Stop the Madness: Bicycle Riding Dogs?

Fear not ATLiens.  The Piedmont Park Conservancy has rid the jogging loop of one of the most perilous of park nuisances.  There will be NO Bicycle Riding Dogs henceforth on the jogging loop.

Norman the Bicycle Riding Dog.. you are no longer welcome here.

Hat tip to my brother in law, Krish Dhokia, for the pic.

Ponce City Market is Going to Look Nice

I can't wait to see the renovation of the old Sears building in the Old Fourth Ward!  Ponce City Market posted a nice fly through of what it will look like.  Enjoy...

Multimodal Passenger Terminal Update

This is not Roswell related per se but I happened to be in the area this afternoon so I stopped in on the Multi Modal Passenger Terminal public information session downtown. Today's meeting was the first meeting where the public was able to see preliminary renderings of the three concepts.

My thoughts are mixed on the project. It is something that can be truly transformational for the city and the downtown area if done right. Situated between Five Points Station and Phillips Arena, it will occupy some prime real estate that is severely underutilized currently. Here are a couple photos that I took today.

My reservations are primarily in the area of design. I won't argue that the team that has been assembled to design this project doesn't know what they are doing. I'm sure they can get the engineering and function right. What I'm concerned with is that we will end up with another over-glasses modernist design that in no way reflects the place and history. The building(s) that are produced should fuse Atlanta's past with her future and not shoot to be the trendiest architectural novelty du jour. Here are three photos of the rendering boards that were on display, one for each concept. Cool, yes. Meaningful, I don't think so. I got the feeling that the crowd of 150+ was less than enthusiastic as well but I didn't run a poll.

I'm also concerned that this won't ever become a reality.  The plan is for inter-city rail, commuter rail and eventually high speed rail.  With the way the TIA vote is looking, people don't want to pay for trains.  They want to pay more for roads.  (this is not part of the TIA project list).  Either way, it will be nice to see what the final concept is but the jury is out on whether this will ever happen.

There is much more to come on this project and there will be a lot of refinement in the months and years ahead.  If you are interested in learning more, you can go to GDOT's site below.  The renderings above are not online yet but should be within the next week. (sorry for the crude pics)

http://www.dot.ga.gov/informationcenter/p3/projects/mmpt/Pages/default.aspx