Azar’s package store on Memorial Drive is dead, long live The George apartments

Liquor store shoppers who prefer to pick their booze through bullet-proof glass are shedding a tear this morning.
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? Azar’s package store along Memorial Drive, a quirky landmark along the gritty yet resurgent corridor connecting Downtown to Stone Mountain, is no more. The remnants of the package store were tossed out over the weekend and the freestanding shop set far back from the street could soon be demolished to make room for apartments.
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? John Reagan of Urban Realty Partners, the same firm that built the 85-unit Leonard on the ashes of the original Lenny’s, closed on the property four to five months ago and plan to build a 130-unit apartment building. Reagan says plans call for 12,000 square feet of retail and include one to two restaurants. The name: “The George.”
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? Reagan says the developers purchased the property from the Azar family, which has developed a reputation over the years of taking the long view on its real estate holdings. Reagan says Urban Realty Partners has spent several years working on putting together the deal.
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? The George will “stand independent of the Leonard,” the developers says. The new apartments will be “complementary” to the box-shaped building but “architecturally, it will be a completely different project.”
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? The proposal is one of several for Memorial Drive, a busy corridor that seemed poised for revitalization before the economy tanked in the late 2000s. Now that developers are building again, plans have been pitched at an increasing clip (hence some hue and cry when Atlanta City Councilwoman Natalyn Archibong earlier this summer called for a moratorium along Memorial Drive). Work is already underway on Paces Properties’ project on the old Atlanta Dairies site.  
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? Reagan, a Grant Park resident who helped craft a vision for Memorial Drive in the 1990s, says Urban Realty Partners owns another property located closer to where the Atlanta Beltline crosses the road and are looking at additional purchases.
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? “We feel this is a huge corridor,” he says.
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? Site work could begin next month, the developer says. Urban Realty Partners says it estimates handing residents the keys to units one year later and commercial tenants shortly thereafter.