Callaway Development Back Before Commission with More Office Space
Decatur Metro | March 21, 2016 | 12:21 pm
New Rendering – Callaway Site
Old rendering – Callaway Site
The Cousins Calloway development is back before the City Commission tonight (agenda item here), after the city sent the developer back to the drawing board last September for not including enough retail or office space in its plan.
A note from Asst. City Manager Lyn Menne summarized the changes thusly…
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Reduces the number of residential units overall by 40 units (from 369 to 329).
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Adds 30,000 sf of upper floor office space to the building in the northeast corner of the site.
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Removes a round entry lobby on the southwest side of the new office building and a pedestrian bridge originally designed to connect upper floor residential uses.
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Provides for a total of 721 parking spaces (an increase of 19 parking spaces to accommodate the increased office space).
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Removes the black box theater space and replaces it with three additional live work units to create three more small office options for a total of eight live work units.
Ms. Menne states that the Decatur Downtown Development Authority Board supports the revised site plan.
Renderings courtesy of Smith Dalia
Note the rendering is from the last draft. There’s a new rendering with a semi-traditional brick office building at the corner instead.
Ack! I shall find and add.
There you go. Now we can do the comparing and contrasting.
It’s just more of the same mediocrity. For the love of all that’s dear, why can’t we don’t something here the city can be proud of?
Examples pls!
Something classy, you know, like a miniature version of that fancy steel tower pyramid thingy they have in Vegas. Or maybe even a hotel with canals inside.
in all honesty, look at the examples about how the midtown connector might be capped. Look not just at the cover, but at the adjacent developments: http://atlanta.curbed.com/2016/3/1/11137126/midtown-atlanta-uli-design-competition
Live work units, as far as I can tell, are rarely actually used as envisioned.
Over a decade ago when I lived in (now) Brookhaven, condos with live-work units were built on Apple Valley Rd, across from the MARTA station parking lot. As far as I can tell, none were ever used as such.
Here in Decatur, the Artisan has at least 2 such units (Splash of Olive and Common Ground Realty). Again, I don’t believe that either are used that way, in fact, during renovations for Splash of Olive they removed the interior connecting stairway.
I know lots of people who work from home, but few seem to require a visible storefront to do so.
On a related note, can any realtor comment on the office space market in downtown Decatur? 315 W Ponce and 755 Commerce seem to (often?) have space for lease signs — I am curious what the occupancy rate is.
I can’t speak to either of those properties but office vacancy rates of 12-15% are pretty standard. So, generally speaking, any large office building will always have some vacant space. That’s why some choose to keep signage out front all the time. There’ll always be space or pending space to discuss should a prospect materialize.
The Jane on Memorial Drive in Grant Park was the same way. Those are more lofty and had a more artsy feel than the Artisan (ironically enough…), but they were vacant forever. I’m not sure if they are filled now.
Yeah who needs a black box theatre anyway? What do people do in those, make art? Quite useless.
Can’t we insist on all natural building materials? The cement siding looks bad.
Haven’t we learned anything from the Alexan (seriously, corrugated tin siding?)?
Boo Decatur! Old version was much more interesting with rooftop balcony. If anything they should require bigger grocery.
boy that is one funny lookin school!
Can someone at least assure me it won’t be a wood frame structure? Those apartment buildings that just went up are going to age fast I’m afraid.
I believe Decatur defaults to the industry standards — the International Building Code and International Fire Code — which typically allow, with proper sprinklers, up to five stories of wood frame construction. So that’s likely the bulk of what we’ll see for the foreseeable future.