Polaris to reopen?
January 13th, 2009 by Cliff Bostock in News
The Atlanta Business Chronicle is reporting that the iconic Polaris restaurant and lounge atop the Regency Hyatt is scheduled for remodeling as a private luxury lounge. The Polaris, which looks like a blue space ship, has been closed for several years.
When the Polaris opened in 1967, it immediately became a major tourist attraction, as did the hotel itself because of its open atrium, gurgling fountains, glass elevators and cage of exotic parrots. The hotel, built by John Portman, was the tallest in Atlanta, so that the Polaris gave the best view of the city. It has long since been dwarfed by other buildings.
As a teenager, I used to visit the hotel with the requisite soap in hand to turn the fountains into bubble baths. My other main memory of the place was that it became a regular site of suicides. People would jump from the upper level of the atrium.
(Photo courtesy of Waymarking.com)
January 13th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Aw, I didn’t realize it had been closed. When I was a kid, probably right around 1967 when it opened (hey, my family must have been super trendy!), we piled in the car and went to the Polaris. I remember drinking a Shirley Temple. The Regency (pre-Hyatt, I think?) also had a great gift shop filled with stuffed animals I used to beg my parents to buy for me. I think they actually succumbed.
I’m glad it’s going to re-open.
January 13th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Great. Another luxury lounge. My parents took me and my brothers there in the 70s. We wore our beset polyester pants and turtlenecks. We really felt part of the In Crowd. Now that I am an adult, I won’t be able to take my kids. Well, the Real Housewives of Atlanta will probably love it.