Examples of Industrial Re-use: Atlanta

[simms3]

This is mainly because I vowed to take pictures of Atlanta’s lofts/warehouse/industrial side, and I’m stubborn so I woke up early on Saturday and spent a few hours doing this.  It was fun, though.  I’ve gotten to the point where I literally don’t ever leave Midtown, and so I enjoyed doing this.

Nobody outside of Atlanta actually knows about Atlanta’s industrial side, but it is very extensive, especially for the South.  There are large pre-war warehouses and factories and brick stacks on all four sides of the Downtown-Midtown line.  These are usually concealed by hills and tall trees, but if you drive around Atlanta, you’ll stumble upon this kind of stuff all around.  Atlanta has done a superb job of preserving these buildings and reusing them.


CASTLEBERRY HILL
Named for a grocer, this area was built up to how it is today after the Civil War.  Designated a federal historic district in 1985, it was depressed from the early 1900s to the early 1990s.  It is now a quiet residential district filled with recent grads, city workers, and AUC students.  There is a second Friday Art Stroll and a monthly Nuit Blanche (an all night art event).  There are several galleries in the area.  Downtown event visitors to nearby Phillips and Georgia Dome stroll over for No Mas Cantina, Wasabi, and a string of bars.

According to a resident I met on the sidewalk, the liveliest times aside from official events are “dog walking time” in the late evening, and on weekend nights (Thurs-Sat).  Otherwise it’s a peaceful area.

The area is changing for the better now on a year by year basis.  There are probably 10 noteworthy galleries here.

Shot of Atlanta from the start of Castleberry, showing the barren ruins of the Gulch.



The Gulch was recently a bidded on project whereby 3 local developers teamed with 3 national developers for the redevelopment bid.  Cousins Properties won the bid, but the team duo of Jacoby and John Buck Co out of Chicago included this rendering:



What the area used to look like:



A view in 2005:



Large warehouses still undeveloped, but will be part of the Gulch redevelopment (and the tracks will be covered like Millennium Park in Chicago).  The Union Station used to be around here, but was demolished.



Housing in the area:



The first building one comes across:





More housing in the area, stuff like this pops up all over Atl:



Castleberry Lofts, prices range from $199K-$800K + on the 1st and 2nd floors and $99K-$300K for most of the lofts in this block large building.



The view:



One side:



ZuCot Gallery is in this building:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI5Tx_C5Y5k





Here you see the Mueller Lofts ($175K and up) and the Storehouse Lofts ($189K-$275K):













Ge Lofts ($150K-$250K and 15 ft windows!)



The back of No Mas Cantina, Wasabi, and another restaurant I think.  The back has one of the “vacant” lots, taken up for valet parking.













Beeline Lofts ($215K-$300K)



New crap:





A stable for carriage tour horses?









330 Peters ($265K and up)











Some guy (apparent owner of the jazz club Studio 281 here) yelled at me here.  The area is still a little rough around the edges.  He was crazy and unstable.



Market Lofts ($179K-$350K):









Swift and Co ($199K-$600K):



Kingan and Co ($179K-$300K):



Organic grocer going in:





Castleberry Row? ($379K-$500K):











Moving on to other side of tracks as I move up to Lucky-Marietta District:







Much more to come…

[simms3]

Can't seem to figure out embedding youTube videos on this site if someone can assist me with that just at least for future reference.

[acme54321]

My uncle lived in an old Atlanta factory loft like those back in the early 90s, but I don't think it was Castleberry Hill. It was somewhere near grady hospital buy the old cemetery.  They had a unit in an old matress factory I believe, the space was really cool.  The neighborhood however was really sketch, the guy down the hall from them was a heroin addicted clown... it was interesting.  Then he moved oer hear piedmont park into an old house turned into apartments and the guy next to them was a legit voodoo doctor.  Hanging chicken bones and stuff in the yard.  He lived some colorful places.

