If you haven’t yet done so, you might want to check out Thomas Wheatley’s cover story in Creative Loafing this week, which does a most excellent job of summing up the unresolved “problems” with Atlanta’s biggest revitalization project – “south downtown”.   After detailing the area’s vibrant past…

Grocery stores sold everything a person would need to make three meals a day, as well as specialty items such as pig’s feet to pig heads. At Roy’s, where you could select a live chicken, get its head chopped off, and watch the decapitated fowl run around the store. Another shop sold “rat cheese” — cut from a block of sharp New York cheddar — for rodent traps or sandwiches. Yet another bar-be-qued chicken.

…and less vibrant recent past…

Nearly 30 homeless men and women huddled together, resting underneath the long ramp leading to the Garnett Street MARTA station. Others slept on the steps of the police department headquarters in the shadow of the city jail. Even more wandered the streets, asked motorists passing through for help, or stood alone in parking lots.

…Wheatley starts to think about possible solutions and dives head first into a Pandora’s Box of urban fun…

Everyone’s in agreement about the key ingredient needed to help south downtown grow: more people. Which raises the obvious question: How do you coax new residents and tourists to a historic area that has very few vestiges of its glorious past, offers little in the way of decent shopping, and which becomes a ghost town after workers hop in their cars at 5 p.m. to head to the ‘burbs? How do you build retail when the number of residents hasn’t reached critical mass and probably won’t if such basic amenities as grocery stores aren’t nearby? It’s a chicken-or-egg scenario, one that leaves many interested parties scratching their heads.

h/t: ATL Urbanist

Is pre-1996 really history?  Of course it is!

For all you – or should I say “us” – post-Olympic transplants and not-borns, here’s what sat on the site of Centennial Park in downtown Atlanta before it was built.

Dang.

Photo courtesy of the Centennial Park Facebook Page

Hey transplants and cool cats under 21.  Ever wonder if Atlanta was as groovy in 1990 as it is today?

Was this taken at lunchtime?  Woodruff Park looks slammed with people!

h/t: PecanneLog

5×5 » November 12th 2010 from Ian Sheddan on Vimeo.

Atlanta is so much cooler in time-lapse with some phat beats underneath.

h/t: ATL Urbanist

How DOES the AJC get all these great scoops? 

The paper reports this morning that Cox Enterprises will be donating its downtown building along Marietta Street and the former printing press building behind it to the City of Atlanta.  The property is estimated at $50 million.

According to the AJC, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed plans to “put police and fire training academies in the buildings, use the auditorium for public meetings, create a gallery space that formerly was at City Hall East, and use warehouse and parking space.”

Not only will this fill a currently vacant building in downtown Atlanta, but it’ll save the city some serious coin as they move departments from leased spaces.

Nice move Cox Communications!