Part I – What’s Wrong With Atlanta?

Downtown Raleigh is experiencing an enormous amount of change. New projects are being proposed by the month, and the amount of investment proposed is staggering. In order to maximize this opportunity, we must ask what type of downtown we want. While each project may be exciting, none stands alone in its neighborhood. As evidenced by our existing facilities, there are collateral, systemic effects of each project.

One way to experiment with development styles is to look inward. We have several examples of successes and failures in our own downtown, and I’ll take a look at those later in this series. Another important tool is to learn from similar cities. There probably isn’t a more similar city out there than Atlanta, GA.

Atlanta bashers are a dime-a-dozen, but if we filter out the noise and look at some decisions Atlanta has made, we can learn from their experience. Atlanta is a Southern city with a similar climate to Raleigh’s. It is the state capital, is home of the state’s engineering school, and experienced much of the same developmental patterns over the last 50 years as Raleigh. Atlanta is a great lab for us because money has been abundant and the city has been able to experiment with many ideas.

Before the 1960′s Atlanta’s downtown was concentrated; full of businesses, government, and residents. During the 1960′s, however, American culture turned toward individual rights and urban crime rose dramatically. With an influx of investment came a new approach to protecting investments and citizens; the great indoors. For a period of nearly 30 years, one of the world’s most gorgeous skylines grew. Impressive interior spaces were created, and then connected above street level by enclosed tubes so as to create an safety-enforceable, climate-independent series of habitrails .

As the building tops told stories of success to those out in the burbs, the buildings’ feet were telling a different story. The streets were treating new investments poorly, so the investments responded by turning their back on the streets. New projects showed only blank concrete walls, parking garage entrances, and service entrances to the sidewalks. Gone were storefronts. Gone was the outdoor experience. Gone was life. With only a collection of blank walls and indoor labyrinths to greet Atlantans, downtown faded as a destination.

Take a walking tour and see for yourself. Let’s follow this map , and start at Centennial Olympic Park moving East on Harris Street.

Our tour is greeted with a blank corner across the street. To the right the first block features a surface parking lot on the right and left side of the street greets us with a blank concrete wall and a garage entrance to the former Inforum building. Where are the people?

A second look back.

As we approach the end of the first block, we are greeted with a construction project on the right and a concrete building across the street. It features a corner stairway with an interesting geometric pattern, but where does it lead? It’s more like a rhetorical question to the pedestrian, so it ought to be called “rhetorical architecture”. Looking to the left we see a totally empty block with a large overhead connector. This block is so boring and dark, it is scary. Let’s venture up the hill another block. Notice from the first picture that the block’s left side offers a series of columns. Unfortunately they adorn a blank wall and service entrances to the hulking mass above.

To the right we approach our first building and it features another column-adorned wall with no programming. There is nothing to do and there are no people. Above? More habitrails. Let’s keep moving Eastward.

We reach the end of our second block and look left (North) down Spring St. The right side of the street features an empty lot followed by a parking garage. If we cross Spring still looking left, we see the left side of the block is a long lobby to the mart.

Let’s turn right on Spring Street and walk a block to the South. Along the block we’re greeted by another mart lobby on the right and a blank wall on the left. Many, many habitrails fly above while the one-way traffic roars toward us. The wind through this dark block is so strong it is hard to walk straight.

We finally reach Andrew young Blvd and look back at the preceding block to see the high-flying habitrails.

Diagonally across the intersection is the stunning Westin Peachtree Plaza , formerly the world’s tallest hotel. The impressive cylinder was the city’s mascot and appeared in several films. While the top is still impressive, the bottom of this building continues to plague its surroundings. Looking up Andrew Young we see, on the right, the entrance to the hotel’s porte-cochere followed by a blank wall up a steep street. The left side offers us nothing more. Beyond the blank wall there is a parking garage. The Do Not Enter sign is humorous at this point. Let’s do enter and go up Andrew Young to Peachtree Street, Atlanta’s proudest street.

If we cross Peachtree and look back to the right, we see the main pedestrian entrance to the Westin. Is there anything going on here? Nope. To the left is the former Davidson’s department store. Thankfully there is stuff to do on this, the East side of the street. Let’s move North one block. This is the most interesting block as there are restaurants, retail stores, and people on both sides of the street.

When we reach the corner of Peachtree and Harris, we turn to the right, and what do we find? That’s right, another blank block. Near the mid block habitrail there is a small door to the left for the Hyatt Regency and to the right for the Peachtree Center. Both are marvelous interior applications of a hotel and urban mall, respectively.

The 340-foot tall Hyatt Regency is one of my favorite buildings. Completed in 1967, it was the first huge atrium hotel with glass elevators. Sitting on top of what once was Atlanta’s tallest building is a futuristic, blue-topped revolving bar that offered impressive views of the entire city. At the bottom a different story is told. The entire Peachtree St. facade is the hotel’s porte cochere.

Let’s go north to Baker Street and look around. Down to the right (East), we see another blank wall of the Hyatt facing Baker. Across the street is the 869-foot tall SunTrust Plaza . It looks great from a distance, but up close we see that its base is surrounded by a small park with no programming other than a few benches.

Let’s do a 180, go back to Harris, and turn right. Whoa! Here’s another block with nothing but blank walls. If we walk down this block and look back, we’d see the empty lot across the street.

Most of this tour concerns buildings by Atlanta architect John Portman . Clearly Portman was commissioned to provide an experience that isn’t confined by street boundaries, weather, or safety issues. My conclusion is that John Portman’s wife must have a fabulous face and the worst looking shoes you’ve ever seen. I honestly don’t know how to feel about his architecture now.

What’s sad is that this canyon effect continues all the way over to the Hilton at Harris and Courtland. In these blocks are some of the world’s greatest interiors, but these exteriors are an example of how design repels life from the sidewalks. While there may be life up in these catacombs, the long term effect is that downtown is perceived to be dead because its streets are dead.

In this tour there was exactly one block that had any forms of life, and it was vibrant. The other blocks are like ghost towns, and there aren’t many solutions for this section of Atlanta. All of the current investment in creating a great street experience has flown up to Midtown. If we are aiming for a downtown that has things to do for several blocks and has a human experience, we need to avoid placing consecutive canyons or we’ll have the same issues that this section of Atlanta has.