Does Atlanta Have the worst big city downtown in the South? (Dallas: pros and cons, move)

[Ant131531]

Pretty much everything I said objectively has been right. People don't like to hear the truth. I'm one of the most honest members in the Atlanta forum because I don't sugarcoat things or boost in areas that don't deserve boosting. People don't like to hear the truth.

[Atlanta_BD]

Originally Posted by Mutiny77

I'm also curious as to how downtown Dallas beats downtown Atlanta when it comes to transit. And downtown Atlanta has a major asset in GSU, something downtown Dallas doesn't have an answer for.

I didnt say Dallas beats it. I said I like it better, mainly because there are less homeless people milling about. It's better looking and has really nice areas adjacent to it.

The Dart has more coverage, regardless of it being light rail and all the lines also stop downtown, along with the commuter rail, which Atlanta does not have. Lots of bus lines run there and downtown Dallas also has a college.

It has the Dallas Museum of Art which in my opinion has a permanent collection superior to The High, and I regularly supported The High. It also has an Asian art museum. Both are free. The symphony is also there.

[JMatl]

Originally Posted by Atlanta_BD

I didnt say Dallas beats it. I said I like it better, mainly because there are less homeless people milling about. It's better looking and has really nice areas adjacent to it.

The Dart has more coverage, regardless of it being light rail and all the lines also stop downtown, along with the commuter rail, which Atlanta does not have. Lots of bus lines run there and downtown Dallas also has a college.

Yes, but none of this does a thing for residents of Arlington.

If I am not mistaken, Arlington is the largest city in the U.S. with no public transit. They even voted to NOT have a station for the TRE commuter rail between Dallas & Fort Worth there.

And despite DART having more coverage and track miles, MARTA carries almost triple the daily ridership of DART.

[OuiOui]

Originally Posted by cwkimbro

The second was to the northeast stretching short of the Glenwood Park: 65% White, 24% White

Wow, that's pretty white.

hehe, Ok, gonna go back to just reading now. Later

[Mutiny77]

Originally Posted by Atlanta_BD

I didnt say Dallas beats it. I said I like it better, mainly because there are less homeless people milling about. It's better looking and has really nice areas adjacent to it.

The Dart has more coverage, regardless of it being light rail and all the lines also stop downtown, along with the commuter rail, which Atlanta does not have. Lots of bus lines run there and downtown Dallas also has a college.

MARTA rail has much higher ridership than DART. Combined with the bus lines and the streetcar, downtown Atlanta's transit options serve a lot more people.

"Better looking" is subjective. To me, having a more historic urban fabric is more preferable and gives a downtown more character but a nice mix of old and new is more ideal. And Dallas does not have a large downtown university with tens of thousands of students which integrates with downtown; El Centro is hardly an answer for GSU.

It has the Dallas Museum of Art which in my opinion has a permanent collection superior to The High, and I regularly supported The High. It also has an Asian art museum. Both are free. The symphony is also there.

Downtown Dallas does have an advantage with the arts district; most of Atlanta's arts venues are in Midtown.

[Atlanta_BD]

Originally Posted by JMatl

Yes, but none of this does a thing for residents of Arlington.

If I am not mistaken, Arlington is the largest city in the U.S. with no public transit. They even voted to NOT have a station for the TRE commuter rail between Dallas & Fort Worth there.

And despite DART having more coverage and track miles, MARTA carries almost triple the daily ridership of DART.

Interestingly enough, I live in Arlington and was able to take the commuter train to my job in downtown Dallas couple of days ago.

But again we are talking about the city and not the suburbs.

[cwkimbro]

Originally Posted by Ant131531

Pretty much everything I said objectively has been right. People don't like to hear the truth. I'm one of the most honest members in the Atlanta forum because I don't sugarcoat things or boost in areas that don't deserve boosting. People don't like to hear the truth.

Tread carefully. I both agree and disagree with you alot.

Much of what you have to say is opinion based and based on the values you desire, which do not always mesh with others' values and desires....

That is not about being 'right,' 'honest,' or speaking 'truth,' etc...

[LovelySummer]

I think my comment about the area around Ponce City Market being decent was misunderstood. I was not referring to what it was more than 5 years ago bc I was not living in Atlanta and would not know. What I was saying was that at the time PCM was decided for location there, that area was not gritty. Hence the Whole Foods across the street in the recent years. I was saying that same developmt could have gone into the true downtown. I think it would have been a hit. It could have even been at the Underground, similar to the layout of Pike's Market in Seattle.

What are the three museums that have come to downtown in the last 5-10 years?

Originally Posted by atler8

Lovely
Ant is absolutely correct in what he wrote about the present Whole Foods area which, as he put it, "was...a gritty area" at one time.
Whole Foods and other stores in that plaza only came into existence in that spot once the gentrification process reached a critical turning point of no return.
I've lived here for 35 years & Ponce's history is very much the stuff that gritty urban tales are derived from.
There have even been pictorial books, etc. made about the street & it's wild former to presently somewhat gentrified and toned down history & state of affairs. I kid you not, the Ponce corridor, Poncey-Highlands, Inman park, etc. all had serious declines after 1950 or so.
And when I moved here, Morningside & Virginia Highland were in the process of settling down & reinvigorating as the last tides of panicked white flight out, consisting of many long time & elderly or empty nest residents in those areas, subsided.

