(EVERY time I drove on the bottom deck, I'd look up and wonder what this would do in an earthquake. EVERY TIME. Now we know...)
Posted on 03/03/2019 1:09:07 AM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
After roaming around and studying downtown for a week, the Urban Land Institute’s advisory services panel provided Atlanta leaders with recommendations on how to move forward with the colossal proposed “Stitch” project.
On Friday, ULI, which conducts land use research for cities around the globe, suggested the time is now to partner with local elected officials and philanthropic organizations to get the ball rolling on fundraising efforts for the potentially 14-acre project that would install a massive park and new construction above the Downtown Connector.
But in order to be competitive for public and private funding—panelists expect the highway-capping project could cost upwards of $450 million—neighborhood leaders will have to map out plans to ensure the finished product spurs equity not just for downtown residents and businesspeople, but for those in neighboring communities.
The Stitch plan calls for a massive park to be built above a portion of the interstate between the Civic Center MARTA station and Piedmont Road, which panelists—architects, city planners, transportation experts, and developers—say could pay in tremendous dividends for stakeholders, such as health and wellness benefits.
The “world-class park” that would anchor the development, panelists say, should probably span about five of the 14 acres identified for capping, and it should be one of the first parts of the project addressed.
After all, good green space can greatly enhance the value of nearby real estate—a boon to the local economy that could help perpetuate the other goals of the Stitch project and the Downtown Atlanta Master Plan.
Additionally, some areas in and around downtown—and especially Midtown—are what panelist Glenn Smith, founder of Washington D.C.-based landscape architecture firm PUSH Studio, called “park poor.”
(Excerpt) Read more at atlanta.curbed.com ...
PING.
Basically, they’d build a deck above ground-level projects, and the deck would have tons of dirt, landscaping, trees and shrubs place upon it.
There’s several communities around the US and Europe who’ve done the same thing....highly-priced projects to add ‘green’ to the landscape. The problem I would see is that problems will occur, and the actual costs will soar to three times the current prediction.
I see this boondoggle as an ideal candidate for federal infrastructure funds, with politicians’ friends poised to live well off the project for at least a decade.
Exactly. Green space above a road deck? sounds to me like a whole new slant on carbon capture. Let all the little kids and people absorb all the pollution and viola! Not one federal dollar should go to this insanity. Fix our roads, do not engage in these things.
The development of urban parks and building space over inner city expressways is ferociously expensive and technically challenging. Rarely can it pass serious cost benefit analysis, let alone attract sufficient state and local funding. I can imagine several cities muscling their snouts into the federal for such projects, but the odds are against more than a handful getting built. But the conzultants should do well in preparing multi-volume studies and reports for such proposals.
Yet they do sometimes get built. Dallas did one a number of years ago over the Walton Walker freeway underpass. It's pretty nice.
(EVERY time I drove on the bottom deck, I'd look up and wonder what this would do in an earthquake. EVERY TIME. Now we know...)
It worked in Dallas because the expressway was built in a trench, so the park ended up between the frontage roads at ground level.
There is also the High Line park in NYC. Yet few cities now have the physical structure and property values necessary to such pronects.
way too much ‘shiny object syndrome’ in Atlanta development
The best comment in the story. Atlanta has a traffic problem. Cheap action could improve traffic congestion by 20% or 30%.
Atlanta has signage that is designed to confuse.
Atlanta has signage that is dangerous. At the exit from the expressway to arterial streets there are “No Right Turn signs with a red slash through a right turn arrow. The intent is to prevent traffic going wrong way on the expressway. But the red slash was of poor quality tape and has faded to where it is invisible. The result is that drivers think an exit is an entrance. Most discover their error half way down the ramp. I’ve seen innumerable traffic jams where cars are blocked from exiting the expressway and backing up traffic on the expressway due to a wrong-way drivers trying to turn around and correct their mistake.
Atlanta traffic lights are crazy. Near me there is a traffic light at the intersection of a busy street and a dead end street with 1 house. One block further on the busy street is a traffic light on a street with four families. Throughout the entire Atlanta metro area there are traffic light locations that make no sense.
The timing of the traffic lights makes no sense. When the light is at the intersection of a low traffic and high traffic street, why does the low traffic street have equal or more green time on than the green time on the high traffic street.
There are numerous cheap solutions that could improve Atlanta traffic problems by 20% or 30%. But Atlanta and Georgia leaders are all chasing the big, expensive shiny object.
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No one has complained about the all white park goers in the rendering?
Oh, no, they are complaining!!!
In fact, that’s the big controversy. The local race baiters are making a big stink that there’s not enough egress for hoodrats and BT-1000s to get there and rob YT.
ingress, not egress. Egress is important, too. Gotta outrun the PO-leeze.
If they can build a park on a concrete deck... they can put up something productive.
A nice office building.
Throw on a ‘green roof’ if they like.
The Old Main Post
Office: Before and After
For 20 years, the 2.5 million square–foot
facility has sat empty. Soon, it will take
shape as a sleek new office building.
“Fortunately, when the complex was mothballed by the United States Postal Service, original ornamentation, such as brass medallions, were put into storage. Other items, including lighting fixtures and the lobby’s revolving doors, were sent off-site to be refinished. The restored lobby is also expected to double as an event space in addition to serving as an entry point for the new Post Office, Schulze adds.”
https://www.chicagomag.com/real-estate/July-2018/The-Old-Main-Post-Office-Before-and-After/
Photos and details.
Sits above Interstate 290, the main east /west artery out of Chicago.
The original 1922 structure was a brick-sided mail terminal building, sited just east of the main building that spans the Eisenhower Expressway as it turns into Ida B. Wells Drive. Major expansion in 1932 added a total of nine floors for more than 60 acres (24 ha), or 2.5 million square feet (230,000 m²), of floorspace. Its footprint, as initially designed, would have blocked the proposed Congress Parkway extension; as a compromise, a hole for the Parkway was reserved in the base of the Post Office and utilized twenty years later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Chicago_Main_Post_Office
Is that a pic of the Oakland bay bridge? Looks like it.
I don’t worry about the Walton Walker underpass caving in. It’s essentially a short span of tunnel running under about a quarter mile of parkland.
And it was built by Texans to Texas standards.
First thing I noticed before scrolling down to your comment.
Remarkable. The size of that facility gives one an appreciation of how important it, the US mail system, and Chicago once were in the country’s commercial life. The delays and issues in its redevelopment seem to mark Chicago’s recent economic struggles.
https://openhousechicago.org/sites/site/chicago-post-office/
The photo at the link, of the Pony Express panel.
Oh my!
The lobby floor (terrazzo? stone?) and the surrounding panels might just pull me down there for a walk through.
I’m about fifty klicks west and I hate the city.
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