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Atlanta-America's newest shopping destination.


Lady Celeste

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Martinman thanks for posting that before and after pictures for the Peachtree Corridor Improvements. This would be expecially beneficial at the Peachtree Rd/Piedmont Rd intersection. With the addition of Terminus and it's retail and residential component, that would make for a much more pleasureable walk.

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One of the things I've been wondering about with this plan is where they would put the streetcar?

Wait, this is Atlanta -- we'll just build more lanes!!!

:lol:

:cry:

Thats one of the things people are starting to worry about concerning the streetcar. Since Peachtree is pretty much fixed width, the streetcar would effectively reduce the usable lanes to one lane in Midtown and two lanes in Buckhead (in each direction). I don't think it would be so bad in Midtown because of the parallel one way streets but in Buckhead its something that will have to be addressed.

Project would make transit viable, but could snarl Peachtree

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One of the things I've been wondering about with this plan is where they would put the streetcar?

Wait, this is Atlanta -- we'll just build more lanes!!!

:lol:

:cry:

They could just put it on the sidewalk. No one in Atlanta uses them anyway. :P

Does anyone remember the Dior store at Phipps? Or YSL Rive Gauche at Lenox? Patrick Kelly used to be a window dresser at Dior in the early 80s. THE Patrick Kelly! I still have one of his Eiffel Tower dresses from '88.

Phipps was built to be an "upscale" mall. Saks was built before the mall, so the mall design was "inspired" by the store. Phipps has had its moments of decline, but a lot of the retailers have been there for over 30 years. Atlanta Saks is a institution. One of the first in the south (possibly THE first). It's also one of the few (Saks, Inc.) flagship stores. And definitely one of a few flagship stores connected to a mall.

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Phipps was built to be an "upscale" mall. Saks was built before the mall, so the mall design was "inspired" by the store. Phipps has had its moments of decline, but a lot of the retailers have been there for over 30 years. Atlanta Saks is a institution. One of the first in the south (possibly THE first). It's also one of the few (Saks, Inc.) flagship stores. And definitely one of a few flagship stores connected to a mall.

I have old ads from the '80s for Phipps Plaza and Lenox Square. Both are pretty dated designs, but you can tell they were aiming at intirely different audiences. The Phipps one played up how many brands they had on-site (there were two people holding about 10 shopping bags riding an escalator) and the Lenox one played up how stylish they were (man and woman in gray suits and spiky hair, lady applying lipstick).

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Why would streetcars reduce the lanes of traffic? The one planned in Charlotte would operate in the vehicle right-of-way, with the same considerations given to it as a bus.

I'm not totally familiar with LRT but doesn't the tracks run on the road like a Marta bus would. If there are trains taking up on whole lane of Peachtree Rd.....which is already inundated with traffic, I can see where this mode of transportation could be viewed as taking of a lane. When a train is going along the track and making several stops, that would back up traffic even further down Peachtree past the Buckhead Village.....that would not be so good for something that will have basically minimal affect on overall traffic.

That's just my thinking.

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I understand that Atlanta's mainstream shopping has increased recently, especially with the opening of Atlantic Station--I hear that within five years all of their commercial enterprise will be incorporated. However, regarding a national shopping station, I feel that it is important to also have many unique shops and boutiques. When I go to a place like New York, I spend just as much time perusing the main stores as I do the small ones. If the volume of boutiques increased within Atlanta, I feel that a great deal more people would be seen touring Atlanta -- outside of their cars.

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I have old ads from the '80s for Phipps Plaza and Lenox Square. Both are pretty dated designs, but you can tell they were aiming at intirely different audiences. The Phipps one played up how many brands they had on-site (there were two people holding about 10 shopping bags riding an escalator) and the Lenox one played up how stylish they were (man and woman in gray suits and spiky hair, lady applying lipstick).

Yeah, but that was the 80s. Saks/Phipps (along with Lord & Taylor) opened in the late 60s. Lenox was a different mall in the 60s. It hadn't been long since they got a roof. Like I said, Phipps did see some decline in its prestige for a while there. It was expanded and remodeled in the early 90s, but eventually sold to Simon in the late 90s. Even in those earlier days, people considered Phipps the expensive mall. But you know all that...

You should scan those ads and post them!

