but will never solve it. Hard to say what would have happened without the Connector but I'm sure the west side would have felt part of Atlanta's city grid.

but now we're stuck with it— what do we do at this point? i think there needs to be heavy lighting under where auburn and edgewood go under the connector, and there could possibly be storefronts built under there. as for the wall, cover it with either art or trees. they made a pathetic attempt on the east side to put some italian-looking trees that don't fit at all when they needed to go with local trees that will tower over the sides of the interstate when grown out.

I'm inclined to say, let it go. Why put lipstick on the pig?

of course the streetcar is the first step to all of this. i can't wait until it's completed.

We'll see, but I think many of you guys are expecting too much of it. Even the MARTA rail stations aren't the bustling hubs of business and commerce that many thought would result.

[MathmanMathman]

Originally Posted by bryantm3

oh, and also, i wish they'd do that sort of thing for all of the bridges over the downtown connector.

That would be a good idea, but it won't fix what the Connector did. It works well there as GT has its Fraternity Row on the west side and a continuation of its campus on the east side. The bridge/park feels like a continuation of the campus.

Now if they were to cap as much of the Connector as possible, and build a park over it, that would be awesome but really expensive.

[MathmanMathman]

Originally Posted by Mutiny77

Precisely. And it was the same story in several other cities across the nation.

I'm pretty sure that the poorer neighborhoods were targeted as land acquisition would be much easier and there was not much there worth preserving. Then they could use "urban renewal" as a justification.

[MathmanMathman]

Originally Posted by JPD

Isn't the streetcar maintennance facility supposed to be housed under the connector? Hopefully that will be an improvement. As it is now, most of the underpass is a toilet.

I doubt at streetcar maintenance facility will be much better than a toilet. MARTA's maintenance facilities aren't exactly streetscape beauties.

[adio]

Originally Posted by Mutiny77

Essentially, Sweet Auburn is on this list because commercial revitalization in the heart of the district hasn't followed residential revitalization. Personally, I'd like to see some of the more notable and wealthy African American residents of metro Atlanta step up here and help invest in the district.

wouldn't that be nice

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by bryantm3

it's pretty clear that I-75/85 was put where it was to separate the neighbourhood from downtown as it was such a significant black community.

Well....as I've said before, the connector certainly didn't do Auburn Avenue any good. However, it was hardly the only neighborhood impacted. Freeways ripped through the heart of many white neighborhoods as well. Look at the photo below and see the connector marching through Midtown -- long before it got to Auburn Avenue.

Freeways run through every part of Atlanta, including many of its swankiest districts. I have lived next to them myself more than once, and while people think it's going to be the end of the world, they adapt.

That's because urban places thrive on people. That's how communities knit themselves back together after the trauma of construction. It was no different with Sweet Auburn. People are what made it happen, and its entrepreneurs were more than capable of overcoming a freeway.

However, the decentralization of cities was well under way 60 years ago. By the time the connector got to Auburn Avenue the area was already getting a bit frazzled. Its decline was not simply the result of the road -- it was because the businessmen who founded it and their clientele were moving on. Greener pastures were elsewhere.

[MathmanMathman]

Do you know what circa that photo is? Wonder if we had a second chance, would they have routed the expressway differently? For one, it passes too close to the Capitol building south of the city.

It's not an authoritative source but Neal Boortz said that the Connector was the combining of 85 and 75 but originally it was supposed to be two freeways going through Atlanta. A case for the latter is that both 75 and 85 are high volume highways and shouldn't be combined. Maybe it would have been better to have 85 pass to the east of the city and 75 to the west rather than have both go right down the middle. In that way the city core could have been kept intact.

[Mutiny77]

Originally Posted by MathmanMathman

I'm pretty sure that the poorer neighborhoods were targeted as land acquisition would be much easier and there was not much there worth preserving. Then they could use "urban renewal" as a justification.

And they did. Poor communities, and communities of color, were and are seen as expendable. The powers-that-be determined there was nothing "worth preserving" but that wasn't true in an absolute sense--far from it.

Originally Posted by MathmanMathman

The black community might have wanted it rather than be left out as it represented progress and business. Like I said, I don't think people back then fully understood what expressways do psychologically.

The Black community didn't want this; who wants a freeway tearing up their neighborhood? In too many cases, businesses and residences were razed to make way for the highways so this obviously couldn't represent "progress and business." Here's a pretty good read on the subject (pp. 31-37 is the relevant part) and clearly shows that Black communities across the nation were staunchly opposed.

I'm inclined to say, let it go. Why put lipstick on the pig?

It's not a "pig." The urban form has definitely been disrupted, but it's obviously not beyond repair.

We'll see, but I think many of you guys are expecting too much of it. Even the MARTA rail stations aren't the bustling hubs of business and commerce that many thought would result.

Well that's because MARTA was essentially built as a commuter system and it's only been relatively recently that serious thought has been given to making areas near rail stations mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly areas. As I've said before, that's probably MARTA's greatest missed opportunity from the start.