Downtown Atlanta revitalization
11 January 2007 2 Comments
Not three months ago I read an article in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette business section talking about how downtown Atlanta was dead. Today’s business section talks about revival in downtown Atlanta. Multi-million dollar projects in the core of the city include Allen Plaza, Peachtree Pointe, Atlantic Station and the proposed “Midtown Mile.”
Mat and Geinene Carson, who I lunched with while at Urbana, live in downtown Atlanta. As I recall, they made three observations in response to my questions about the city: Downtown goes to sleep after five o’clock; downtown is experiencing a revival; and public transit in Atlanta is terrible. This isn’t to say they dislike living there, in fact they claim to feel more alive in their present circumstances than ever before. This comes from people who spent years living overseas in somewhat exotic locations.
Other observations from the article with respect to the revitalization of downtown Atlanta:
Both cities added new decorative lighting (just visible inbetween the taller streetlights) in the last decade. Both, however, left older style street lights along the road — the light from which negates any sort of intended ornamentation from the new decorative street lights.
Well, I am not sure I have a comment based on anything but 1.)amazement at reading something with “In Nebraska, street enhancements on North 27th street in Lincoln and South Locust street in Grand Island (Yes, it actually does look quite a bit better than it used to.):” both cities of my university and high school years, respectively, and, 2.) memories of something peculiar about the street lighting in both cities as I remember them which I have seen nowhere else. Not that it was all that spectacular; rather, peculiar to Nebraska. I am slightly bemused by the fact that anyone else ever noticed this and that such an observation would strike home so completely as it did when I read it!
Mr Guinty sounds remarkably like someone I knew back in the early-mid 1960′s. The last thing on earth I would have predicted him remembering would be the street lights!!!