Trinity Triangle Project Should Begin Construction Next Year
Decatur Metro | September 18, 2013
After years and years of false starts, the Trinity Triangle construction project has a vague start date. In case you missed this blurb in the latest Decatur Focus…
The Trinity Triangle, at the intersection of E. Trinity and E. Howard and including the Dairy Queen, is moving into the permitting phase. The project includes 200 upscale apartment units with retail fronting along E. Trinity. It is being coordinated with planned streetscape improvements along the Trinity corridor as well as the upcoming intersection improvement at the railroad crossing. Dairy Queen will remain as a tenant in the project. Construction should begin around the middle of 2014.
Photo courtesy of Google Maps
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As long as I can still cut through the DQ parking lot to Howard when it’s done, I’m cool with it. If not, hell no!
this must be where the trader joe’s is going. about time.
The closer I get to not having to drive a car at all the better. Traffic is going to be horrendous here in a few years.
With every new residential project downtown there are predictions of traffic Armageddon. Yet, the statistics don’t bear that out.
Even though residential units have increased like 1000% over the past decade in downtown Decatur, traffic counts have actually decreased. When you create a walkable community, you can increase density and not increase traffic.
I heard that you were drunk and mean
Down at the Dairy Queen.
There’s just enough of you in me for me to have this sympathy.
Hanging out in the parking lot at Dairy Queen
You’ve been a dropout ever since you’ve been seventeen
This is a great project for this side of town. Lots of positives for this new development. The West Howard Street area has needed some new higher density residential for a long time (maybe we will see the few buildings left to improve move forward!). It will also help push the city to improve the intersections. Bring much needed streetscape improvements along Trinity and bring a leg of downtown over to the Winnona Park / Agnes Scott College area. All of this new “Heads-in-Beds” will be good for the city once everyone gets over the shock of them all.
It’s all about the density … How dense! Goin OTP Baby, oh yeah!…and I’m tired of waitin for Trader Joes BTW! LOL!
I’ve heard the claims that traffic will not increase, but I have a feeling that most of the new residents will not be working in downtown Decatur. Growth for growth’s sake is a bad idea. I don’t want Decatur to end up like Virginia Highlands– it’s gridlock over there sometimes.
Don’t think of it as growth for growth’s sake. Think of it as growth for school’s sake. Downtown residential is the only area of town that, at the neighborhood scale, consistently contributes positively to Decatur’s bottom line. We revere our neighborhoods, and for good reason, but they don’t tend to pay their own way. The more families we attract to our single family homes (I’m one of ‘em) the faster we dip into the red.
If you’re a parent or otherwise have an interest in the school system, you owe a big hug to every new downtown single or childless couple (who compromise the vast majority of downtown residents). They’re what offers us the prospect of our high standards that many communities simply can’t afford.
I thought it was businesses that offset us revenue-negative households with kids, much more than no-kid households. If the bottom line was the only issue, I’m not sure that lots of childless condos and apartments will help the school system enough, especially since they will increase the number of schoolchildren, however small that increase. CSD’s problem isn’t purely a financial one but that it has a finite ability to grow in terms of classroom space, no matter what it obtains from local tax support.
“I thought it was businesses that offset us revenue-negative households with kids, much more than no-kid households.”
I doubt it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the downtown condos payed more in property taxes than all the businesses combined. And I’d guesstimate they have less than 20 kids in the school system.
The Artisan residents, for example, probably pay close to a half-million in combined property taxes, and I believe there are three kids in the school system who live there. ( I meant to add this to my comment above, but the editing timed out on me.)
This is a critical issue to establish. I’m instinctively for density and walkability because that’s what I enjoy. But my sense is that CSD is at the breaking point in terms of retaining its unique value in the face of burgeoning numbers of students. I’m worried that there’s a tipping point at which every additional student, no matter how much money we have to deal with them, is hard for the system to assimilate. Of course, tipping points are tricky to predict. I suspect that you often identify them retrospectively.
Not necessarily disputing anything but a couple additional thoughts:
First, didn’t we determine in recent discussions that downtown apartments (as opposed to condos) were considered a commercial enterprise and thus were taxed even higher than the condos?
Second, while I agree that CSD is bulging at the seams, it’s also true that we have many single family homes in Decatur that don’t currently have kids but could. Unless we’re prepared to put breeding restrictions on currently childless homes
(an intrusion no one would tolerate), I don’t see how we can apply a similar logic to downtown by preventing landowners from legally meeting market demand for apartments. A wider spectrum of residents (age, income and ethnicity-wise) is a goal of the city; packing more families into more SF homes is not, so we shouldn’t — policy wise — behave in a way that incentivizes what we’re not seeking while obstructing what we are seeking.