Avondale Buys Vacant, Half Built Publix Site and Plans For Mixed Use
Decatur Metro | January 2, 2014Decaturish reports on Avondale’s purchase of the now infamous, half-built Publix site with quotes from Mayor Ed Rieker.
Avondale Estates Mayor Ed Rieker said the city’s purchase of downtown property that’s been vacant for years is a sign that the city has regained some economic momentum.
Rieker said the 4.09 acres located along Oak Street, Franklin Street and North Avondale Road has been a drag on the city’s development prospects.
“It has been a deterrent to development because it just has put us in kind of a stuck place,” Rieker said.
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Photo courtesy of Google Maps
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Excellent. Perhaps this can spur more development movement.
Agreed. SO much potential there. That road gets a lot of traffic, and with the renaissance of the German (Austrian?) style buildings a little further down, I do believe we’re seeing the start of a new era for AE. They’ve dealt with some frustrating stops and starts over the past few years, so this is great news.
Tudor style, actually.
As a future biz owner, I’ve got my eye on AE. We live close and I really think it’s gonna be the Next Big Thing. Decatur is full, so AE is the next logical step. I truly hope that we can make OUR dream come true in AE in the next few years!
They didn’t buy the site pictured (which is reportedly under contract by someone). They bought the site that had been planned for the Publix but no work had yet been done.
The description sounds more like the old rubber or tire factory around Skip’s and the Post Office. Is that the right place? Good location if it is but very narrow streets leading to it from all directions if I recall.
Oak St. runs beside Skip’s and Franklin runs parallel to N. Avondale Rd., one block to the north. Property “located along Oak St., Franklin St. and N. Avondale Rd.” must be the parcel across Oak St. from Skip’s.
The property pictured above is at the corner of E. College and Maple St., a few blocks to the west. It was specifically mentioned in the Decaturish article that the City of Avondale did NOT purchase that property and that it is under contract to another party.
Thanks. Removed the pic.
Scott’s right. Post needs correcting.
The update to our LCI study is just getting wrapped up…calls for a road diet on College, mixed use, a “usable” town green behind the Tudor block, and possibly a roundabout at College and Clarendon. Museum School has a lot of support, it was even on the tour of homes. I’d be curious what the stats are on the private school population in Decatur and if it has dropped over the years. Seems the taxes and single family home prices are so high because you’re paying for a defacto private school system there…a little simplistic, but it certainly is part of it.
2013-2014 enrollment at Friends School of Atlanta in Decatur was a record high despite the popularity of the Museum School.
A good local public school system does not necessarily decrease private school attendance. Plenty of City of Decatur parents do not send their kids to CSD. This is true in other affluent communities that have excellent public schools, e.g. Greenwich, Connecticut or Chappaqua, New York. Affluent folks can afford private school AND a big renovated house with high local school taxes. And the Atlanta Metro area has a tradition of a particularly robust selection of private schools. Folks send their children to private school, despite having good local public schools, for a variety of reasons:
– Religious affiliation (e.g. Catholic, Quaker, Jewish)
– Ability to address special needs or special talents (e.g. dyslexia or other learning disorders, art or music, foreign language)
– Better marketing
– Specific curriculum or approach (e.g. Montessori or language immersion)
– More responsiveness to parent questions, concerns, and feedback
– Smaller class sizes (in some, not all, private schools)
– Belief that private education has to be better than something public
– Elitism
Something still common in Decatur is to send one’s child to a few years of CSD K-3, then to private school. Some may be trying to save a few years worth of tuition; others may be waiting for their child to get into their private school of choice; others found that CSD did not fit their child. It used to be that folks would say they were “worried about Renfroe”–now they usually cite a specific feature of the private school as the reason for the change. Interestingly, a few kids come back to CSD at the Renfroe or DHS level, either because their private school ended at a certain grade level or because the child lobbied to come back.
Commercial may have been “stuck” recently but residential seems to be on fire in AE. New construction all over the place and home prices appear to be quite high. Not quite up to the eye-watering levels of Decatur, but far from cheap.
AE has shown a lot of potential lately with some nice commercial developments, but I think they really need more residential development along East College. I know a lot of people like the low-key feel of the road, but if they want to attract a lot of commercial development, they’ll need to push for some residential, or mixed-use developments. Need a lot more people walking and biking along that corridor to really take off.
That part of E College gets a ton of cycling traffic, as it is used by many cyclists in lieu of a section of the Stone Mountain trail.
If Avondale could change the street scape on College to be more pedestrian and bike friendly, they’d have a winner. i recall that the original plan was to center the whole development on another street parallel to College – while not big box focused (well, Publix), the artistic drawings reminding me of the cloistered walled-off “feel” of Edgewood or Atlantic Station.
I hope any newer plan is more externally inviting (from College) to the local community.
If Avondale development were to take off, I think there’s a market for a “circulator bus” during weekends that does a downtown Decatur to Avondale (and Oakhurst) loop? I’m just thinking of the brewery tour possibilities alone … (Blue Tarp, 3 Taverns, Wild Heaven)
Too bad the schools stink. That’s what happens when people move into the nice AE area and then send their kids to private schools.
Well actually – sticking just to public schools – the elementary is still an issue but with Avondale middle and high school closing, those kids got a major upgrade after being districted to Druid HIlls. I know that many/some/a few/lots/millions (?) at least one Avondale kid that would have been in private HS now is at public Druid Hills HS. Their IB program is held in high regard there.
Isn’t the Museum School a public (charter) elementary school? Everybody seems to rave about it.
Being a charter means not every Avondale kid has a spot in the much-sought-after Museum school. So many/some/a few/lots/millions (?) get left out.
Yes. I know of one family in AE with a preschooler, and they’re starting to get involved with the Museum School. If he gets in there, they’re staying in AE, and if not, they’ll move to Decatur.
Ditto, I know of a AE middle school girl whose family was going to try to pay tuition in Decatur for Renfroe when they realized that Druid Hills Middle was a good option.
Yes, Druid Hills seems to have a good IB program. In fact, I wish CSD would audit it and bring back some of its features. It seems to be able to do IB without de facto tracking. I see Renfroe and DHS becoming more and more tracked–not deliberately, but because of scheduling. The two schools are more tracked and the classes are less diverse (and I mean “diverse” in all ways, not just race/ethnicity) than they have been in years. It’s causing kids to try to overload themselves with courses they really shouldn’t be handling because they do not want to be assigned to the “slacker” courses where they feel that the teachers and students care less.
They got districted to DH? Wow. That’s great. I hope the AE folks have the sense to take advantage of that. It was really awful to see what happened to Avondale High School.
I love seeing the potential for this area. We don’t live in AE proper, but do have a child (and another in a couple of years) at Museum School. Without that school we would have moved a couple of years ago. In my 11 years here we’ve seen so many changes in the school system that I don’t feel Druid Hills is a guarantee in seven or eight years. Hope I’m wrong and we do end up there in eight years.
TRADER JOE’S TRADER JOE’S TRADER JOE’S!!!!!
I can’t believe it took over 20 posts for someone (me) to bring up TJ’s.
seriously though, I hope it’s true that the other plot of land is under contract as well. that steel shell has been sitting there as an eyesore for waaaaaaay too long.