Real Estate Briefs

The Atlanta BeltLine’s Eastside Trail will get its first hotel, which will be built on a swath of land in the Old Fourth Ward just across the street from Irwin Street Market. According to the Atlanta Business Chronicle, the 140-room hotel with rooftop bar, retail and restaurant space will be modeled on architecture surrounding the High Line in New York City. Guests will be just steps away from Krog Street Market, Studioplex and the Highland Avenue corridor full of restaurants and shops. Groundbreaking is expected this spring.

A treehouse in Buckhead has been named Number 1 on Airbnb’s wish list of most wanted properties. Listed as “Secluded Intown Treehouse,” the property features three connected treehouse rooms “set amongst lush greenery.” The list also says “each structure is beautifully furnished with antiques, natural artifacts and the sounds of nature around you.” The price: $350 per night.

The General Board of Global Ministries of The United Methodist Church will move from New York City to a new home in Atlanta – Grace United Methodist Church at 458 Ponce de Leon Avenue. The move includes the relocation of 150 employees, construction of a new Center for Mission Innovation and a new training facility. The North building, where office and meeting space will be located, is currently registered with the U.S. Green Building Council and is designated for LEED Gold certification. LEED, or Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design, is a green building certification program that recognizes best-in-class building strategies and practices. Building upgrades will include a significantly more energy efficient building with high-performance glass, added fresh-air systems, water-efficient plumbing fixtures and a photovoltaic solar array. In addition to the energy features, the project will include recycled and low-emitting materials to improve indoor air quality. The William I.H. and Lula E. Pitts Foundation has awarded Global Ministries a $500,000 grant in support of GBGM’s establishment of its new home in Atlanta.

Harry Norman, Realtors chose the Atlanta History Center as the venue for its 85th Anniversary Celebration. Company President and CEO Dan Parmer arranged the donation to the History Center of large jardinières of year-round green plantings to be presented for the main entrance area, where guests gathered for the cocktail reception. To commemorate the anniversary, a gift to the community, a check of over $46,000, was contributed to CURE Childhood Cancer. Guests at the event were Harry (“Dave”) Norman III and his sister Anne Norman Fuller, children of the late company President Harry Norman and grandchildren of the founder, Mrs. Harry Norman, Sr., known to all as “Miss Emmie.”

The Zac Team at RE/MAX Metro Atlanta CitySide has earned the service industry’s coveted Angie’s List Super Service Award, reflecting an exemplary year of real estate service provided to members of the local services marketplace and consumer review site in 2015.

Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices will expand their Midtown office to include a new Condominium Division, according to an announcement made by Dan Forsman, company president and CEO. Heading the launch of the Condominium Division will be Kerman Haynes, who has joined Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices as vice president of the New Homes Services Division and branch manager of the Midtown office.

The Atlanta Apartment Association (AAA) has elected Jamie Teabo, executive vice president and head of property management for Post Properties, its 2016 chair of the board of directors. Teabo previously served as vice chair in 2015 under chairman Tim Schrager.

Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage has named Kathleen Sickeler as the new assistant branch manager of the company’s Intown office, where she will assist Managing Broker Vic Miller overseeing the office and its approximately 85 affiliated sales associates.

WE’LL DO THE FOOD

Seared Bay of Fundy Salmon in a Carrot Harissa Broth with Caramelized Root Vegetables ~ Or

Grilled Tenderloin, Fingerling Potatoes, Brussels Sprouts with Balsamic Reduction and Blue Cheese Compound Butter

Kale Salad with Granny Smith Apples, Celery & a Lemon Agave Vinaigrette

By John Ruch

When Scott Ruzycki, the area manager of the LA Fitness at Town Brookhaven looks around at the neighborhood, he likes what he sees: hundreds of potential customers living right next door.

“I think this is one of the smartest developments that LA Fitness has located in,” said Ruzycki. “We pull about a thousand more people than a regular LA Fitness.”

Many don’t have far to go. The gym Ruzycki manages sits in the middle of a massive “mixed-use” development on Peachtree Road in Brookhaven.

When it comes to new development, “mixed use” has become master of the moment. From The Shops Buckhead Atlanta to Sandy Springs’ City Springs project, mixed-use redevelopments are supposedly blending shops, homes and offices to create downtown-style centers from Perimeter suburbs.

