Pope
& Land, one of Atlanta's
top commercial real development firms, is poised to be one of the first to
build on or near the proposed Atlanta BeltLine.
The
Cobb County-based firm has filed plans to redevelop the Colonial Homes apartment community next to Bobby Jones Memorial Golf Course and Memorial Park
in Buckhead. Pope & Land's plans call for razing part of the 1950's complex
to make room for one five-story with two parking levels and one four-story
building over one level of parking. The new buildings would be 75 feet high, or
40 feet taller than the existing buildings at Colonial Homes, according to
plans filed with the city of Atlanta's
Bureau of Planning.
Rents
at Colonial Homes are about 30 percent below market. This represents good
upside for Pope & Land, which plans to develop the buildings as apartments.
"Detailed plans for the development have not been worked out at this time, but
the assumption is certainly that all the units will be rental, given the
foreseeable market," Seyfarth Shaw partner Carl Westmoreland said via e-mail.
He and Seyfarth associate Jessica Hill are representing Pope & Land in the
rezoning.
Earlier
this month, Atlanta's
Zoning Review Board deferred a hearing on Pope & Land's rezoning request
for 90 days. It will be interesting to see whether this portends a drawn-out
zoning process. Larry Kelly, president of Pope & Land, doesn't shy away
from challenging zoning cases. His attempt to rezone a 9-acre tract at Phipps Boulevard
and Lenox Road,
landed in the Georgia Supreme Court.
Pope
& Land purchased the 20-acre site in 2005 and filed plans to rezone two of
its five tracts earlier this summer. The property is about one block west of
the Houston's
restaurant on Peachtree Road.
The redevelopment would be part of the BeltLine Corridor System, according to
Pope & Land.
With 580
residential units, Pope & Land's redeveloped Colonial Homes project would
be one of the largest so far to be tied to the BeltLine. The redevelopment
project would have a five- to seven-year construction cycle and be started
after the requests to rezone the property and change the Comprehensive
Development Plan are approved, according to the rezoning application.
Although
the BeltLine and its plans for a 22-mile "necklace" of parkland, light rail and
new development has received a lot of attention, concrete examples of its
progress are hard to find outside of the addition of parkland. The
highest-profile real estate project planned for the BeltLine dissolved late
last year when Atlanta BeltLine Inc. ended its partnership with Barry Real
Estate Cos.
Barry
and Atlanta BeltLine had planned to develop more than 4 miles of the northeast
portion of the BeltLine.
Since
then a debate has emerged about whether the BeltLine is a project that will
take 25 years to build out. Kasim Reed, a Georgia
state senator running for mayor of Atlanta,
has been telling people on the campaign that that is too long. He supports public-private
partnerships that can make the BeltLine a reality in about a dozen years.
Atlanta
City Council President Lisa Borders, also a mayoral candidate, favors taking
the time to do the BeltLine right. She wants to be a champion of the BeltLine
because of the jobs and new transit options it would create.
As
for Atlanta BeltLine, it has appeared somewhat concerned about the possible
perception that the project is a pipedream. It erected a billboard in downtown Atlanta that reads, "Yes,
the BeltLine is Happening!"
Pope
& Land's master plan for the site, created by Rule Joy Trammell Rubio,
shows new roads that would connect the Colonial Homes redevelopment to Atlanta's hip Bennett Street. Bennett Street is
proximate to the site of a proposed modal for the BeltLine.
