Quote:
Originally Posted by Libertarian
Let me say a word in defense of Fuqua. I know you guys don't like his developments, I respect that, but let's look at the big picture here. Atlanta isn't San Francisco or Manhattan and in my opinion that's a good thing because those places are way over-gentrified. What is happening in SF and NY isn't sustainable. Atlanta has to provide deliverable product that fits the community needs. When there's an economic reset, and there will be sooner or later, SF and NY are toast. Meanwhile Atlanta enjoys steady, more-or-less sustainable growth because we're providing lots of housing and amenities for the other 99% of us, thanks to developers like Fuqua.
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You're right that Atlanta isn't Manhattan. My problem with Fuqua's developments isn't that they have cookie-cutter architecture or that they aren't dense enough; it's that their sites are badly designed. Fuqua still thinks it's 1995. Although he builds his developments in urban areas where cars are not the only way people get around, he still designs them as if absolutely everyone will be driving to them, and if a pedestrian should happen to wedge their way in every once in awhile, then yay for them
If the site plan is accurate, pedestrians can only access the site in two places. That's appalling. Of course, since the center is just a giant parking lot with no footpaths, the retail isn't even easily accessible to the people who live
inside of the thing. There isn't even a way to walk from the large retail space to the smaller ones without navigating what looks to be some kind of mutant six-way intersection.
If they made the retail more contiguous, added a pedestrian plaza to the middle of the parking lot, added street-side pedestrian access to the apartments, homes, and retail (similar to what was done in Lindbergh where each retail space has two entrances), and maybe (now I'm just dreaming) got rid of the fortress-like design of the subdivision and added some public greenspace, then the development would actually be pretty nice. None of that is outlandish, but if history is any indication, none of it will be done without a hell of a fight. I'm worried that Loring Heights doesn't have the resources to save that lot from Fuqua's suburban garbage.
For contrast: Even as poorly-designed as Atlantic Station's mall is (why in the world is State St. treated like a back alley?), it caters first and foremost to pedestrians. Cars are allowed in there by the thousands, but they're kept underground and out of sight. Did you know the BB&T building is actually sitting on a 5-6 story parking deck? Probably not... it's completely camouflaged from the outside. All that was done on a vacant brownfield site a good distance from the Midtown Mile (where everything was happening in the days Atlantic Station was built), and it never needed to be that way. They could have very easily built giant surface lots around a mall and made the whole thing car-oriented. Say what you will about the various architectural flaws of the thing, but they were very forward-thinking when they designed that site, and it's going to pay off as the density increases in the future. Fuqua is doing the opposite.
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