I understand that Atlanta's mainstream shopping has increased recently... If the volume of boutiques increased within Atlanta, I feel that a great deal more people would be seen touring Atlanta -- outside of their cars.

The boutique shopping is where Atlanta excels. Other than Jeffrey, you don't hear much about them. Atlanta is second to Chicago for the city with the most retail per square foot. Or something like that. The majority of that retail are small, locally owned shops and boutiques.

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Why would streetcars reduce the lanes of traffic? The one planned in Charlotte would operate in the vehicle right-of-way, with the same considerations given to it as a bus.

The Peachtree streetcar would operate in the same way. Its just that most drivers would not even venture into that lane to avoid being behind the streetcar since the service is planned to have a streetcar at a stop every 6-8 minutes.

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They could just put it on the sidewalk. No one in Atlanta uses them anyway. :P

Does anyone remember the Dior store at Phipps? Or YSL Rive Gauche at Lenox? Patrick Kelly used to be a window dresser at Dior in the early 80s. THE Patrick Kelly! I still have one of his Eiffel Tower dresses from '88.

Phipps was built to be an "upscale" mall. Saks was built before the mall, so the mall design was "inspired" by the store. Phipps has had its moments of decline, but a lot of the retailers have been there for over 30 years. Atlanta Saks is a institution. One of the first in the south (possibly THE first). It's also one of the few (Saks, Inc.) flagship stores. And definitely one of a few flagship stores connected to a mall.

Yes! and Phipps had Dolce and Gabbana store at one time in the 90's. There also used to be 2 Versace stores in Atlanta, one in Lenox (a jeans store) and one at Phipps (boutique). I think the Phipps one is still there. Those malls have seen lots of designers come and go.

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Yeah, but that was the 80s. Saks/Phipps (along with Lord & Taylor) opened in the late 60s. Lenox was a different mall in the 60s. It hadn't been long since they got a roof. Like I said, Phipps did see some decline in its prestige for a while there. It was expanded and remodeled in the early 90s, but eventually sold to Simon in the late 90s. Even in those earlier days, people considered Phipps the expensive mall. But you know all that...

You should scan those ads and post them!

Ask and ye shall recieve :D

View StevenRocks' Atlanta Retail Ads 1986 on Yahoo! Photos

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  • 4 weeks later...

New arrivals for Phipps, Lenox add cachet to shopping landscape!

By now you all have probably figured that I love my fair share of shopping. While reading the AJC this morning, I found two very interesting articles about Lenox and Phipps plaza. The first here is an article about the store mixture and bew arrivals at the shopping behemoths. Great news for my eldest daughter and me....bad news for my husband.

With more than 30 new stores between the two malls, 2005 marked the biggest retail infusion since the Olympic Games came to Atlanta in 1996. Sharing Kalinsky's optimism, shoppers are greeting the new stores with open arms
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From an urban standpoint, it's almost as if Lenox/Phipps and the stampede for the suburbs were the deathnail in downtwon shopping. :unsure:

I don't think there's any doubt about it. I believe people knew at the time that the city's retail focus was going to shift north, as whites began to flee the city en masse in the late 1950's and 60's. We'd already been a car culture for decades, but the rise of the freeways made it even easier for people to move out.

Downtown shopping actually held on pretty well into the 1980's, to the extent that it served downtown workers. I worked downtown in those days and many of us regularly shopped at Regenstein's, Macy's, Rich's and Peachtree Center. The men often went to the Muse's, Stockton's and Brooks Brothers stores downtown.

In the latter part of the 80's, however, a number of large employers moved to Buckhead and Midtown and beyond. Lenox and Phipps by that time were well established high-end powerhouses and of course there were many other major malls all around the suburbs. Very few people lived downtown and there just wasn't any reason to shop there anymore.

Personally I miss the grandeur of the old department stores. The old Rich's was vast and spread out over many floors in several buildings, and Macy's was elegant, too. At the same time, I'm pleased to see how Lenox and Phipps have matured into sophisticated retail centers.

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wow....I like those ads. Especially the Gwinnett Place one. I remember I used to be IN LOVE with the waterfalls, because they reminded me of the ones that were in Paramus Park in New Jersey.

I love the old department stores of the past. I really wish that I went to the old downtown Rich's before it closed.

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