A Green Space Race Is Growing In Atlanta's Urban Core

On the heels of the announcement that a prime Midtown property once envisioned as a skyscraper is now set to be turned into a park, stakeholders in Downtown Atlanta are working to create more public gathering spaces in an effort to turn around the area's perception.

As part of that effort, the owner of Underground Atlanta is seeking to create a public forum along Upper Alabama Street, closing down Pryor Street to vehicular traffic to make the area more pedestrian-friendly, Lalani Ventures Vice President Devin Simon said at Bisnow's Urban Core event Tuesday. 

The public space could also be used to ease concerns of visitors who may be "scared" to visit Underground Atlanta due to the city's unhoused population, Simon said.

"We've got to give someone a reason to come to the Underground," Simon said. "It's not as scary as everyone thinks. You have to actually come to Downtown to understand what Downtown really means." 

Simon said she is working on a committee with representatives from Central Atlanta Progress, the new owners of South Downtown and the Atlanta Downtown Improvement District to address the homelessness issue in the submarket. 

Georgia State University President Brian Blake said the university's $107M plan to create a string of public space improvements on its campus, including razing its three-story Sparks Hall building to expand the school's Greenway by connecting Gilmer Street and Hurt Park, will hopefully encourage students to congregate on the campus despite the persistent presence of homeless people. 

"We really want to activate it more, to give a fuller coverage of the park. I tell students all the time, you should see unsheltered citizens because you don't know where you're going to work," Blake said onstage at Society Atlanta. "But I also think the park needs to kind of be renovated in such a way that is good for all pieces."

Blake told Bisnow in a phone call Wednesday that at the campus park, “predominantly the use right now is for the unsheltered.”

“The idea is not to run unsheltered out of the park,” he added. “But for 6 acres it would have better use if it’s programmed better and designed better.”

GSU's campus plan, boosted by an $80M gift from the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation in November, will be put toward nine projects aimed to "reinvigorate and reimagine the campus experience," university officials previously said. 

Other projects to revamp GSU's Downtown campus include a new glass facade at The Arts and Humanities Building at 25 Park Place and a dining area and updated classrooms at 100 Edgewood Ave.

The efforts downtown near the Georgia State Capitol are just the latest in a wave of green placemaking efforts throughout the city. The city is planning to cap the Interstate 75/85 Connector from Ted Turner Drive to Piedmont Avenue for a 17-acre park called The Stitch and to cap Georgia 400 in Buckhead and build the $270M Hub404 park.

Planning experts have long been calling for increasing green space in urban centers, seeing it as critical to fight climate change and improve health and community. That's especially critical as 70% of the world's population are expected to live in an urban center by the middle of this century, according to a University of Leeds paper. 

The Midtown Improvement District made headlines last week when it announced plans to buy 98 14th St., a 4-acre site in the heart of Midtown that was set to be the location of the Southeast’s tallest residential tower. The project, which, under a previous developer lost the property in foreclosure, never materialized. 

Now, the landlord-run group is under contract to purchase the land from its new owners and former lenders, Benmark Capital and Peachtree Group, with the goal of creating an outdoor venue that could be a central activation point for Midtown public gatherings, Midtown Alliance CEO Kevin Green previously told Bisnow.

"I think about how this site can become one of the best free things to do in Atlanta," Green said last week. "This is not a site where you’d have a Music Midtown scale thing, [but] art and performance would seem to have a role here."

During the event Tuesday, Trammell Crow Co. principal Katherine Lynch called the transformation of 98 14th St. "pivotal" for Midtown.

"I'm really excited about Opus Park," Lynch said. "That's going to be really pivotal for Midtown to have that right there in the middle to supplement what's going on in Piedmont Park."

Many of the streetscape revitalization efforts are happening with an eye on the summer of 2026, when several matches of the FIFA World Cup will be played in Mercedes-Benz Stadium a few blocks from GSU and Underground Atlanta.

Page Associate Principal Anne-Michael Sustman, who is working with Lalani Ventures on the Underground Atlanta revamp, said her firm is designing what she described as "almost like a town square" outside of the iconic shopping destination.

Sustman told Bisnow after the event that the project would create a public gathering space along Upper Alabama and Pryor streets that would eventually be closed to vehicle traffic as a way to create a new public gathering nexus for live performances and other events.

"When you look at great cities around the world, that is a common characteristic and a common amenity that they share," Sustman said. "There's been a desired effort to put Atlanta on the world stage. And I think people see that is what Atlanta is missing."