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Old 10-20-2012, 07:16 PM
 
7,132 posts, read 9,081,479 times
Reputation: 6333

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Introduction

For downtown Atlanta to be the historic heart of the city, the current status of the area is daunting at best. Tenants continue to move out of the downtown office buildings, lack of new residential buildings are being constructed, nothing new is going on in downtown EXCEPT for the Centennial Olympic park area which just happens to be the nicest part of the downtown core.

Just recently a CVS opened in Peachtree Center that is open 24 hours...which is good, but that mainly caters to the business crowd. There is still a lack of a neighborhood grocery stores in downtown and restaurants still close at 6 pm weekdays and don't even open on weekends.

Reasons
-The biggest reason I can think of is the homeless. The homeless are by far the largest reason downtown Atlanta is the way it is atm. The constant panhandling is very annoying for those who work and study in downtown. You might say, it's apart of city-life, but it's the proportion to the amount of people who spend time in downtown that is huge.

-The people who walk it's streets....go to the area around Five points station during the day....it's ghetto...just pure ghettoness...compare that to the Midtown MARTA station and Midtown business district....yeah.

-Nightlife...last I checked, downtown didn't have a very large nightlife scene..if at all...like I mean, where are the bars at here? Where are the classy clubs? I'm not talking about those ghetto hoodrat clubs in Underground either.

-Negligence from the city....it's like Atlanta does not care to clean up downtown Atlanta...like I don't get it, but they put a lot of heart and soul into Midtown...it's almost like they gave up with downtown and look forward to the midtown and buckhead business districts.

-Livability....other then the recently opened 24 hour CVS, there isn't much places you can go after 8 pm in downtown to say, pick up groceries or get something quick....there isn't much restaurants open. In Midtown, there is a publix that opened at the bottom of a skyscrapers...that is smart growth and helps add to livability. There are also plenty of smaller stores you can go to to pic up something real quick. They have restaurants that are open relatively late like Five guys, The Vortex, Starbucks, etc.

I'm sure there are more reasons I'm listing but those are the biggest reasons.

Conclusion

Midtown Atlanta atm is just a much nicer and more desirable area to do business and live in. I fear for the worst in Downtown....it's looking similar to what happened in NYC. Midtown eventually became more desirable for people. Other then Wall Str., Midtown is practically the financial core of NYC. It is also the cultural core of New York just like how Midtown Atlanta is becoming the cultural core of Atlanta.

What can Atlanta do to make downtown more desirable to tenants and people to want to live in the area? Is it doomed to fall?
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Old 10-20-2012, 08:38 PM
 
16,634 posts, read 29,315,928 times
Reputation: 7555
I think Downtown Atlanta will be the "final/last frontier" in the urban redevelopment of intown Atlanta.

When/if they build the multi-modal station and commuter rail--this will, especially, cause Downtown to blossom once again.




Great bones. Great buildings. Great street grid. Great transportation connections.


Don't count it out at all. You'll see.
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Old 10-20-2012, 08:41 PM
 
Location: Atlanta
7,574 posts, read 10,697,081 times
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There is really just so much to address here I'm not quite sure to start.

I'm trying to figure out if you just haven't been in town long enough, if you're just young, happened to live downtown for a short while because you were at GSU, or any combination of the above?

There are a few real trends you're noticing, changes in the recent past you seem not to have noticed, some reasons you're a bit off base on (I'm sorry but a suburban style food market in the bottom of a modern high rise is a pretty recent trend and typically only happens in a -new- building that is built to suit), reasons you haven't noticed or haven't figured out yet, etc... After several threads I'm not really sure you see/understand the big picture of the Atlanta region as whole in how it exists today, how it got there, and the impact that has on decision making by the private market (aka residents, businesses, shoppers, etc...)

It isn't so much that we would disagree on wanting things to be better, but that there are issues of market demand, transportation, private development vs city infrastructure and what a city gov't can and can't do. It is important that we place out complaining and efforts in the right place to move forward in the right ways.
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Old 10-20-2012, 08:44 PM
 
16,634 posts, read 29,315,928 times
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And--there are neighborhoods in Atlanta now that I nevah thought would be revitalized--and many were down and out through even the mid-2000s.

For those that truly know Atlanta, just think of the rapid change that has taken place in:

Kirkwood
East Atlanta
Old Fourth Ward
Reynoldstown
West Midtown/Westside
East Lake
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Old 10-20-2012, 08:59 PM
 
37,798 posts, read 41,536,546 times
Reputation: 27068
Quote:
Originally Posted by aries4118 View Post
I think Downtown Atlanta will be the "final/last frontier" in the urban redevelopment of intown Atlanta.

When/if they build the multi-modal station and commuter rail--this will, especially, cause Downtown to blossom once again.




Great bones. Great buildings. Great street grid. Great transportation connections.


Don't count it out at all. You'll see.
Downtown is without a doubt the most urban part of greater Atlanta with the most built-in assets. All it has to do is get cleaned up--easier said than done I know, but once you take care of that, the rest will pretty much take care of itself because all of the basic elements are already there for that to happen.
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Old 10-20-2012, 09:04 PM
 
31,994 posts, read 36,544,457 times
Reputation: 13254
Downtown could be cleaned up in a matter of months, if city government had the backbone to do it.

Unfortunately they are more interested in staying in office, and are too beholden to their voting blocs.
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Old 10-20-2012, 09:05 PM
 
Location: Sweet Home...CHICAGO
3,421 posts, read 5,191,408 times
Reputation: 4355
I have wondered the same thing myself. I don't know the answer though. There used to be a Kroger downtown on Central Ave., but it closed many years ago, I think because too many people were stealing. The Macy's closed many years ago also. There is something to be said when the downtown of a major city can't even support having a Macy's.

There's nothing worth seeing or doing in The Underground and around Five Points station it's ghetto a bunch of homeless and always smells of urine. If there is nothing downtown to attract people then it can't grow. By the same token, maybe there isn't enough people to support any downtown offerings, given that bad/poor neighborhoods are in such close proximity to downtown' which is probably why Macy's and Kroger downtown closed.

I worked downtown for several years. I stopped working there in 2007. Since I stopped working there I very rarely go downtown. There's nothing there that warrants me going--not for fun or shopping anyway.

My parents wanted to have a fun night out a month or so ago. They went downtown on a Saturday night looking for something to do but said they ended up going home because they couldn't find anything to do.
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Old 10-20-2012, 09:41 PM
 
Location: International Spacestation
5,185 posts, read 7,529,156 times
Reputation: 1415
Midtown trumps downtown 10 to 3, downtown needs a lot of work, I was in both districts tonight & downtown was looking hella shady. Especially the peachtree corridor between GT-BOA & Woodruff Center lots of foot traffic. Midtown is the official main district of Atlanta core in my eyes.
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Old 10-20-2012, 09:49 PM
 
37,798 posts, read 41,536,546 times
Reputation: 27068
Quote:
Originally Posted by arjay57 View Post
Downtown could be cleaned up in a matter of months, if city government had the backbone to do it.
I think if it were that simple, no city would be dealing with homelessness in their urban cores, and most large cities do to some degree or another.
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Old 10-20-2012, 09:51 PM
 
1,971 posts, read 3,030,094 times
Reputation: 2209
Downtowns big issue is that most of the buildings aren't mixed use and don't have any street level spaces to rent out anyway. There's not much that can be done with space like that other than sell or rent it to other large tenants (like GSU). Homeless persons arent as big of an issue as others have mentioned... if the city wanted to they could relocate that element. NYC did. It's much harder to deal with the structural issues.
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