40 Element condos at Atlantic Station went up for auction yesterday, and while the AJC seemed focused on the  “bargain” prices, I was most interested to hear that all 40 condos were easily sold.

According to the article, 175 bidders showed up to bid on 40 Element condos with opening bids less than half their original asking price – though the two profiled in the article actually ended up going for more like 2/3rds the original asking price.  To me this seems to indicate that the condo market is over-saturated not because of dying interest to live intown, but because property is simply over-priced.

Though it would be nice to have these condos going for insane amounts of money, its still good to see so much interest in Atlanta’s condos when the price is right.

As the AJC reports this morning, the “Element” condos at Atlantic Station are auctioning off 40 condos on February 28th, with minimum bid prices up to 59% less than the last asking price.  A 1 bedroom/1 bath starts at $95,000!

This surplus of available condos may indeed be in part the result of bad timing in a terrible market.  No one wants to own a condo in this kind of landscape…

“Intown Atlanta is awash in 6,000 unsold condos, according to the local real estate consultant Haddow & Co. Just 66 new units sold in the second half of 2008, Haddow & Co. says. For the year, 645 new condos changed hands, which is 76 percent below the average of the previous eight years.”

But there’s still a lot to learn from this lack of demand and we shouldn’t waste a perfectly good down-market to gauge what types of development are actually desired by residents and what types are just bought up by speculators that have no desire to live there.  Those that designed, built and promoted Atlantic Station as mixed use, should still acknowledge the short-comings of their model city-within-a-city.

Any mini-city built from the ground up will have its share of problems.  It doesn’t have the luxury of an organic city with years of trial and error under its belt, having adapted to the needs and desires of its specific population.  But beyond that, I believe that poorly executed “smart growth” properties like Atlantic Station, often display signs of something I would label as “automobile hypocrisy”.

Like every other “smart growth” model that drives me insane, these developments bend over backwards to cater to the car while simultaneously promoting it as a “smart growth” district.  They show sidewalks and parks in advertising, making all kinds of false promises to potential residents and customers about the walkability and community aspects of the district, while building massive underground parking decks and major thoroughfares that are impossible to walk along. This actually does damage to the public face of smart growth, as the average citizen sees these failed projects as emblematic of the failure of the movement.

The planners of these communities might have actually thought they had the answer.  They thought they could have the best of both worlds – catering to all metro-Atlanta commuters, while simultaneously creating a walkable community.   But the results say otherwise.  Atlantic Station can’t sell its condos because everyone wants to visit and shop at H&M but few want to live (and even fewer want to walk around) there.

But there is hope yet for places like AS.  Like everything else in our built environment, it will also soon be subject to change.  Exterior forces will alter it in ways not yet imagined and they will either adapt or disappear.

The first chapter is already written.  But unless those close to Atlantic Station realize that its not just a down market that leads to $90,000 condos, they will continue to do a larger share of the suffering.