Conor with 315 West Ponce developer Carter sent along the latest renderings of the mixed-use development currently under-construction at the corner of Ponce and Ponce Place.  He also announced that the project – long called “315 West Ponce” or “315” for short – now has an official name, “The Place on Ponce”.  You can check out their new website HERE.

He also provided this update on the project…

…we are about to complete the parking deck and get it open (in the next week). At that time, the office building tenants will start to park in the deck and we will begin full construction on the apartments in the surface parking lot facing Montgomery. We are well underway on the building facing Ponce and that is scheduled for completion this fall (November). We will begin our leasing efforts this summer. The full project will be complete next summer (2015).

Also, here’s an interior rendering…

After receiving a tip from a reader, DM confirmed with Decatur Asst. City Manager Lyn Menne that a new hotel is planned to be built on the land adjacent to the Courtyard by Marriott along Clairemont Road in downtown Decatur, just off the Square.  She provided this additional information about the project…

Vision Hospitality out of Chattanooga TN has plans to construct a 138 room hotel at 116 Clairemont Avenue adjacent to the Marriott Courtyard.   The proposed hotel will be similar to a facility Vision Hospitality developed in downtown Chattanooga that is very impressive.  The addition of these hotel rooms will allow us to attract some larger, regional conferences to the adjacent conference center.   The conference center is larger than the available hotel rooms at the Marriott can accommodate so the additional rooms at the new hotel make the center more marketable.  The Marriott hotel sales team supports the idea.   

They did request and receive a parking variance.  Our current parking requirements for a hotel are 1.25 parking spaces per room.  However, existing parking information from the adjacent Marriott showed that less than 25% of their allotted parking spaces in the conference center deck are used by hotel guests.  This number was confirmed by a check of similar hotel parking facilities in downtown Atlanta, Midtown and Buckhead.  Most hotel guests are arriving by transit or taxi and are not using a personal vehicle.   Keeping parking requirements down to actual use requirements allowed us to limit the size of the parking deck behind the building and assure that investment dollars could be spent on making the hotel facility as nice as possible.  

Photo courtesy of Parker Cross

In an article included in the March issue of the Decatur Focus, city staff recount how “History has shown us that development in Decatur comes in short bursts followed by lulls with little to no development.”  The article goes on to detail the various spurts of commercial development over the last 50+ years, before addressing current development projects…

Now after a five-year quiet period, we find ourselves in another development cycle that has folks asking the age-old question referenced in the first sentence above. Yes, there are several projects coming on line over the next few years. Many of these projects were in progress before the great recession hit and are coming back to life as access to financing returns. The 315 West Ponce apartment development is currently underway. Other apartment developments have been approved behind the Fidelity building and on the Trinity Triangle parcel between Dairy Queen and Twain’s. Like the condominium developments in the previous decade, the apartment developments are responding to a big hole in our housing market. The majority of these developments will be one-bedroom with some two-bedroom units and efficiency units included in the mix. Only a very few three-bedroom units are planned in one of these buildings. The primary market for these apartments is young professionals in an age group and income bracket that is finding the road to homeownership much more difficult these days.

It is interesting to point out that during the 1970s our city used a number of creative development options to provide different types of alternative housing in and around single-family neighborhoods. Townhouse developments along the eastern edge of Commerce Drive and in the area of Sycamore Drive provided a transition zone between single-family neighborhoods. Cutting-edge cluster home developments like Charter Square on W. Trinity Place and Wimberly Court off of Upland Road were successfully developed along with similar projects on Pinetree Drive and throughout other Decatur neighborhoods.

For the first time, a type of home ownership other than traditional single-family was possible in our city. New neighborhood developments like Swanton Heights, Rosewalk and Sycamore Ridge continued this trend in the 1990s. Although each of these developments was initially met with public skepticism they continue to be populated with some of our most active and supportive residents just as we found with the mid-rise condominiums constructed. We expect the same experience with the apartment units that will soon join our housing mix. These new residents are attracted to the Decatur lifestyle and will bring a younger demographic to help balance our diversity.

It was a year ago when the Atlanta Business Chronicle reported on the revival of the large, mixed use Avondale MARTA Station parking lot project that the City of Decatur has been pursuing from over a decade.

Now Decaturish reports that the MARTA Board of Directors recently voted to begin negotiations with the Decatur Downtown Development Authority of redevelop the site.  The two orgs have selected Columbia Ventures as the developer, which will include 604 apartments, 74 condos and 25,000 of retail space, according to Decaturish.

More HERE.

Map courtesy of Decaturish

Many of you have asked for more info on Dairy Queen’s impending closing.  Decaturish just posted a new report from the restaurant.  Here’s the intro…

The word got out that the Decatur Dairy Queen will close soon. Loyal customers stormed the store on Monday to pay their respects.

Dairy Queen closes on Feb. 22 after 30 years in business. It will be razed as part of a plan to develop apartments on Trinity Place. But the DQ will be back in the new development. Right?

Maybe not, the owners say. They put a sign on the store that said “We will be back in new development.” The sign doesn’t say that the message is more of a hope than a promise.

Photo courtesy of Decaturish