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HOW TO MAKE THE SUBURBS COOL
SEUG: As this issue was hitting newstands, the Athens-CLarke
County Commission was voting on Selig Enterprises' downtown
development. Citizens spent the past week rallying support
for delaying the project based on former commissioner Carl
Jordan's revelations in the June 26 Flagpoie about a forgotten
rail spur through the Armstrong & Dobbs property that could—
if the commission doesn't give it away—bypass two steep hills
and provide a level connection from East Athens to campus.
It looked at press time, though, like the commission would
approve the development anyway. Check Flagpole.com to find
out.
ATLANTA HIGHWAY: When Georgia Square Mall opened in the
early 1980s, downtown businesses headed for greener pastures,
or at least what used to be pastures. Drawn by cheap rents,
artists and musicians moved in, turning downtown into the
quirky, dynamic place we know and love today.
Auto-centric strip malls were the future then, and down
town main streets were the past. Ironically, now it's the big
boxes and shopping centers with acres of parking that are in
danger, and downtown is in some ways a victim of its own
success.
Let's be real: Atlanta Highway kind of sucks. It's the antith
esis of what we think of as Athens—sprawling and full of chain
businesses. It might as well be Snellville. But its franchise res
taurants and big boxes employ thousands of people and bring
in millions of dollars in tax revenue to the city. We can't afford
to let it die.
With a new outdoor mall in Oconee County threatening
to pull in retailers from Atlanta Highway, Commissioner Mike
Hamby put together a committee last year to find ways to revi
talize the corridor. That committee is paying the Urban Land
Institute $15,000 to brainstorm ways to fix the ailing corridor.
The institute brought 14 experts to Athens Thursday and Friday
to take a look at it for themselves.
They advised ACC officials to come up with a strategy, build
relationships with property owners, relax development stan
dards, provide tax incentives for job creation and improve sig
nage. It all sounded pretty rote, until Ryan Gravel spoke up.
Gravel is an urban designer who came up with the idea
for the Atlanta BeltLine, the transit and pedestrian loop
that promises to spur sustainable development in intown
neighborhoods.
"Oconee County is pursuing an outdated strategy," he said.
"In my opinion, it's a mistake to do what they're doing."
The creative types who saved downtowns like Athens'
are now being pushed out as those downtowns gentrify and
become more mainstream, Gravel said. At the same time, many
cities like Athens are also having trouble with vacant retail
space in their suburban corridors. Why can't creative people do
there what they did downtown?
"These can be kind of low-cost areas where people can get
creative and do something interesting," he said. "But that
might require lowering your standards" to give them the free
dom to do it.
He cited the example of Buford Highway, another aging
commercial corridor that found new life as a regional destina
tion for ethnic food. Maybe something similar could happen on
Atlanta Highway with music.
What if we convinced Georgia Square Mall to tear down its
outbuildings and some of its parking and replace them with
From cotton to condos.
greenspace, gathering places like coffee shops and a stage
where families could see concerts? What if we encouraged
developers to turn the shells of big boxes into lofts, artists'
studios, offices and band rehearsal spaces, the way we do with
abandoned industrial areas like the Chase Street warehouses?
What if we created a semi-walkable environment and con
nected the strip malls along the highway so shoppers didn't
have to get back in their cars, turn left across four lanes of
traffic and drive a quarter of a mile to get from Toys 'R' Us to
the mall?
"You can't compete with the suburbs," Atlanta transporta
tion planner Heather Alhadeff said. "You have to recognize your
uniqueness. You have to grab it. You have to celebrate it."
SOUTHERN MILL: Speaking of redevelopment, a Watkinsville-
based developer has submitted plans to turn a century-old
Boulevard mill into lofts.
Millworks Holdings, a Watkinsvilie-based company, intends
to renovate four vacant mill and warehouse buildings north of
Oneta Street and west of Chase Street into what was known
in a previous incarnation as Southern Mill Lofts. (An unnamed
company representative said in an email that the project is
now called Millworks.)
Although it's an attractive 18-acre site just blocks from the
Boulevard neighborhood and the Chase Street warehouses—a
similar and successful adaptive reuse project— the property
has sat vacant for years.
The Athens-CLarke Heritage Foundation owns an easement
on the buildings' facades, and the developer is applying for
state and federal tax credits that will require preserving the
interiors as well, ACHF Executive Director Amy Kissane said.
The State Office of Historic Preservation and the National Park
Service will have to sign off on the plans.
"With the facade easements, they are required to preserve
the exterior of the building," Kissane said. "Going for those
rehabilitation tax credits means they will be held to the high
est standards in our codes, which is great
news."
The Southern Manufacturing Co. built
the mill in 1900 to process cotton that
was shipped along the railroad running
adjacent to the property. The Wilkins fam
ily bought it in 1953 and started manu
facturing overalls, slacks and blue jeans
and storing dog food there. But like most
of Northeast Georgia's mills, it closed and
lay dormant before Atlanta-based Aderhold
Properties bought it in 2000. The Athens-
Clarke Commission approved Aderhold's
plans that year, but they never came to
fruition.
In an effort to generate interest in
the property, the Athens-Clarke Heritage
Foundation and the University of Georgia
College of Environment and Design held
a charette and symposium last year to
discuss what could be done with it. Ideas
participants came up with included an
arts community with affordable housing and studio space, an
assisted living center with live/work space for caretakers and
an incubator for light industries.
Millworks Holdings isn't using any of those ideas, though.
Instead, it's using the plans already approved by the commis
sion 13 years ago, except that it's not proposing any new con
struction, ACC planner Gavin Hassemer said. The complex will
now include 181 units with a total of 262 bedrooms, as well as
a parking lot.
"It will not be student housing," Kissane said. "They're
doing more creative residential."
Blake Aued news@flagpole.com
4 FLAGPOLE.COM-JULY3, 2013