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Posted inDavid Pendered

A final frontier in Atlanta: West End could grow new homes, shops, while sheltering current residents

by David Pendered

West End may be an ideal candidate for redevelopment in this unusual era of the economy.

The newly released study of West End by Georgia Tech students sees opportunities in situations that would have been clear threats to redevelopment before the great recession. The report suggests that West End is ripe for new investments in retail and residential.

These ventures could both stabilize and benefit from the redevelopment of a stretch of Northside Drive, an historic industrial corridor that begins at the tip of Buckhead, passes Atlantic Station and the future Falcons stadium, and ends in the vicinity of West End and Fort McPherson.

Posted inDavid Pendered

A final frontier in Atlanta: Northside Drive plans complete – Buckhead to Falcons stadium area, to West End

by David Pendered

The final piece is in place of a framework plan by Georgia Tech students that could guide development along the frontier of an historic Atlanta industrial corridor.

Just like Buckhead, the West End neigbhorhood that’s at the heart of the newly released plan developed around a tavern – Charner Humphrie’s two-story White Hall Tavern. West End’s beginnings as a travelers’ rest stop date to 1835, three years before Buckhead was established.

The latest plan provides a method to link the shops, homes, parks and places of worship of West End with the Atlanta University Center – the nation’s largest concentration of historically black colleges and universities.

Posted inMichelle Hiskey, Michelle Hiskey & Ben Smith

A bartender’s faith and the death of Robert Berry

by Michelle Hiskey

How do you love a friend who won’t stop self-destructing? How do you offer hope? And how does witnessing that change you?

Ask Kimberly “Berly” Logan.

Her friendship with Robert Berry began a decade ago at Houston’s Peachtree, a restaurant bar where she served him bottles of Amstel Light and he always questioned God’s existence and asked, “Why?”

It ended last month in a hospice where she held the 55-year-old Berry’s jaundiced hand as he waited to die from liver failure and complications from diabetes. Berry, an eccentric, flamboyant writer who once wrote features for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, passed away May 24 at age 55.

Posted inDavid Pendered

Buckhead a study in contrasts: Mobility to improve as office market sags, construction slumps

by David Pendered

Buckhead provides an interesting glimpse into the mixed bag that is metro Atlanta’s commercial real estate industry, a vital piece of the region’s economy.

The good news is two major transportation projects should improve access measurably in a region where prestigious buildings are surrounded by traffic congestion. One project involves MARTA’s Buckhead Station, while the other addresses the interchange of Ga. 400 and I-85.

The not-so-good news is the office market continues to drag. Buckhead was one of the region’s five submarkets that lost tenancy in fourth quarter 2012, though Buckhead showed an overall gain in the year, according to the latest vacancy report from Cassidy Turley, a commercial real estate services provider.

Posted inMichelle Hiskey

With island help, Atlanta family tastes success with a Sea View and pimento cheese

by Michelle Hiskey

Pawleys Island, SC

Brian and Sassy Henry say they left Atlanta ten years ago because they didn’t like how competitive everyday life had become. Simply getting a parking space was a hassle. They didn’t want to raise their daughters (ages 1 and 3) at such a fast, crowded pace. One day in 2002, they took off.

“We literally left like thieves in the night,” said Sassy Henry, who grew up near Chastain Park and went to Lovett School. “We had nothing but what was in our car, and when we got to the island, we slept on mattresses for three weeks.”

To restore their balance, they took on a big restoration project 350 miles east: an icon of South Carolina’s Low Country, the rustic Sea View Inn.

Now in its 75th year, and the only inn on Pawleys Island, the Sea View is where generations of families have vacationed, eating family-style meals in the dining room, unplugging how the rat race and pace conditions us over time. The the inn, the couple and their line of gourmet pimento cheese (Palmetto Cheese) have followed a similar recipe for success: Blend the new and old to make the new better.

Posted inMichelle Hiskey

Limelight’s notorious hustle returns in new Buckhead mural, book

by Michelle Hiskey

The disco era took a lot of secrets with it, because no cell phones or pocket cameras were around to record the evidence of today. Today, Atlanta’s most infamous disco is back after 25 years – resurrected through a bright mural in Buckhead and a new book of 1980s photos that weren’t too risqué to publish.

Documented in “Limelight … in a sixtieth of a second,” are the nearly naked patrons of the club’s “Bare as You Dare Night… the skimpy loincloths of Jungle Night … the live female mannequins stretched out on a buffet table, covered with whipped cream.
“Indulgence. Excessive. Flamboyant,” said mural artist Dax, when asked to describe the disco era through his palette of neon colors.

“It was a very artistic, creative time,” club photographer Guy D’Alema said. “It’s interesting that art is now paying tribute back to the club. It’s come full circle.”

Posted inDavid Pendered

Buckhead trail in Ga. 400’s right-of-way begins final planning phase this week

by David Pendered

The proposed five-mile trail to be built alongside and beneath Ga. 400 moves into its final planning phase this week.

If all goes as scheduled, design work that begins at this time will lead to construction starting in mid 2013, according to Denise Starling, the executive director of Livable Buckhead, Inc. Livable Buckhead is the chief organizer of the $10 million trail that is to stretch from a cemetery off Loridans Drive in North Buckhead to the planned Peachtree Creek spur of the BeltLine, near MARTA’s Lindbergh Station.

The Buckhead trail is not directly affiliated with the BeltLine. But the two projects are complementary, and are to constitute the largest expansion of greenspace now underway in any U.S. city, according to Trust for Public Land.

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