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Originally Posted by mayhem
I could not disagree more. Centennial Place needs to be completely torn down. There shouldn't be a place for suburban gated apartments in the middle of the city. Also, things should not be built to fit those aparments scale. We've got the propsed Luckie St tower which will be 500 Ft, The Coke complex, The Roosevelt House, and the GSU villages in the area. I don't know the logistics of rezoning section 8 land but something REALLY needs to take the place of all the wasted space used up by those apartments. A one story single use building [the preschool] shouldn't be catered to. Something like that can be incorporated into a new mixed use development. I agree 100% with more evening use, but it seems like no one really wants to take the reigns in that industry anywhere in the city. We could really use about 10 more late night eateries. Your thoughts?
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My thoughts are that we have to deal with reality rather than what we wish was the case. The reality is that Centennial Place is relatively new and it is very unlikely that they would be torn down so early in their lifespan. That doesn't even get into the political realities of removing subsidized housing. I guarantee that the race card will be played if anyone tries to remove Centennial Place and the play of that card will be successful. Atlanta takes enough heat as it is for using Hope VI to tear down old housing projects and replace them with mixed income developments with much few units. It doesn't matter what any of our opinions are about subsidized government housing, the politicial climate is such that if you work for AHA try to replace that housing with high price condos, you will be looking for a new job. It's already a very sensitive issue that is ready to explode. Gentrification in the private sector is only throwing more fuel on the fire but because that's private, not that much heat can be pushed in that direction. As a result, the government programs get over attention. Perhaps in a couple of decades things will be different and financial investment into Centennial Place will have recovered enough to make redevelopment possible, but that's not now by a long stretch.
I do totally agree that it would be best for the city if the high density development that is happening in Downtown and Midtown was allowed to expand onto that land. Simple fact is no matter how valuable that land becomes, as long as there is a significant low income voting block in the city, any attempt to remove Centennial Place is going to be perceived as an attack on that voting block and the politicians will fall all over themselves to be the savior of Centennial Place and the common man who is being attacked and pushed out by those rich yuppies. Once again, the racial issue will come up as part of that no matter what is the actual racial make up of Centennial Place.
With the reality that Centennial Place is here to stay no matter what we think of it, it is wrong to try to smother it into oblivion by dwarfing it with towers of a totally different scale.
If you want to be outraged by something in the neighborhood, you should focus it on Centennial Park North, which has an acceptable (but not great) face along Centennial Olympic Park Drive but the bulk of the development is behind gates and along twisty private streets that could have provided connectivity between Luckie Street and Centennial Olympic Park Drive. The construction on that is just now finishing up so if it is a sign of what we can expect for intown development, we're in trouble.
I don't know why you used World of Coke as an example since its height would be a perfect step down from the new Post Allen Plaza and bridge the gap between Allen Plaza and Centennial Place. I'm certainly not argueing that the lot should have two or three story buildings. I'm saying that it should be a midrise that transitions from the highrises to the scale of Centennial Place. Even the GSU dorms make a decent transition towards Centennial Place. It's not like they're forty stories and the parking deck that sits between them, while still not the ideal structure to have next to any house, it not that tall. Six to eight stories is probably the maximum that can be resonably be expected to successfully transition.
The eateries will come. The French Brasserie opens early next year, as does the Luckie Food Lounge. Certainly if Centennial Place was a dense grid of mixed uses with a high residential and worker density that would attract more service businesses and on a faster pace but since Centennial Place is not going anywhere, any influence brought to bear on planning in the area needs to keep that reality in mind.
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