NPU-W again urges city to reject Fuqua’s plan for retail center along Atlanta Beltline

‘The cookie cutter suburban style shopping center with urban window dressing is simply not appropriate for this site’

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  • Fuqua Development
  • Neighborhood says ‘cookie cutter’ development isn’t appropriate for site

Residents who live near a proposed mammoth retail center along the Atlanta Beltline near Glenwood Park have once again told the city that developer Jeff Fuqua’s plans are unacceptable.

Neighborhood Planning Unit-W, which includes East Atlanta, Grant Park, Ormewood Park, and other communities, says the the developer’s revised pitch is no different from the plan the group - and the city - rejected late last year.

“NPU-W finds that the ‘revised’ application contains many of the defects of the ‘original’ application, along with some new flaws,” the response says. “Therefore, NPU-W’s position on the ‘revised’ application is that is should be rejected.”

Fuqua, who helped developed the Egdewood Retail District and Town Brookhaven, wants to turn the former concrete facility into a retail center that would include streetfront retail that hides a mammoth parking lot. A 155,00-square-foot retail space would occupy the rear of the property. Fuqua offered to build the Beltline bike trail that planners envision snaking through the 10-acre property.

The NPU listed several causes for concern that it found in the developer’s application. It says Fuqua’s new application fails to explain why it needs exemptions from certain development requirements, including the construction of a street grid in the middle of the property, and is vague on certain plans for the parcel.

In addition, it claimed Fuqua’s promise to build an extension of the Beltline bike trail that would snake through the property creates a “conflict of interest.”

“The City of Atlanta is being offered, gratis, the costs of construction of this portion of the Trail,
plus some form of easement granting a public right of travel over the Trail,” the document says. “It is unseemly and inappropriate for such a carrot to be dangled by a developer in return for the grant of an SAP.”

The residents also say Fuqua’s plan does not adhere to the city’s comprehensive development plans.

“The cookie-cutter, suburban-style shopping center with urban window dressing is simply not appropriate for this site,” the NPU says.

The executive summary of the NPU’s response follows after the jump.