New Hotel Planned for Downtown Atlanta. (Marietta: neighborhood, calculation, closing)

[gtcorndog]

Originally Posted by arjay57

Puh-leez, corndog. Downtown retail is just fine.

What downtown retail?

[bryantm3]

Originally Posted by gtcorndog

Of course. Downtown needs more crappy, rundown retail shops. Downtown could always use another hair weave shop, multiple barber shops, and dirty bodegas. That is the downtown experience, right?

why don't you go find a cave to live in?

[cqholt]

Downtown is red hot with 2 new museums, several new hotels, falcons stadium, and streetcar construction. People still believe in downtown. Now if we could just do something with south downtown.

[arjay57]

People forget that downtown is a huge area that covers 15 neighborhoods. Like Midtown or Buckhead, it's not just a dot on a map.

Live Here | Neighborhoods

[bryantm3]

Originally Posted by cqholt

Downtown is red hot with 2 new museums, several new hotels, falcons stadium, and streetcar construction. People still believe in downtown. Now if we could just do something with south downtown.

the problem is that nobody lives there. we've got all of these attractions and stuff to get tourists to come downtown, but the city relies on people. that's why midtown has been much more successful at sustaining a vibrant street life. yeah, 30,000 people live there, which sounds like a lot until you realize most of those people are at the edges of downtown in centennial place or castleberry hill. there are hardly any apartment or condo buildings downtown— even if they were built to be so, they've long since been converted into office space or another massive switching station like the telx building and countless others.

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by bryantm3

there are hardly any apartment or condo buildings downtown—

Well, you've got the Healey, 90 Fairlie, Kessler lofts, the Metropolitan, Museum tower, William Oliver, Centennial House, Landmark, Peachtree Towers, Centennial Park West, the GSU student housing, all the stuff in Castleberry hill, etc. There's a bunch of new stuff in the works as well.

All that is right in the middle of downtown.

[lastminutemom]

Originally Posted by arjay57

Well, you've got the Healey, 90 Fairlie, Kessler lofts, the Metropolitan, Museum tower, William Oliver, Centennial House, Landmark, Peachtree Towers, Centennial Park West, the GSU student housing, all the stuff in Castleberry hill, etc. There's a bunch of new stuff in the works as well.

All that is right in the middle of downtown.

My understanding of cities in general and even small towns, is that retail requires residents, businesses and tourists are simply not enough, especially if an area has mid to high rental rates.

Clearly, as it stands today, the density of housing/residents isn't enough to attract a ton of retail. Over time, this will change as more people live in downtown. (I am not certain that students have the spending power to support retail establishments that are charged high rents.)

[cqholt]

There's more people living downtown than you realize.

[HH82]

All those surface parking lots west of Peachtree and south of MLK have an ungodly amount of potential if a developer wanted to take a chance and try to get some residential going in that part of town. The Garnett MARTA station area could be prime location pretty soon.

[J2rescue]

Originally Posted by westau

Homewood Suites are often more expensive than Hilton hotels themselves to stay in and every one I have stayed in has been nice. They are more business people extended stay than anything else and it is a quality brand coming downtown.

I agree. And its not just consulting but this type of hotel might appeal to any business traveler with a stay of a week or longer.

I have to say that downtown's HGI/Homewood combo trumps the one in Midtown. This is how urban blocks should be developed and even though there is tons of parking it will be on the interior of the block (I'm looking at you Novare). I had forgotten that this project was initially call 'Park Pavilion' with the HGI being the first phase. Back during the '00 boom, there were also plans for a Hard Rock Hotel next door.