Comments on: 315 W. Ponce (aka Decatur Court) Plans and Studies Now Online

By: David

David — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:29:32 +0000

It’s not about building in parking lots its about what they build in parking lots. The quality of the construction and the way it blends in with the surrounding area. Most of the buildings in Decatur date from the early part of the 20th century. Most of whats gone up lately has been a sort of ad-hoc post modernism so beloved of develpoers because its cheap and and looks sort of ok for a while.

I really think what the blogs can do best is get enough info out there so we can create enough friction that the cheap devs won’t want to deal with the hassle. The high end folks won’t have a problem. But mister bait and switch oh by the way we need a tad and 100 more units to make the numbers work will go else where.

A historic district is good but it didn’t seem to help the folks in Druid Hills much on the Emory Village issue. Rader asked for hard numbers and wasn’t much interested in aesthetic concerns when they approved the overlay. But then most of our elected officials are involved with developers in one way or another.

I’m not anti-dev I just want more than money to drive these decisions. For the area we live in Decatur is pretty unique. I’d like to see it stay that way.

By: decaturite

decaturite — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:00:22 +0000

Hagus…we would probably have to caffeinate the heck out of the HPC if we did that.

By: Hagus

Hagus — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:24:07 +0000

Downtown historic district… I think we need historic districts just about over the entire city.

By: Scott

Scott — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:13:16 +0000

I think I’m missing something. Hasn’t all of downtown’s notable growth for the past ten years has been built on old parking lots? Which ones displaced historic buildings (and the Relapse Inn doesn’t count!)?

At some point, though, the potential infill lots are going to fill up, which will increase development pressure on our small-scale historic stock. I agree with DM that it would be a good idea to have a HD — or other protection — in place before that happened. Otherwise, David’s fears of bulldozers will become all too real.

By: Lain

Lain — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:10:02 +0000

@ G.G – Despite my relationship, I’m sad to report that I don’t receive much juicy insider information, let alone top-secret facts about proposed developments. I wish! Mostly I hear about who in the office is having a baby, etc. Yawn.

I only knew about the 315 documents when I asked and was told that they’d put up a link on the News Flash part of the Decatur web site.

@ Everyone else, I think that quality materials are crucial to a great, neighborhood-friendly, lasting development. Let’s hope their already planning on using something those and not something like EIFS.