The team that is staffing the Midtown Connector Transportation Improvement Project – the MCP Foundation – has released its second 15 minute video providing background and an overview of the proposed project. 

This second installment focuses on elevated deck projects in other cities that have been studied, key learnings and other features that have inspired the design of this project. 

It can be viewed here: https://abetterconnector.com/community/inspiring-inspiration/

The new apartment tower has a $55 million construction loan and forms a wave of investment planned for the area south of North Avenue.

A 16-story apartment tower is the latest project sparking long-awaited revitalization within Atlanta’s SoNo district.

Woodfield Development just purchased the nearly 1.1-acre site at 505 Courtland St. where it will build the 284-unit project. It’s the first residential tower to be developed in SoNo in the past 10 years.

Woodfield paid just under $7.9 million for the development site, a record price in SoNo based on a land per square foot value. It’s a reminder of the new investment finally pouring into the area.

While SoNo features Atlanta landmarks such as the 55-story gold-crowned Bank of America Plaza, for years development has been sluggish compared with other parts of the city such a Midtown, West Midtown and areas along the Beltline Eastside Trail.

But Australian real estate firm Drapac Capital Partners believed in SoNo. Five years ago, it paid just over $1.7 million for the site at 505 Courtland, then sold it to Woodfield this month for nearly five times that value.

The project will add 284 apartment to the SONO district of Atlanta, an area between Midtown and downtown that includes the Emory University hospital campus.

By Douglas Sams  – Commercial Real Estate Editor, Atlanta Business Chronicle (August 31, 2020)

Link: https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2020/08/31/woodfield-development-buys-atlanta-site.html

With more than 40 years in business under their belt, Owners Janice Phillips and Bob Orlowski are ready to retire.

Skate Escape and its parcel of land which sits at the corner of 12th Street and Piedmont Avenue at the “front door of Piedmont Park” was recently re-listed for sale, Rob Kincheloe, the broker who holds the listing, Monday told What Now Atlanta (WNA) in a telephone interview. The sales price has not been disclosed.

The corner space, which has been home to the bike shop since 1979, was first listed for sale in February 2019 when Skate Escape Owners Janice Phillips and Bob Orlowski decided it was time to retire. Unfortunately, a deal that was under contract for the property, fell through, according to Kincheloe. This time around, Phillips and Orlowski wanted to be more public with the listing, so they had Kincheloe hang banners outside the bike shop recently.

But when the for-sale sign went up, so did suspicion from neighbors and passersby that Skate Escape had shuttered and was the latest victim of the novel coronavirus pandemic. Skate Escape is still open and “selling bikes like hotcakes,” Kincheloe said. “Skate Escape will stay open until we find a buyer, and if the new buyer wants to keep operating a bike shop, it may never close.”

The property is zoned for residential and retail and both industries have expressed interest in buying, according to Kincheloe.

“This is the first time the property has been available in 40 years. The adjacent property has been listed for 14 years but until the Skate Escape corner became available, there hasn’t been much interest in that property. Now buyers are looking at both, together.”

Tim Holdroyd, who represents the seller of the neighboring circa 1900s building, at 1094 Piedmont Ave NE, told WNA Monday that the properties are the “most complicated parcels of real estate in the City of Atlanta.”

“In my opinion, both properties have to go together, but every sophisticated commercial real estate professional I know has looked at this property and determined it wasn’t worth their time,” Holdroyd said along with a laundry list of reasons why in 14 years he hasn’t been able to get a deal done including zoning and building height restrictions, among other things.

Phillips and Orlowski at one point operated both buildings. The corner building, which dons the Skate Escape name, was built in 1948 as a service station and today acts as the bicycle repair shop and sales center. The older adjacent property, at 1094 Piedmont Ave., was originally an Anheuser-Busch yeast manufacturing facility and acted as the business’ skate shop. They consolidated both the skate and bike shop several years back into the corner parcel property they own.

Skate Escape was not immediately available when reached by What Now Atlanta for comment Monday

By: Caleb J. Spivak (July 27, 2020 6:39 pm)

Link: https://whatnowatlanta.com/longstanding-skate-escape-publicly-re-listed-for-sale-after-deal-falls-through/

The latest on Google’s commitment, a Sky Plaza, condo sales, and street retail

Selig Enterprises

Specific timelines are emerging for a multi-pronged project that’s swallowing a block of prime Midtown real estate.

Sited along one of the subdistrict’s most active development corridors, Selig Development’s $530 million 1105 West Peachtree mixed-use venture is on the rise, with major construction milestones on the horizon.

Selig’s chief development officer Steve Baile told Curbed Atlanta this week that construction of the 3.5-acre, multi-tower project is on track to wrap in the third quarter of next year.

At the end of this month, though, the ninth-floor amenity deck—aptly dubbed the “Sky Plaza”—is set to top out, Baile said.

Selig Development

Selig also confirmed recently that Google is set to make 1105 West Peachtree its Southeast headquarters, claiming five floors of the planned 31-story office tower.

