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Aquarium: Area gets ready for '05 opening
New street, buildings to surround aquarium
By DAVID PENDERED
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 05/30/04
The Georgia Aquarium is scheduled to open late next year in a section of downtown Atlanta that is expected to look much cleaner and have a few more skyscrapers than it does today.
Streetscapes will be improved. Sidewalks hosed clean regularly. A new boulevard created. New directional signs installed to help downtown visitors find both their destination and the way back home.
With the exception of the retooled road, these upgrades being arranged by downtown boosters may seem inconsequential. But they won't be insignificant to a family that gets lost and faces an uncertain walk on smelly and broken sidewalks.
That family isn't likely to hurry back. And Bernie Marcus made it clear, when he broke ground a year ago on his $200 million gift to metro Atlanta, that he wants a lot of repeat visitors so that downtown can reap all the financial benefits of what could be a huge tourist attraction.
"It's all economics," Marcus says. A cleaned-up downtown would induce people to stay there longer, he says.
"If people would stay one more day, it would be a shot in the arm for the city and the state. It would lead to revitalization of the downtown area. People will invest their money in something if they see that it's working."
Downtown boosters have been working intently to respond to the call from Marcus, who says the aquarium is his offering to the city where he and Arthur Blank founded Home Depot, a business that changed the nature of home improvement and made each of them a personal fortune. Blank used some of his wealth to buy the Atlanta Falcons football team.
Marcus' challenge fueled a sweeping effort to upgrade the tattered central business district. The work is being coordinated by Central Atlanta Progress, a longstanding group of downtown business leaders. And Marcus' call even prompted quick action from the Georgia Department of Transportation to retool a road that many aquarium visitors will use.
A.J. Robinson, CAP's president, says the goal is to create an inviting downtown where people will want to linger. The idea is not to replicate the pattern of Atlanta Braves fans.
"When a lot of people come to the baseball game, they drive in and drive out," Robinson says. "We don't want that to happen. We want to make it easy for them to see the aquarium and all the attractions downtown has to offer. We will miss a great opportunity if we don't try to take advantage of the aquarium."
To that end, CAP is evaluating a free shuttle bus system to link the aquarium with places such as CNN, Underground Atlanta, the Martin Luther King Jr. Center and the hotel district. CAP wants area attractions to team up to sell a discounted admission ticket that would allow entry over a two- or three-day period to tours of the CNN Center, World of Coca-Cola museum, the Imagine It children's museum and the aquarium.
A grand boulevard
Meanwhile, several private developments have been announced that would bolster the area around the aquarium.
Two 35-story condominium towers with more than 1,000 units are to be built, starting later this year on a blighted tract near the Civic Center MARTA station. Southern Co. plans to move its headquarters to a new $50 million office building near the towers.
Another condo project overlooking Centennial Olympic Park has been announced, a $50 million project by Larry Gellerstedt, the former chief executive officer of Beers Construction. The final announced project is a retail and residential community being developed by the Integral Group.
To figure out how to capitalize on all these projects, and to improve the area's physical appearance, CAP in October started a review of the entire downtown area. It spans, generally speaking, the area around Peachtree Street from North Avenue to just south of the Five Points MARTA station.
Several improvements are viewed as crucial to a successful opening of the aquarium.
Streetscapes must be improved along the path between MARTA's Civic Center station and Centennial Olympic Park, which faces the aquarium. The work is to be funded with $3.2 million that Gov. Sonny Perdue included in his proposed transportation bond package.
Directional signs, to be installed throughout the downtown area, will be designed so they are of use to both pedestrians and motorists. Perdue's bond package calls for $2.2 million in funding, to be divided between downtown and Midtown.
The biggest project involves widening a series of streets into one grand boulevard, four lanes wide in parts, from West Peachtree Street past the aquarium and to Northside Drive near the Georgia World Congress Center. The main segment of the $13 million street is to open before the aquarium does, says Tom Turner, who oversees preconstruction for the GDOT. Perdue's plan calls for the state to provide $5.8 million for the boulevard.
The project has been on the state's drawing board for years. It involves three streets that now pass through a no man's land: Jones, Simpson and Alexander streets, known collectively as the JSA corridor.
Now, with the aquarium expected to attract 2.2 million visitors in its first year, the GDOT has put the project on the fast track, Turner says. Lots of visitors will be arriving by bus: school buses, tour buses and passenger buses carrying smaller groups.
"There's no question that we're trying to accelerate this project," Turner says. "Our target date is to have it open no later than when the aquarium opens."
The work will be done in two phases, starting with the stretch between West Peachtree and Luckie streets. It will have four lanes, flanked on each side with bicycle lanes. Each side will have 10-foot-wide sidewalks separated from the street by landscaping.
The second phase is important, but its timing is viewed as less critical. It will extend the boulevard to Northside Drive, near the Georgia World Congress Center. Once it's open, it will provide access to visitors from north of Atlanta who travel south on I-75 and will exit on Northside Drive and then proceed to the aquarium.
Bouncing back
Downtown has proved in the past year that it can rebound. A bustling restaurant row has emerged on once-blighted Broad Street, a block west of Peachtree. The catalyst was a classroom building that Georgia State University opened in the historic Fairlie-Poplar District.
Around noon on Fridays, a party unfolds during the SunTrust Lunch on Broad event. CAP workers put out chairs and clean the area for hundreds of students and office workers who gather weekly. The scene is vastly different from the former foreboding appearance of the place.
As Robinson considers the evolution of the downtown area, from the new office and residential developments to the aquarium to the new Broad Street, he's still convinced the future is bright.
"The private sector is beginning to see the potential of what is going to take place in this neighborhood," he says, "and we're still a long way away from the opening of the big fish tank."
WOW! Amazing, isn't it?
