Novare Looks to Build 23-Story Mixed-Use Project on 6th (Atlanta: rent, neighborhood)

[waronxmas]

Originally Posted by brownhornet

People keep saying this but im sorry, not having a car is just too much of an inconvenience for me and it only benefits people that live in very few areas. Unless you're going to make public transportation more adequate that goes EVERYWHERE it just won't work for me. It's bad enough having to stand at a bus or train stop when they're steady cutting routes and having to be there longer outside in the elements, but at this point the system just isnt nearly adequate. If and when they start taking public transportation seriously here more people will consider it.

And honestly, Atlanta will never be more than 30-40% carless other than those that just can't afford it. Why? Because cars make things so much more convenient. If I wanted to get from where I live to the airport without a car i'd probably have to leave home 2.5 hours early. Would have to take a cab or walk to the nearest cct station, then wait forever on the link that goes into downtown. With a car it's 20 minutes...I just don't see ever giving that up to go to riding a crowded bus and still having to rent a car when I need to go out of town.

And even if I did decide to give up the ride, then I have to basically move somewhere that's likely going to be more expensive than where I live now or to the hood just to have access to it. If you live downtown or midtown or Buckhead, yea great no issues for you with Marta. But for many others, not so much. This city wasn't built around the bus/train and I don't think that'll ever change.

You make a valid point that gets lost in the shuffle when talking about these sort of things: some people just like to drive. And honestly, I don't see anything wrong with that. While I prefer to walk and use transit more than drive, I'm not going to lie and say I don't enjoy the fact that I also have a car available for use when I need it such as when I have a lot of stuff to carry, or on 20 degree mornings in the middle of January, or 100 degree heat in the middle of July, or a torrential downpour in the middle of April.

Making it too difficult to own a car is just as bad as making it too difficult to be a pedestrian. Rather, a balance should be struck between the two. Walk environments should be the priority, but also should creating parking structures the integrate well in to the urban environment (and don't cost a fortune a month to use). An equilibrium can exist to accommodate both modes of transportation.

Also, I just laugh at the idea of there being a big city out there where everyone universally enjoys not owning a car. For example in New York City, perhaps the most pedestrian friendly non-car owning urban environment in this country, over 40% of the adult population still owns a car. That's millions of people. Those 40% also do insane things like get in to fights with strangers over the few available parking spots, roam around their neighborhoods at night for hours looking for a parking spot in vain, and (if they find one) waiting in their car for hours for the street cleaners to come (if they happen to be at home) to move their car in to a spot as soon as the streetcleaner has gone its way like so:


NYC Street Cleaning - YouTube

And while a lot of people like the idealize the existence of the 60% carless New Yorkers, I am not aware of an occasion while I was visiting there where my family didn't bug me AD NAUSEUM to drive them here and drive them there if I had my car with me. Hell, I even pulled a lot of dates by just parking a car.

Basically what I'm trying to say is the "grass is always greener" and we shouldn't swing things too far in one specific direction.

[Mishap]

I think Manhattan itself is 75% car free. The outer boroughs need cars but people get by w/ fewer cars per family. There's no right of passage of getting each kid their own car when they turn 16. I've had friends not learn how to drive until after college. It's not like down here where every individual has their own car (and sometimes more). I'm sure the numbers would be different if keeping a car in Manhattan wasn't that cost prohibitive but a car isn't a defining factor for being able to get a decent job/avoiding poverty. There, it's more of a luxury since getting a cab is probably easier than finding parking virtually anywhere.

To be honest, I don't know why there's so much hate for keeping around a deck w/ each building. These several blocks are already close the most density you'll see anywhere in the city between Spire/Viewpoint1/2, Metropolis, and 1010 a few blocks further north. Just between Spire/Viewpoint, you'll have over 1,000 fairly expensive homes in 2 blocks. Atlanta lacks geographic barriers so there will always be a need to get 30-40 miles out of the city. These condos won't replace cars w/ density but they certainly can reduce the need for a car (still fewer cars on the roads since they're driven less). When I lived in the burbs, I could do 20k+/yr which is a lot of time just spent driving/stuck in traffic.

