AJC moving to Metro Atlanta’s real downtown
August 17, 2009 at 4:20 pm by Andisheh Nouraee in NewsObviously, by leaving its Marietta Street headquarters and heading north, the AJC is leaving the City of Atlanta’s Downtown business district.
But before one declares the AJC is abandoning the city, ask yourself a question: what city?
Perimeter Mall area is actually more of a city center to more metro Atlantans than the area we actually call Downtown.
Take a look at Colliers Spectrum Cauble’s most recent report on Atlanta’s office market and you’ll see there are as many offices above the top-end of I-285 as below. The office submarket to which the AJC is moving, Central Perimeter, has more office space than either Downtown, Midtown or Buckhead. It’s been that way for a long time.
Commerce isn’t the only thing that defines a downtown, but it’s arguably the single largest factor. Like every other society in the developed world, the geography of our lives is determined by the geography of our livelihoods. People generally want to live close to where they work. People shop, go to school and recreate close to where they live. Remember, 90 percent of the people who call themselves Atlantans live in the suburbs.
The AJC’s new Perimeter office will be closer to where more Atlantans sleep, work, eat and poop than Marietta Street. Like it or not, Perimeter is the real center of town.
I’m not saying I approve of the AJC’s move. I’m suggesting we acknowledge a reality about our city: Downtown isn’t downtown.
August 17th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Andy, I get your point, but one of the reasons more people live and offices locate outside downtown is that there’s more SPACE. “Downtown” is a finite area so its real estate is rarer and more expensive. Comparatively, the ‘burbs are cheap. The South doesn’t have the culture of 30-story high-rise living, like Manhattan; its culture is sprawl. That said, Downtown Atlanta is more vibrant now than it has been for 30 years. Downtown is still the home of the central largest municipal government in our area. There’s no way you can call “the Perimeter Mall area” a city. (Okay – whew! – here endth my sermon.)
August 17th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
I agree with all but one thingou said. I’m not sure that comparable office space/real estate is cheaper around Perimeter than it is in and around Atlanta’s Downtown.
40 years of lousy city, county, state and even national leadership, combined with some good ol’-fashioned southern racism, fractured Downtown into its component parts.
The place called Downtown has govt. buildings, is at the hub our transport network.
The cultural hubs of the city are around, but not in Downtown.
The commerce all over the place.
Perimeter Mall area is a not a downtown in the sense that think of one. But neither is the actual place called Downtown.
August 17th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
First off, Andy, I know we’re tight and all but you don’t know where I poop.
Also, Intownwriter, I have the same personal feelings you do about Downtown but I need to correct one misstatement – office space in Central Perimeter is actually more expensive than Downtown.
Urban living may indeed be more expensive but urban officing is cheaper.
August 17th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
I think this post, and the Colliers Cauble report, miss the crucial point: “Central Perimeter” is larger (in acreage) than Midtown and Downtown combined. In other words, it is only by artificially dividing Downtown from Midtown that one can mask the true strength, and the centrality, of the city’s core. Given the common urban character of Midtown & Downtown, it is more accurate to consider Downtown and Midtown together. Once you do that, you realize that it blows away “Central Perimeter” (that oxymoron) and every other district.
August 17th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Maybe the move will allow the AJC to devote more paper to the crooks OTP.
August 17th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
BPJ-
I think you’re correct that dividing Downtown, Midtown, and Buckhead is somewhat arbitrary.
But so is dividing Perimeter, North Fulton and offices around Cumberland.
Combined, those markets far exceed the Intown office market.
And once you get into the burbs, along 75 and 85, there’s a heap o industrial real estate next to those offices too.
Next to, of course, is relative term. It’s sprawling out there, as you point out.
My point isn’t that intown Atlanta is irrelevant, however. My point is that the geographic center of the development you and I are talking about is a lot closer to Perimeter Mall than it is to Downtown.
August 17th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
‘There’s no way you can call “the Perimeter Mall area” a city.’
And there’s no way you can call the AJC much of a newspaper. sad.
August 17th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
All the geniuses here are forgetting one thing. The “Perimeter Mall area” and the new AJC headquarters are in the “city” of Dunwoody. Love it or hate it; it’s still a city.
August 17th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
One of the things that makes Atlanta unique, good or bad, is that it has three central business districts within the City of Atlanta each with its own character.
Downtown – government, conventions/hospitality, sports/other massive events, growing education sector, still a player in professional services – still plenty of law firms and accounting firms.
Midtown – arts/cultural, nightlife, increasing player in professional service firms
Buckhead – shopping, fine dining, financial service firms (not banks – as most of those are in Downtown or Midtown)
You can also argue that the suburbs have two “central” business districts – Cumberland/Galleria and Perimeter. Yes, Perimeter is the largest submarket by square footage of office space, but this is probably not that unique if you look at other cities – ever been along the LBJ Fwy in Dallas?