The Smith, Gambrell & Russell law firm is also taking five floors for its new offices.

Also on the docket is a 178-key Marriott Autograph Collection Epicurean Hotel that Selig reps announced in October.

“We’re currently working with our hotel partners and retail team to fine-tune the office lobby food and beverage service, which will excite Midtown residents, office workers, and visitors alike,” Baile said.

Selig Development

The development, located between MARTA’s Midtown and Arts Center train stations, will also include a 64-unit luxury condo tower called 40 West 12th.

Baile said the developer has been having some luck with condo pre-sales, although he did not provide specifics.

“We are pleased with the condo sales we have had thus far,” he said. “We believe 40 West 12th is hitting on the pulse of what intown Atlanta condo buyers are looking for, and that’s a high-end product that’s understated yet refined and has access to all the great amenities the project, and Midtown as a whole, have to offer.”

Lastly, at the ground floor, expect some 25,000 square feet of retail space.

Selig has tapped Rule Joy Trammell + Rubio as the design architect and architect of record and Brasfield & Gorrie as the general contractor.

By Sean Keenan

@ThatSeanKeenan Jan 15, 2020, 2:11pm EST

Grassroots activism helped turn an infamous dump at 10th and Peachtree streets into a gathering place, christened with a six-pack of Budweiser

Today, the pint-sized Midtown green space at 10th and Peachtree streets is a pleasing respite among so much concrete and glass. It hosts community events, curious tourists, and businesspeople on lunch break, often with a mix of large-scale art, Christmas lights, public corn hole, lounge chairs, and the fading leasing signs of longtime property owner Dewberry Capital. But four decades ago, the site was considered a trashy blight on Atlanta’s signature street—literally a dump.

That’s according to researcher Adam C. Johnson, the Midtown Neighbors’ Association’s History Committee Chair. Johnson, a Midtown resident, has conducted more than 40 interviews with residents and business leaders while poring over Atlanta History Center and Georgia Archives materials in an effort to tell the story of his neighborhood’s metamorphosis in a series of articles. The first installment below chronicles the “Pit of Peachtree” and its demise. Johnson writes:

By the mid-1970s, Midtown began an arduous recovery from the aftermath of the countercultural movement that had made it the South’s beleaguered version of Haight-Ashbury.

Many buildings along Peachtree Street sat abandoned, and more than 15 bathhouses, peep shows, and adult establishments had sprung up in the area. Trash was strewn about, boards covered windows, and garbage obscured some previously sought-after lots.

Midtown was a mess.

Bill Seay and Jerry Attkisson, who led the recently formed Midtown Business Association (now Midtown Alliance), pitched Central Atlanta Progress’s Dan Sweat to sponsor the MBA by hiring its first executive director and to pay the position’s salary.

Sweat agreed to the “staffing support” and hired Doug Downing as MBA’s first director.

After joining MBA in May 1978, Downing started its first campaign to clean up Midtown by addressing the infamous dump at 10th and Peachtree streets. He wrote in the MBA’s newsletter:

Nowhere was this needed more than in the area of this property. For many years this property was a dumping ground, over grown [sic] with weeds and strewn with garbage. At the time, it was aptly referred to as “the hole,” and existed as an unwanted symbol of the degenerated state of the surrounding neighborhood.

Downing knew the importance of quickly demonstrating MBA’s commitment to Midtown by making the area hospitable again, which, he hoped, would also garner membership with his organization.

Twenty-five community residents, including some members of the Midtown Neighborhood Association (now Midtown Neighbors’ Association), joined the effort to remedy the “Pit of Peachtree.” Initially, they removed almost 20 loads of trash.

Downing called the efforts “the most conspicuous symbol of the action being taken by the community and the MBA to inject life back into our street.”

Photo courtesy of Doug Downing

Dubbed “Peachtree Street Clean-up” day, the effort continued in October 1978, and 60 Midtown residents and workers from the Army Corps of Engineers painted walls, removed garbage, and planted 17 trees, flowers, and grass. Southern Railway also donated railroad ties and helped install them.

Conveniently, the Army Corps of Engineers used more than 20 dump-truck loads of soil from the nearby MARTA excavation to flatten the park, and then graded it to its current height, which filled in “the hole.” (MARTA’s rail service in the area wouldn’t begin for another three years.)

Photo courtesy Doug Downing

The business association completed major construction of the park on May 3, 1979—and christened it using a $2.25 six-pack of Budweiser.

Because the MBA had secured a longterm lease from the owners of the land for $1, the staff unofficially referred to it as the “three dollar and twenty-five cent park.”

Photos courtesy of Doug Downing

Neither Attkisson nor Downing thought the park would last more than a few years. Yet the Pocket Park at 10th and Peachtree is a relic of the MBA’s first efforts to partner with area businesses, organizations (CAP and MNA), and residents to clean up Midtown.

Today, it stands as a tangible example of what successful public-private partnerships and volunteerism can achieve.

By Josh Green@JoshGreen1234 Jan 10, 2020, 3:43pm EST