[simms3]

^^^Mattress Factory Lofts

(From AJC Homefinder)


I took pictures of that area, too.  Now that I have time to sort through everything, I will post pictures of the Luckie-Marietta District up to the historic Westside (we call it Midtown West now).  I will post pictures of Miami Circle, which is newer and lower density industrial re-use, but as good of an example of clustering and re-use as one can get.  I will post pics of the warehouse district in the Old Fourth Ward, which contains one of the largest structures in the country, and I will show Memorial Drive down past the Cottonmill Lofts (the Stacks) on down to the Mattress Factory Lofts where your uncle lived.  Oh, and can't forget a couple of shots of industrial re-use in Inman Park, which is definitely the hottest neighborhood in Atlanta right now (I mean HOTTT).

[simms3]

LUCKIE-MARIETTA DISTRICT

Legacy Property Group is the key to the rebirth of the anchor area of Marietta Street near downtown/Centennial Olympic Park.  Yes, the CNN Center and Omni Hotel and Phillips Arena were already there, but they added actual life beyond tourists and event seekers to the area.  Now there are great restaurants, lounges, hotels (for Atlantans), condos, and destinations in that area.  Marietta Street is about 1.5 miles long, though, and runs by rail yards.  As a result, there are a ton of old buildings lining the street, but at some points these old buildings are a room across.

The following are from Legacy Property Group’s website:



(What it looked like before)





Because they specialize in one area, and have a lot of vision, and now a lot of experience, they can get so much done.  This could be one route for an area in Jacksonville.  Someone who is passionate about infill and rebirth could make LaVilla their baby, and nurse it from birth to adulthood like Legacy has done with the area around Centennial Park.  They are very very respected.

[simms3]

Some buildings still need some TLC:

[simms3]

The trains are right there:

[simms3]

Hands On is a community service organization:



These buildings are a block off of Marietta Street, and there are quite a few buildings like these, providing the area with loft space and art space (CARRIAGE WORKS):





Old Roxy Hotel…the bottom floor has Spoon, a Thai restaurant, and Wingnuts, a late night Georgia Tech favorite:



A college bookstore for Georgia Tech:

[simms3]

BRICKWORKS

Read the following from 1999 discussing plans to turn the old Brickworks into a tech office hub with retail and restaurants:

http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/1999/09/06/story2.html

It just opened under those same plans a couple years ago.

Anyway, being the start of Midtown West, there are literally around 1,200 residential units that have been built in a walkable area around here in the last 3 years, and another 1,200 that were built in the few years prior.  Now Facebook has leased space in the Brickworks, which is a very telling sign.  Atlanta is a tech hub of the South, and it helps that Georgia Tech is right there.  Atlanta is also one of the top cities for social media connection (I think only behind DC according to Menshealth, but always right up there).  That helps, too.







Octane Coffee is a good example of how a coffee shop should be (and Starbucks follows most of the rules): free wi-fi, liquor license, wine and beer, pastries/snacks/sandwiches prepared be nearby restaurants, really really nice baristas, local art hanging for sale, outdoor seating.





Parking on the roof:

[thelakelander]

Great pics.  Castleberry Hill still looks like I remember it.  There are still a number of vacant lots that take away from walkability but I'm sure the area will see significant infill over the next decade as the trend of coming back to the city center grows.  My guess is that like Jacksonville, many of those sites had buildings on them at one time that were torn down for one reason or another.



I like the small scale adaptive reuse and infill projects along Marietta in the last post.  When I was speaking about building scale in the Myrtle Avenue thread, these are the type of spaces I was referring too.  When you're dealing with square footage that scale in Jacksonville, a wider spectrum of people have the opportunity to play a role in the redevelopment/adaptive reuse/urban infill game.  I found a great local example yesterday in the Eastside (I'll have to go back and get a pic).  Pretty close to the Union Terminal warehouse on East Union, it appears that someone has converted a small vacant brick storefront into a private residence.

Btw, from a public ROW standpoint, does Atlanta have any plans to upgrade the quality of street/sidewalk infrastructure in these popular redevelopment areas?  Many of these areas would look completely different with a complete streets makeover.

[simms3]

WHITE PROVISIONS ON HOWELL MILL

Literally a quarter mile down from Brickworks (and past a few huge new apartment buildings with their own ground level retail) is the coolest development in the city (or one of them).