[LovelySummer]

Yes, I am not arguing with him. That is what I keep trying to say.

With regard to true Grant Park and the area I like (the large victorians that border the park), I visited numerous times and spoke to passersby on the streets and I saw lots of families with small children but there was absolutely no racial diversity. I guess it's a result of gentrification as you (or someone on this thread) indicated. No, I wasn't saying Buckhead was better. I was saying if the make-up of the area of Grant Park that I like is not going to be diverse, what is the point of incurring addtl travel time. Staying in Buckhead makes more sense. Less commute and same lack of diversity. I have been looking and also started a thread bc a colleague asked about diversity intown but I haven't found it. Where is Fairlie-Poplar by the way?

Originally Posted by cwkimbro

Don't take this the wrong way... I think y'all could agree on more than you realize.

I suspect you just haven't been in town long enough, since you're a transplant.

Parts of Ponce have always been really high end, particularly leaving the city and in Dekalb Co.

The commercial parts of Ponce, where there are more multi-family housing and where Ponce City Market is has gotten much better. It is much nicer now than 5 years ago, but the differences are bigger from 10 years ago, 15 years ago, etc... The gentrification didn't happen over night.

The Single Family home neighborhoods going back a few decades were more working class. They were not near as expensive as they are now and Whole Foods has not always existed there. Now smaller neighborhoods nearby have always been fairly nice (ie Inman Park, Little 5 Points, etc..), but even they have gotten a huge uptick with the Old Fourth Ward getting much nicer. Some of the buildings on Ponce were a bit more run down and the city bought the old Sears building in part to keep it from decaying and to keep it from being totally vacant.

In fact before the 80s many of the people in some of those neighborhoods worked in the Sears building when it was still a distribution center.

As for Grant Park, I'd take another look. It is lacking diversity beyond white-black and some streets immediatly around the park are more expensive (and more white), but the neighborhood as a whole is not all white. I suspect it will get increasingly more white in the future with further gentrification, but from the 2010 Census there were 3 census tracts over that neighborhood.

One was to the northwest and shared with parts of Summerhill: 48% White, 45% Black

The second was to the northeast stretching short of the Glenwood Park: 65% White, 24% White

The Third, which is most of Grant Park, but mostly the southern 2/3: 56% White, 35% Black

So I'm having trouble understanding things in context. That isn't diverse enough, but Buckhead is? It is even more troubling to compare this to the previous comments on diversity of neighborhoods in Chicago.

You're idea for downtown is not a silver bullet and this is why it did not gain traction. There isn't much space for many single family homes, if they were built. It would be a way of getting a hand full of the richest people in town there. The problem is the land values are still too high for that. The economic functions for Downtown will be larger buildings that cost more, whether there will be more residential or not. Most on here would rather have 200 Yuppies with moderate levels of expendable income, than 5 extremely rich families living on a single block. They want to generate a bigger consumer base to increase retail activity.

Now there is an array of single family homes in the immediate adjacent neighborhoods, like Sweet Auburn and Old Fourth Ward. The home values can be high in spots, but the lot sizes are too small for large homes.

From Marketing perspectives... many of the projects throughout the city to the north couldn't have as easily been shifted downtown to draw people there, either. They do market area research and that type of move would have shifted the market area, but people do care about Downtown. The city tried for decades to make retail work at Underground. It was significantly nicer in the early 90s, than it is now...but even then it was struggling to keep enough foot traffic with money to attract better paying tenants. This led to decades of debate on whether the city should give it up or prop it up, but a good bit of money was invested to Underground and it didn't take off. There are also lots of existing struggling retail space to the South. We couldn't have built a PCM and changed that... that was sort of tried, rather they have to get the whole neighborhood of South Downtown to adjust, so a development like that could succeed.

My two cents... I still hope for the day downtown could attracts Macy's into the old Rich's building in the future. I want Atlanta to have that traditional early-mid century department store back in the center of town.

It has a huge convention business and luckily we finally got some traction getting more street level businesses to cater to that, beyond a few blocks of Peachtree St. Now those won't be the Southern part of Downtown.

[Atlanta_BD]

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Originally Posted by Mutiny77

MARTA rail has much higher ridership than DART. Combined with the bus lines and the streetcar, downtown Atlanta's transit options serve a lot more people.

"Better looking" is subjective. To me, having a more historic urban fabric is more preferable and gives a downtown more character but a nice mix of old and new is more ideal. And Dallas does not have a large downtown university with tens of thousands of students which integrates with downtown; El Centro is hardly an answer for GSU.

Why does everything turn into a p***ing for you guys? I personally like downtown Dallas better. That is MY opinion and I am entitled to it. Who cares if El Centro isn't an answer for GSU? Some of you here act as if people don't have the right to like other places more than Atlanta. Good grief!