Another interesting thought, Manhattan is divided into three central business districts – Downtown, Midtown South and Midtown. Although the historic heart of New York is Downtown (the financial district), Midtown is by far the much larger submarket – and what most people feel is the heart of that city.
August 17th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
At some point in my studies, we talked about various theories trying to explain how cities develop — the most simple and probably widely known being “Concentric Circles.”
A contemporary theorist called today’s pattern of development “Pepperoni Pizza.” It almost seems appropriate.
August 17th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
I like my development with extra cheese.
August 18th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Andisheh,
I’ve thought about your argument, and I just can’t agree that it’s arbitrary to divide Perimeter & N. Fulton. Taken together, that’s an enormous swath of land, and I can’t meaningfully conceive of it as a “district”. Downtown, Midtown, and perhaps Buckhead, look like more of a unit to me, and are more geographically compact.
I will admit I am biased in favor of cities; I prefer them over suburbs. (I’m glad some people have different prefernces; if everyone wanted to live intown, I couldn’t afford to live there.) I do think that the movement away from cities in the 60s, 70s, and 80s was an aberration, nationally and locally, and there’s plenty of data to support that. Midtown and Downtown are growing together into a vibrant district; right now there’s more vibrancy in Midtown, but I predict within 10 years few people will think of the two as seperate.
Anyway, as for the AJC, good riddance to bad rubbish.
August 18th, 2009 at 11:20 am
I hope it’s evident I’m not happy about what I’m describing.
August 18th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Yes.
August 18th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
It’s an interesting story how the huge number of people who moved into Metro Atlanta over the past 30 years have primarily moved into those northern suburbs, with so much office construction building up around that area.
How odd that this happened despite the major efforts to build a transportation infrastructure around the concept of the center of the City of Atlanta being the center of activity. The completion of 75 and its union with 85 through town; the completion of of 400 into Buckhead; the MARTA rail network — all of this very expensive work was done with the center of the city in mind as the nexus.
I wonder what happened. Did the City of Atlanta/Fulton County not do enough planning or invest enough money into making the intown area (or at least the area near 285) more livable as this infrastructure was being built? Certainly we’ve seen some population gains intown in the last 15 years, but as this statistic of 90% living in the suburbs points out, the intown population is a drop in the bucket comparatively.
August 18th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
I wish I had time to address that question adequately – here’s the short version:
The interstates divided (and in some cases, destroyed) intown neighborhoods. At a minimum, they discourage people from walking (or bike riding) from one part of the city to the other when it involves crossing over the interstate. Try to visualize what the city looked like before these giant rivers of concrete splashed down. For instance, in Midtown, to cross over the connector (ironic name), you can take 5th, 10th, 14th (when it reopens), or 17th; before the interstates, you could also have gone east-west on 6th, 7th, 8th, etc.
The interstates also encouraged moving to the suburbs, as they seemed to offer easy access between the center of town and outlying areas. (Eisenhower was appalled when he saw much of this.) That worked for a while, until the numbers of people began clogging these arteries.
Cheap land made it possible to offer cheaper housing in the burbs -obviously that was and is an attraction.
Yes, race played a role, as the end to legalized segregation made some people uncomfortable.
MARTA has helped the Downtown/Midtown area no doubt; note that all the condos and offices there tout proximity to MARTA. But the way MARTA was designed was not a typical city subway, for the most part. A few years ago, the first director of MARTA remarked that IF they had known that counties such as Cobb and Gwinnett would opt out of MARTA, they would have designed the rail network very differently – meaning that it would have been built much more like a true city subway system, with a lot more stations in the city of Atlanta, and most of the stations designed to serve mainly passengers who arrive and depart on foot. Instead, we have a hybrid, with a handful of city-subway stations (between 5 Points and Arts Center, and a few on the east-west line), and a number of suburban commuter rail type stations. Of course we need commuter rail, but such a system is more useful when it has a true city transit network to plug into.
That’s an abbreviated answer. One other point: beyond the numbers of people moving intown or to suburbs, the trends of WHO chooses to move WHERE are interesting. Over the past 20 years, the city has gone from being less educated and lower income, compared to suburbia, to the opposite. It takes time for people’s perceptions to catch up to this reality, but the trend is clear.
August 18th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Thanks for the interesting response, BPJ. I hadn’t read before about Eisenhower’s displeasure with interstate-based suburban growth.
I also wasn’t aware of the higher education levels of Atlanta city residents. Hopefully these educated residents will grow to favor the implementation of measures that build a more sustainable transportation/development scenario in Atlanta — one that relies less heavily on car transit and more so on pedestrian movement.