Best New Uses for Old Buildings

Here’s hoping Renzo Piano’s reconceptualization of the HIGH MUSEUM OF ART will accomplish what it’s promised: to make Midtown into a walkable hub and pack shows with eager art-goers. Scheduled for a 2005 completion, the ambitious plan calls for three new buildings and an additional 177,000 square feet, featuring an open air “piazza,” new exhibition space, administrative offices and retail space. The museum already took a step in the right direction when it made renovations last month that returned the space to architect Richard Meier’s original vision for the building by reverting to the design’s original gallery configurations and revealing previously concealed skylights. “The High Museum of Art, 1280 Peachtree St, 404-733-HIGH. www.high.org” less...

Atlanta once led the nation in large-scale conversions of industrial buildings into mixed-use developments, but there haven’t been any innovations on that front recently. This past year did demonstrate the new trend of ripping the guts out of old Midtown houses and filling them with brushed metal and Artemide lights to serve as restaurant/lounges. These eateries have created a new cliche, no different than when T.G.I. Friday’s decided to staple antique crap to their walls. So we give a nod to TEASPACE for its creative form-making, which suits the food to a “T.” The wonderful birch-paneled walls radiate a warm glow, and the matching multi-functional seating makes one feel nestled in an exquisite oriental box. It’s a precise use of a compact space. Scott Brown, co-owner, is responsible for much of the design (and sweat) that went into transforming Teaspace from a back alley room into a comfortable urban den. There’s something to be said for simplicity. “1133 Euclid Ave. 404-577-9793.” less...

793 Juniper St. 404-875-4242 www.spicerestaurant.com Sometimes an old building gets a cosmetic face-lift. With Spice, you get a whole new building. Workers gutted the place, turning a century-old home on Juniper into a hip “be seen destination, with plush carpets, expensive hardwoods and contemporary furniture, art and lighting. Even more exciting than the building makeover is the energy that the renovation has stirred on the slumbering street. The expected conversion of several other abandoned historic homes into restaurant and retail space is expected to transform the area into an enclave of hip food establishments. Spice is a key ingredient in the new Midtown dish. less...

Imagine when the old cotton press warehouse at the east end of Auburn Avenue was built, in the first half of the last century. It was a state-of-the-art construction. All concrete and brick, not some liter-wood fire trap like the hump-backed cotton warehouses of yore. The people who built it probably beamed with almost as much pride as the artists who live in the place now — not that the original builders would recognize it.

Now called Studioplex , the ceiling’s been ripped out right down to the spine so blue sky shines through above patches of newly planted grass and plots of flowers and shrubs outside loft apartments. There are businesses, investment advisors, retail shops and travel agents chugging along next to more artsy concerns like movie studios and glass-blowing hotboxes. With residential rent starting at $790 and commercial rent at $1,400, it’s filling up fast and will soon embrace a restaurant under the old warehouse’s water tower.

Near the other end of Auburn, west of the Martin Luther King Jr. Historic District and the massive churches of Big Bethel and Wheat Street Baptist, beyond the shining black obelisk of the Equitable Building, is the Stuart Peebles Building, better known in the Fairlie-Poplar district as The Art Building. A happy, bouncy jumble of color and creativity, the studio/retail space at the corner of Cone and Luckie streets actually started harboring artists in the mid-1980s. That’s when Paige Harvey moved into the top floor, along with her enormous canvases of abstract animalistic motion. The middle floor is the habitat of Tom Haney and Paula Joerling, whose chunky sculptures contribute to the Romper Room ambience. The circa 1920 building looks like a Parisian souvenir dropped from the pocket of an eccentric child. Long windows topped by faux gables smile out over boxes the residents keep stocked with flowers. The building has always housed retail, but now, the store on the first floor shimmers with baubles and smells of bubbles.

From there, a trip back east to 621 North Ave. brings a visitor to the Southern Dairies Building, a loft project that still looks as if squeaky-clean milkmen ought to be straightening their bow ties in the parking lot. Clean lines are found inside where glass doorways reveal counters and partitions that curve away into delicious whorls of colors. Between renters like eHatchery and Pogo Pictures, are landscaped gardens and courtyards. Space at the Dairy is priced at about $20 per square foot.

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