Jamestown Properties is a private German real estate fund manager with interests throughout the country.  It is headquartered in Atlanta, and it specializes in large projects in urban areas and large markets (the exception is their Warehouse Row in Chatanooga, which is really cool).  They are the capital provider and project manager for many projects in Atlanta, and they partnered with Chris Faussemagne (the son of the former CFO of Ritz Carlton when it was an Atlanta company owned by W.B. Johnson Int’l. ahem I mean Waffle House), Michael Phillips, and Mike Millett.

This is big league, big money stuff (like Legacy Property stuff nowadays).  I wouldn’t expect anything like this in Jacksonville, but, it would be nice to see a similar development between downtown and Springfield where the Claude Nolan Cadillac building is.

http://whiteprovision.com/





















If Atlanta can claim the best of any genre of food, it is the burger.  We have America’s best burger at Holeman & Finch, we have the Vortex, we have Fuze Burger, we have Top Chef Masters winner and Atlanta chef Richard Blais’ Flip Burger (down the road from all of this), and we have Yeah Burger here.  Go to any of them and be impressed.



Lots of garden and yard furniture stuff…



One of **Many** new condo/rental buildings in the area…

[simms3]

Smokestacks are all over Atlanta…a sign of its industrial times and something that you won’t find in other southern cities or Dallas/Houston.



Believe it or not that is a 5 star restaurant in the background, and the wait for a Saturday dinner can be months…





Yes, national retailers are here too (Room and Board is a super high end furniture shop shown earlier that is in only a few cities)







This is not the Atlanta Hermes (or maybe it’s another one?), but the Atlanta Hermes is actually not in a mall, but rather a district in Buckhead.

[simms3]

The same area…

[thelakelander]

Is the West Egg Cafe any good?  The last time I was up, I tried Carver's Country Kitchen, which isn't too far away.

[simms3]

Great pics.  Castleberry Hill still looks like I remember it.  There are still a number of vacant lots that take away from walkability but I'm sure the area will see significant infill over the next decade as the trend of coming back to the city center grows.  My guess is that like Jacksonville, many of those sites had buildings on them at one time that were torn down for one reason or another.



I like the small scale adaptive reuse and infill projects along Marietta in the last post.  When I was speaking about building scale in the Myrtle Avenue thread, these are the type of spaces I was referring too.  When you're dealing with square footage that scale in Jacksonville, a wider spectrum of people have the opportunity to play a role in the redevelopment/adaptive reuse/urban infill game.  I found a great local example yesterday in the Eastside (I'll have to go back and get a pic).  Pretty close to the Union Terminal warehouse on East Union, it appears that someone has converted a small vacant brick storefront into a private residence.

Btw, from a public ROW standpoint, does Atlanta have any plans to upgrade the quality of street/sidewalk infrastructure in these popular redevelopment areas?  Many of these areas would look completely different with a complete streets makeover.

I might be blind, but aside from maybe 3 lots, there aren't any vacant lots in Castleberry.  It's actually pretty walkable, but I do have a life you know and I didn't want to take up my afternoons and evenings with photos, so I took all of these on Saturday morning (and it was already above 90 degrees).

It's great that people are converting old buildings.  They are more of pioneers for doing so in Jacksonville than Atlanta because a) there are 5 million fewer people, b) there is a much higher risk that they will be alone for a while.  The word should be spread.

Also, regarding streetscapes in Atlanta, the city does not pay for them.  It is up to the neighborhoods.  That is why Midtown sidewalks are so nicely landscaped and wide and clean.  That is why downtown is always improving and now there are those permanent public toilets you see in New York or London in downtown Atlanta.  All of that is paid for by additional taxes via the community improvement districts.  The Westside is so newly redeveloped, all private sector, no TIF financing, that it will have to come into its own.  I agree, though, that it needs sidewalk help.  One thing Atlanta does have, even in areas with bad sidewalks, are crosswalks with timers and clean, covered bus shelters.

I just think Jax citizens are so selfish for getting mad at the city for building beautiful streetscapes and not having the money to keep them up (which is minimal effort and cost).  You pay barely any taxes, and the city still stepped in.  We pay 3x the property taxes and still the city won't do street work.  Jacksonville City Hall was very kind (in the long run of course...I know businesses suffered) to do the streetscapes.