My g/f and I keep 2 cars right now but I'd like to cut it down to 1. My current project has me driving 3 miles to the client site (directly over a Marta station) but I can only expense parking vs. Marta. My car is paid for and I'm only driving ~4k/yr including trips out to Gwinnett. If I get a client I have to fly to, my car would just be sitting at the airport anyway. Plus it gives me the excuse to swap to an AMG C63 since she only knows how to drive auto.

[cqholt]

My wife and I are a 1 car household. We ride the bus from the MARTA station to the stop outside our house. I enjoy walking to the grocery store and restaurants. We keep our car for trips to see the family in Alabama, but other than that its sitting in the driveway. We fill up maybe every 3 months, we save tremendous money but walking and using MARTA. We also feel good knowing our impact on the environment is minimal.

[waronxmas]

Originally Posted by Mishap

I think Manhattan itself is 75% car free. The outer boroughs need cars but people get by w/ fewer cars per family.

In my perception it really isn't the case that people need cars in the outer boroughs except for Staten Island. You can live comfortably car free in Brooklyn, Queens or the Bronx (which is really no different than Manhattan). Granted, owning a car in terms of parking it is a much easier thing to do in Brooklyn and especially Queens where most of the infrastructure was built post automobile.

As for Manhattan, I cannot think of a situation when one needs a car their and why anyone would be insane enough to do so. I've seen people buzz around like gnats for a parking space and if you sneeze when opens up, it'll be filled before your eyes even open. And then there are the tolls, or as I call it the "Your dumb for owning a car in Manhattan" tax.

An even crazier thing to ponder is that even though 75% of Manhattan residents don't own a car in Manhattan (or whatever the real number is, that sounds about right) that means there are still more cars owners in Mahattan than there is the entire city of Atlanta. Granted this is a useless fact that has literally know value, but it's interesting to consider that even when an environment is created where there is a super high population density and massive public transportation coverage that it doesn't not mean car dependency somehow goes away. Some people just won't give up their cars period.

Originally Posted by Mishap

There's no right of passage of getting each kid their own car when they turn 16. I've had friends not learn how to drive until after college. It's not like down here where every individual has their own car (and sometimes more). I'm sure the numbers would be different if keeping a car in Manhattan wasn't that cost prohibitive but a car isn't a defining factor for being able to get a decent job/avoiding poverty. There, it's more of a luxury since getting a cab is probably easier than finding parking virtually anywhere.

I grew up ITP and did not have a car when I was sixteen (one part because my parents couldn't afford it and the other part because they laughed in my face at the suggestion they'd buy one) so it's far from a rite of passage everyone goes through. I would say where I am from on the Southside it is more common to drive a parents car, but most teenagers use public transportation to get around. Here, in the City of Atlanta/ITP at least, the problem is more getting people out of the mind frame that they HAVE to have a car.

Of course, there are also scale differences at play. Significantly less people live and/or work in the central city here so thus that translates in to significantly less peopel living those types of lifestyles that they can shuck having a car. However for all it's faults, people seem to forget that Atlanta just didn't become a big city yesterday. Many intown neighborhoods and inner ring suburbs were built and occupied long before owning a car was common. The basic infrastructure is there, we just need to do a better job of utilizing it.

Originally Posted by Mishap

To be honest, I don't know why there's so much hate for keeping around a deck w/ each building. These several blocks are already close the most density you'll see anywhere in the city between Spire/Viewpoint1/2, Metropolis, and 1010 a few blocks further north. Just between Spire/Viewpoint, you'll have over 1,000 fairly expensive homes in 2 blocks.

I don't either. The people who could afford to live in that building would like own a car no matter where they lived. It's better to have them park in a building rather than on a lot or along the street.

[Mishap]

I may have spoken a bit too soon. Novare seems to really know how to build an ugly deck.

