G.W. Collier was one of those Atlantans who got in on the ground floor of a good thing. When he first came to the region there was nothing but wilderness and Indians. When Marthasville was incorporated as Atlanta, he became the city’s 1st postmaster and to fulfil his duties, he purchased a small parcel of […]
Tag: Five Points
Posted inColumns, Maria's Metro
Atlanta leaders reviving Commerce Club board with Michael Russell at the helm
For decades, the Commerce Club served as a focal point for Atlanta’s business and civic leaders seeking to guide the city through changing racial and economic challenges.
Posted inLatest News
The Gulch: Consultants line up for contract to rebuild MARTA’s Five Points Station
MARTA has started the process of transforming the Five Points Station into a transportation hub to serve the planned mini city to be built at The Gulch.
Posted inATL Business Chronicle
Coca-Cola to refresh its iconic sign at downtown’s Five Points
The Coca-Cola sign at downtown’s Five Points will shine brightly for years to come.
Posted inThought Leader, Transit
MARTA ARTS ADMINISTRATOR RECOGNIZED FOR HER WORK AS AN ARTIST CHAMPION
Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) Arts Administrator Katherine Dirga will be recognized this spring by C4 Atlanta for her work bringing artists and their art to public spaces around Atlanta. Dirga currently heads up MARTA’s Artbound, an art-in-transit program comprised of permanent and temporary visual artworks as well as live music, theater, and dance […]
Posted inThought Leader, Transit
READY FOR MORE? MARTA WANTS TO KNOW
MARTA Riders Encouraged to Provide Feedback on Proposed More MARTA Atlanta Projects More MARTA Atlanta, a partnership between MARTA and the City of Atlanta, is blitzing the city to make a final push to engage and hear from MARTA riders regarding the More MARTA Atlanta proposed project list. On Wednesday, Aug. 22 from 2 – 6 […]
Posted inStories of Atlanta
The City Center
It is Atlanta’s most historic intersection. But in the early years of Atlanta, Five Points was the junction of Peachtree, Whitehall, Decatur, Marietta and Line Street. Two decades after the Civil War, though, things changed for Five Points, thanks primarily to the efforts of one man as you will see in this week’s Stories of […]
Posted inStories of Atlanta
The layers of history
It probably goes without saying that pretty much everything was something before it became what it is today. An examination of any city’s past is an exercise in peeling back the layers of, as the Beatles might have put it, the long and winding road. Because of our city’s particular penchant for casting out the […]
Posted inMain Slider, Stories of Atlanta
Imagine What Atlantans in the Early 1900s Would Think
Water has always been at the heart of any community, especially a landlocked one such as Atlanta.
Posted inDavid Pendered
Olympia building at Five Points to be restored to historic grandeur
The historic Olympia building at Five Points is to be restored to its original grandeur, right down to the neon lighting from its days as the showroom for Wormser Hats.
The entire plan for the exterior of the building is based on photographs of the building when it opened soon after the Great Depression, according to Michael Wirsching, with Atlanta-based ASD Inc.
The building is to have a single tenant. Further commercial details were not available from city records and a principal with the owner, Florida-based Encore Real Estate, could not be reached for comment.
Posted inColumns, Michelle Hiskey, Michelle Hiskey & Ben Smith
Looking in plain sight for Atlanta’s random signs of optimism
A random shoe track on a downtown Atlanta sidewalk turned into a “spontaneous smiley”—a feat akin to finding the face of Elvis in a piece of toast, but a whole lot easier.
People all over the world (like me) discover, photograph and post spontaneous smileys to social media as a creative challenge to others. It is tailor made for creative thinkers and distracted people in our crowded and gridlocked city. This fun scavenger hunt can be done anywhere, and a handy time-killer when you’re stuck waiting.
Looking for the most basic sign of happiness in ordinary circumstances will shift your mood and mindset. Looking for a smiling face can release positive brain chemicals like dopamine. The scientific term for this pursuit is pareidolia, when a vague and random stimulus is perceived as significant (after all, it was just a footprint…). It is an example of how mindfulness identifies the extraordinary in ordinary life.
Posted inDavid Pendered
Police raids, building price lift veil on business district south of Five Points
A string of narcotics arrests near Five Points last week, plus arrests for several outstanding warrants and the recovery of a stolen handgun, are among the latest examples of the challenges of sprucing up the city’s southern business district.
This section of downtown Atlanta remains a place of competing objectives. The planned billion-dollar redevelopment of the gulch and neighboring area may spark a restoration of Atlanta’s historic urban core, even as an underground economy seems to thrive in the current environment.
The pedigree of one building where drug arrests were made highlights part of the economic tension. The building was purchased in 2009 for a sum higher than may be expected in the recession: 175 percent of the value assigned by Fulton County’s tax assessors.
