Cap the Downtown Connector? Let’s consider it, Midtown Alliance says

Covering I-75/85 was one of several big-picture ideas proposed as part of new ‘Blueprint’ plan

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  • Midtown Alliance
  • Remaking the area around the Midtown MARTA station is one of several potential ideas that the Midtown Alliance recently presented to residents.

Nearly 20 years ago, the Midtown Alliance created its “Blueprint,” a master plan that helped spur the neighborhood’s enormous development boom and quality-of-life touches.

Now the Blueprint is up for its third major revision, with the civic group floating ideas large (a new MARTA station) and small (fine-tuned street-design rules). Oh, and really large — like capping the Connector.

“It is time to look at both new ideas and old principles,” Midtown Alliance COO Shannon Powell told more than 80 people attending a debut public-input meeting April 29 at the Loews Atlanta Hotel.


The oldest principle, she said, was asking an up-and-coming Midtown, “What do we want to be when we grow up?” The answer was the 1997 “Blueprint Midtown,” a huge rezoning plan that turned its dreams into realities with major funding from commercial property taxes in the new Midtown Improvement District. And some of those dreams were pretty basic, like “having sidewalks and lights,” Powell told CL.

“Blueprint Midtown II” followed in 2004, with a particular focus on boosting the “Midtown Mile” retail streetscape.

The new “Blueprint Midtown 3.0” is a return to the big-picture view. Still, one theme stands out in the Alliance’s presentation: creating a “mixed-use, 24-hour community” with a “dynamic pedestrian environment.”

The Blueprint is a “living document” that the Alliance constantly tweaks, Powell says, but it gets major revisions in response to changing times. New trends and projects — like environmentally sustainable design and the Atlanta Streetcar — are among the sparks for the new edition.

Local startup businesses are one inspiration for Powell, both in how technology might play a role in Midtown improvements and in the companies’ sense of “energy.”

“They don’t see the obstacles,” she says of the startup scene. “They’re like, ‘The world is your oyster. We can make anything happen.’”

The Alliance funds and conducts most of the planning itself, but in close coordination with the City of Atlanta. Some of the new Blueprint involves coordinating with larger city master plans or projects underway, such as extending the Streetcar.

Some eye-popping big ideas were displayed on easels at the meeting, including: a new MARTA rail station at 19th and Peachtree in northern Midtown; capping the Connector to build a new park or a neighborhood atop it; and extending 15th Street over the highway with a new bridge.

Other ideas are less ambitious but also transformative. Those include: creating a bicycle-route network; making “signature streets” like Peachtree more human-scaled, with glassy storefronts and building facades stepped back to be less imposing; more parks; and public art everywhere, including a “signature civic space” in the current asphalt moat around MARTA’s Midtown Station.

Attendees at the meeting could vote, with green dot-shaped stickers, for some of the bigger proposals displayed on a board. Among the higher vote-getters: the Connector cap and turning West Peachtree and Spring streets into two-way streets. The new MARTA station was among the lower vote-getters.

Before the Blueprint process wraps up in the fall, the Alliance is planning more meetings and an online input strategy that’s currently in the works thanks to Georgia Tech students. Then the comes the hard part: narrowing the priority list and coming up with plans — and funding — to carry them out.