Women’s Wear Daily – May 7, 2007
By Georgia Lee
ATLANTA — Touting the proposed Midtown Mile here as a potential version of Chicago’s Michigan Avenue, city officials and developers envision high-end fashion stores as linchpins for a major shopping, residential, office and entertainment district created virtually from scratch.
Spanning 14 blocks of Peachtree Street, Atlanta’s main thoroughfare, the project involves mixed-use high-rise projects that would create 1 million square feet of street-level retail by 2010.
The challenges of creating this ambitious landscape, especially in Atlanta’s suburban residential and retail culture, are significant. During the past four decades, many residents and merchants left the city as the metropolitan region — among the fastest-growing in the U.S. — spread out over almost 8,400 square miles. However, as Baby Boomers and young professionals seek the convenience and community of an urban setting, development is benefiting in once stagnant core areas of cities such as Atlanta.
“In three years, Atlanta will have what took” many decades “to evolve in New York and Chicago,” predicted Shirley Gouffon, senior vice president, Selig Enterprises, developer of 12th & Midtown, a $1.1 billion project that broke ground in fall 2006.
Even as new developments such as the $2 billion Atlantic Station have attracted residential, office, entertainment and retail space, street-level retail on Peachtree Street has been mostly restaurants and furniture stores. High-end apparel stores lagged behind. Preferring the tested formulas of luxury malls, they have thrived in locations like the Lenox Square and Phipps Plaza shopping malls in Atlanta’s affluent Buckhead section.
“Until recently, Atlanta has had a mall mentality, a suburban focal point and a driving culture,” said Keith Pierce, director of research for the Atlanta office of CB Richard Ellis, a commercial real estate firm. “Around 15 years ago, with the buildup to the 1996 Olympic Games here, and concerns about growth, traffic and suburban sprawl, a trend back to in-town living began, and developers began building mixed-use, live-work-play developments.”
City and development officials concede that the Midtown Mile is not a “build it and they will come” proposition, as they seek to lure luxury retailers such as Barneys New York and Bergdorf Goodman.
“They have to convince the first retailer to roll the dice, and go where there’s no proven track record for these stores,” Pierce said.
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