Source: Midtown Patch

Novare Group Reveals '100 6th Street' - Midtown, GA Patch

Do wish they could either integrate it better to Viewpoint (or at least offer us access to 7th St). That said, I do hope they can price the retail space cheap enough to have some more innovative businesses pop up. Also doesn't leave anywhere for me to walk my dog anymore. Maybe some day, they'll decide the top level of the deck is underutilized and put in some tennis/basketball courts/park space for residents.

[ATLTJL]

Criminy, that is an ugly deck! It looks like it has a footprint 3 or 4 times that of the building itself! The street level retail is a nice idea, though. I just can't imagine who would want to live here, though. I imagine only one level of the deck has access to the building, so when you come home, you may have to take an elevator (or stairs) in the deck, walk to the building, then take an elevator again. Not a great selling point.

What perspective are we looking at this picture from? They say the deck faces 6th and Juniper. To be honest, I think that's okay. Let's be honest, in midtown, Peachtree is really what matters. If you have parking structures on side streets.....eh, maybe not ideal, but it's not horrible. To be honest, the businesses on 6th (McRae's, Loca Luna) never had attractive entrances anyway. And there was NOTHING attractive about the building they were located in. I think this parking deck may actually be an improvement over what used to be there. It would look nicer if they put trees on the roof, though.

Regarding having a car, the arguments in this thread are silly, not to mention off topic. Manhattan is an island (literally!) unto itself. You can't compare Atlanta to Manhattan any more than you can compare Kansas City to it. If you want to live comfortably without a car, by all means, go to Manhattan and I'm sure you will be much happier there. But really, where else can you do that? Maybe certain parts of San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, and a few select other places. America really isn't a car-free society...manifest destiny and all that!

I briefly lived without a car my freshman year of college. It was a college town, I could walk most places I needed to get to. I hated it. I vowed to never do it again. It seemed like the places that I really wanted to go always required a car to get there. I'm the type of person that needs to be able to take off for a weekend to the mountains or beach at a moment's notice. I need to be able to go to Walgreens at 3am. Manhattan is the only place I could realistically live without a car, but even there, I bet I would want to go to a shopping mall in New Jersey or go up to Maine, or something like that often enough to make me kind of wish I had a car, even though it would be financially silly to have one. So I don't live in Manhattan, I live in Atlanta. Where even if I lived in the center of midtown, I would still have a car. I live OTP and still do a lot of things ITP, just as when I lived ITP for years, I still did lots of things OTP. Even when I lived in Buckhead I still liked to go to Mall of Georgia, Stone Mountain, North Georgia Premium Outlets, suburban 24 hour Wal-Marts, visit friends OTP, my dentist in Dunwoody, and the list goes on. Also, if you have no car, how are you supposed to take your dog to the vet? Not allowed on MARTA! Suppose the dog is too sick to walk and too heavy to carry. Bottom line: for most people in Atlanta, car = necessity. Not going to change in anybody here's lifetime.

[Mishap]

^That's from Juniper looking SW. 7th St is the bottom right corner and you have to imagine Viewpoint's podium deck rising another 6 stories above the deck toward the middle. The front of the building would be on 6th St. In a direct overhead view, the deck footprint would probably 2-3X the size of the building's footprint. I had hoped they would put the amenities on top but I guess they're going on the roof. Means somebody around 25-26 on Viewpoint's SE corner will suddenly have a pool view.

[ATLTJL]

I had hoped they would put the amenities on top but I guess they're going on the roof.

If you're right, that's awesome for them because rooftop pools are great!

However, this is Novare we are talking about. The thought that they would invest in rooftop amenities for an apartment seems slim to me. My guess is they will just tell renters "you have access to Viewpoint's amenities!" and the owners at Viewpoint are going to see their pool invaded by renters. I bet they included the right to do that in the original Viewpoint covenants.

[bryantm3]

don't be fooled by the picture— there will be no retail on the first level of the deck, only "window boxes". what i can't understand is why they can't put the deck in the center of the block and put something else along all the edges. have little driveways between the streetfront properties to have access to the deck. problem solved.

[tonygeorgia]

When will the luxury apartment market hit downtown Atlanta? The area around Centennial Olympic Park is really underdevelop in that particular market