The mix of retail and housing in “live-work-play” developments has been popularized by such high-profile projects as Atlantic Station and Alpharetta’s Avalon.

Town Brookhaven was among the first smaller-scale versions of those mixed-use, mega-projects to launch in the Perimeter area. It opened for business five years ago. That makes it a project that commercial developers keep in mind when they think about the mixed-use developments rising around the area.

“I love mixed-used developments,” said Steve Tart, who sits on the Sandy Springs Planning Commission and is a managing director at Genesis Real Estate Advisers, a commercial property firm.

But in Sandy Springs, which has made mixed-use redevelopment of its Roswell Road “downtown” a priority, notes of caution already are sounding about mixed-use zoning.

Sandy Springs City Council recently passed new guidelines out of concern that large apartment projects were being approved under the trendy mixed-use label and not providing enough of the walkable, street-front-retail environment the city wants. And some Sandy Springs Planning Commission members are wary of over-promoting mixed-use development in places it might not work.

“Not every place is made to be retail ... you just can’t have it everywhere,” Tart said. “Not every community can have that live-work-play environment. It’s just not feasible unless government underwrites part of it.” He’s a supporter of City Springs, the public-private, $220 million mixed-use redevelopment underway in Sandy Springs that will include a new City Hall. City Springs has already helped inspired two other mixeduse redevelopment plans for a nearby shopping center and office complex.

Town Brookhaven is just the sort of location that raises concerns, Tart said. “I hear from [Town Brookhaven] retailers that they hadn’t performed as well as they anticipated,” he said. “It’s a little bit between everything. It’s not connected to anything…It sits so far off the road.”

The Sembler Company, which developed Town Brookhaven and leases its commercial property, did not respond to questions.

Tart said that connecting mixeduse developments to surrounding neighborhoods is key. “I think [Town Brookhaven] will be ultimately, longterm, very successful because the Buckhead community will grow to it [and] the Brookhaven community will grow around it,” he said.

Richard Munger, vice president of development at North American Properties, which created Avalon in Alpharetta, said the retail part of a mixed-use complex cannot be sustained by the complex’s residents alone. The big concern for a developer, Munger said, is “making sure the location has strong surrounding fundamentals to support the commercial uses, which include visibility, employment base, neighborhood demographics, access and demand.”

That calculation can be seen at Town Brookhaven, which combines 950 apartments, office space and 460,000 square feet of retail on a 48-acre site.

It includes street-front retail beneath apartments, like many mixed-use projects, but also has some car-oriented big-box anchors, such as Costco.

Ruzycki at the LA Fitness looks both inside and outside the complex for customers. He said the club has about 7,500 members, of whom about 2,300 to 2,400 come in on the busiest days. “Many do walk here,” presumably from the nearby apartments, he said, but the company doesn’t keep track of where they are coming from. Meanwhile, he’s looking forward to having more customers from an apartment complex being built outside Town Brookhaven, but just across the street.

Munger and Tart said that mixeduse developers have higher planning and construction costs because of the complexities of blending residential and commercial uses. That’s another reason mixed-use could prove infeasible or unsuccessful on particular sites.

But some of the underlying goals of mixed-use developments—walkability, street-front retail, interconnected retail and residential areas—can be met in better-designed single-use complexes as well, Tart said.

One trend is reconfiguring old stripmall style shopping centers into streetfacing, pedestrian-friendly centers.

Tart said his company is working on such a project in Florida now.

“We don’t need a lot of new shopping centers,” Tart said. “What we need to do is take the old ones and fix them.”

New towers proposed Towering new developments are being proposed or are underway in the Perimeter.

In Sandy Springs, an Australian developer has proposed five new skyscrapers reaching 20 to 29 stories at 1117 Perimeter Center West. Also, the Texas-based developer Hines is taking the city to court over its denial of zoning for a 25-story office building and a hotel at Northpark at Ga. 400 and Abernathy Road.

Meanwhile, in Dunwoody, CRB Realty Associates is proposing a 20-story hotel, two highrise office buildings and two residential towers up to 40 stories tall each at Dunwoody Crown Towers. And in Brookhaven, Seven Oaks is starting construction of a 15-story office building at 4004 Perimeter Summit.