2025 Peachtree Road odyssey
Atlanta Business Chronicle - by Martin Sinderman Contributing Writer
Its name is practically a synonym for Atlanta. Historians say it takes this name from either a former Creek Indian settlement "Standing Peachtree," or for a particularly noteworthy pine, or pitch, tree that stood at the juncture of the Chattahoochee River and Peachtree Creek in the early 1800s.
Built along the top of the granite ridge that divides two major Southeastern drainage basins, it starts in the southern half of the city, near the Garnett Street MARTA rail station. It runs about 10 miles north by northeast to Brookhaven, bisecting downtown, Midtown, Brookwood and Buckhead/Lenox, changing from a "street" to a "road" along the way.
Peachtree Street has anchored, defined and linked development in Atlanta's urban submarkets over time.
Development trends along the Peachtree Road of 2025 will change the look of the metro area's premier thoroughfare -- in some stretches subtly, in others dramatically.
Look for an accelerating pace of high-density, mixed-use development along Peachtree between downtown and Brookhaven during the next couple of decades, said Jim Carson, vice chairman of Carter & Associates.
"Ultimately, this is going to be one long mixed-use corridor -- not just office, but also condominiums, apartments and retail," Carson said.
The downtown portion of the corridor will be more residential in character.
"You are going to see a lot of residential development between now and 2025," Carson said. "And when that takes hold, new office development will become more desirable than it is now."
Increasing densities of office and residential development along the Midtown portion of Peachtree will trigger more retail development, while Buckhead/Lenox "will clearly remain a center for retail development, along with high-density office, condominium and apartment development," Carson said.
Residential development along Peachtree will increase in the coming years, said Bill Halter, a principal in Thompson Ventulett Stainback & Associates Inc.
"People don't want to be trapped into commuting anymore," Halter said. As this attitude grows in the Atlanta area, "it will lead to more residential development along Peachtree which, given Atlanta's linear growth pattern, is the `spine' to which all else is attached."
Park or Michigan Avenue
Some see Peachtree taking on the characteristics of notable streets in other major urban areas.
"I think pockets of Peachtree will start to resemble [Chicago's] Michigan Avenue," said Mark Fritz, vice president of The Griffin Co. "There are properties already in place that I don't see changing, due to the costs of redevelopment, but there are some areas, especially between Fifth and 14th streets, that are really starting to take shape."
The stretch of Peachtree running north from around Piedmont Hospital to West Wesley Road is increasingly becoming the Park Avenue of Atlanta, Carson said.
"This is where you are going to see more very high-end residential, with the single-family neighborhoods along that stretch becoming more and more pricey -- and more and more treasured," he said.
With the development of condominiums and apartment projects including Post Peachtree, "the area from Piedmont Hospital to the Roswell Road split seems to be taking on a kind of Park Avenue character, which could easily continue over time," said Ed Allen, vice president for development at Post Properties Inc.
The lower-density/single-family neighborhoods behind the high-density developments that front Peachtree from Midtown through Buckhead are likely to stay that way in the future, said Larry Keating, associate professor for the graduate program in city and regional planning at Georgia Tech.
The Peachtree Street corridor has what Keating calls the "hardest" zoning in the Atlanta region.
"The line that runs behind the office and commercial development on the street as it passes by neighborhoods like Ansley Park and Peachtree Hills is a rigid line that will hold," he said.
Like Carson, Richard Bowers & Co. President Richard Bowers foresees an increasing level of high-density development along Peachtree between now and 2025.
"There will be a real densification along Peachtree from the Garnett Street MARTA station to Brookhaven, with a lot of new office, retail, hotels and residential buildings," Bowers said.
In the office sector, "a number of these buildings are going to be in the 50-story range," he said.
How these projects are developed is important to the character of Peachtree and Atlanta as a whole, said Jeff Floyd, president of John Portman & Associates.
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