The event received press coverage in several local publications,
including The Story and Creative Loafing.
Glenwood Park: walkable community, proud home
of Southern
Living Idea House
By Theresa Woodgeard
The Story
6/9/05
The first thing one notices about Glenwood Park, a city neighborhood
with a view of the Atlanta skyline, is how easy it is to get from
one place to another, on foot. The development, located two miles
east of downtown Atlanta off Interstate 20 seems to invite pedestrian
traffic with its wide sidewalks, parks and public gathering spaces.
When finished, the 28-acre community located between Ormewood Park
and Grant Park will feature a compact mix of residential units,
stores, offices and parks.
The vision for Glenwood Park is different from most housing developments
in the Atlanta area, according to the developer's brochure. "The
overriding principle is walkability. Walkability means that things
are built on a human scale, not an automotive scale."
Using that principle, Green Street Properties, the primary developer,
designed the intown neighborhood, so that if they choose, residents
can access retail stores, restaurants, shops, green spaces and
outdoor meeting places without getting in their cars. Residents
can also get to MARTA by walking to the rail station about a mile
away or catching a bus in the neighborhood.
The development, which is about a third of the way complete and
partly occupied, will have 375 residential units ranging in price
from $130,000 for an 850 square foot condo to $850,000 for a 3,500
square foot single-family home. The commercial district will feature
50,000 square feet of retail and 20,000 square feet of office space.
Babalu's, a Latin restaurant, and Perk, a coffee shop, are already
open for business.
"There is a diverse range of people interested in the neighborhood," said
Walter Brown, vice president and project manager of Green Street
Properties. "People with small children, singles, expectant
mothers, empty nesters and families with teenagers are coming to
see Glenwood Park. It's very exciting to see that cross section
of people moving in."
The mix of single-family homes, condominiums, townhouses, lofts
and apartments will all meet EarthCraft House Standards, a voluntary
program of the Greater Atlanta Homebuilders Association in partnership
with Southface Energy Institute. When homes are built to the program's
standards, energy costs are reduced, indoor comfort and air quality
are improved and maintenance is reduced.
"Most EarthCraft houses cost two to three percent more to
build," said Brown who is also a former employee of Southface
Energy. But they also typically use 30 percent less energy and
are easier on the environment, he said. Some "green" building
features include tighter air sealing, high efficiency gas furnaces,
low energy windows, sustainable harvested wood products, on-site
waste management which includes grinding construction material
for ground cover.
Showcasing many of those ideas plus some is the 2005 Southern
Living Idea House, Parkview, one of three Southern Living Idea
Houses this year. The two-story 3,700 square-foot house with a
wrap-around porch overlooking the two-acre park is designed to
save 50 percent more energy than a conventionally built house the
same size and is built to be kind to the environment.
Parkview's energy saving or "green" features include
a 50-year metal roof for clean rainwater collection, a porous pavement
parking area, instant and on-demand hot water heating and pre-finished,
recycled wood floors.
"Some ideas are cutting edge and some are not," said
Brown who cited front loading washing machines that use half as
much water, purifying indoor air by using ultra violet light to
zap microbes and using building materials with fewer chemicals
as some of the ideas. Others include rainwater harvesters, solar
panels, urethane foam insulation, and recycled-content sheetrock.
Aside from its green features, Parkview is full of design ideas,
inside and out. The 12-foot deep wrap around porch has plenty of
room for furniture and an outdoor fireplace. A second-floor landing
includes a mini-office with a desk, storage closets and built in
bookshelves and the master suite is complete with a claw-footed
tub, spa shower and his and her closets.
The Idea House is sponsored by Southern Living magazine and will
be open June 18 through October 2. Visitors can tour the home Wednesday
through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from 1 to 5
p.m. Visitors can purchased $10 tickets at the door. A portion
of the proceeds from ticket sales will benefit Earth Share of Georgia
who partners with businesses and employees to support 62 environmental
groups through workplace campaigns, volunteerism and other activities.
For information about Glenwood Park visit www.glenwoodpark.com.
To find out more about Earth Share, visit www.earthsharega.org.
Birth of a Neighborhood
Charles Brewer's gamble raises the bar for intown development
By Michael Wall
Creative Loafing
6/15/05
Ever since Glenwood Park's groundbreaking in January 2003, the
28-acre, mixed-use development between I-20 and north Ormewood
Park has been showered with accolades.
It's won national and international awards from environmental
and development groups, including the Congress for the new urbanism, new urbanist, the Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association, and the Georgia
Conservancy.
Southern Living magazine picked Glenwood Park as the permanent
home for its 2005 Idea House, built with environmentally friendly
materials and energy-efficient appliances. At the neighborhood's
opening ceremony June 18, Mayor Shirley Franklin undoubtedly will
shower Glenwood Park with more praise.
A lot of the buzz about Glenwood Park centers on its builder,
Charles Brewer, the self-made millionaire who founded Internet
service provider MindSpring out of his Ansley Park home in 1994.
Brewer proved he had a knack for making money with MindSpring,
which he grew into the nation's second largest Internet provider
in just six years. He was known for instilling a rare sense of
loyalty among MindSpring customers and employees, with a set of
core beliefs that valued people as much as profits. He resigned
in August 2000, after his company merged with California-based
EarthLink.
He was a maverick CEO, and he's not your typical developer, either.
Building a neighborhood from scratch takes a lot of money - and
carries a lot of risk.
When completed in late 2006, Glenwood Park will have 50,000 square
feet of shops and restaurants, 20,000 square feet of offices, and
a park with a small pond and playground. Its 350 condos, townhouses,
and single-family homes will create, Brewer hopes, what will feel
like the center of a small, Southern town.
Most of Glenwood Park's shops are underneath apartments. The streets
are narrow, the sidewalks wide, and the houses close together.
There's also a town center plaza with a fountain, called Brassfield
Square.
About 20 percent of Glenwood Park's construction is complete.
The rest will take another year-and-a-half to finish. All of the
23 single-family homes that have been finished either are sold
or under contract. The same goes for the nine completed townhouses
and 15 of the 18 apartments. Another round of townhouses and single-family
homes will hit the market over the next two weeks. What's more,
14 of the 17 office spaces have been leased.
"When you come out your door, you're somewhere. You don't
have to go get into your car and drive off every single time," Brewer
says. "There are things to do, whether it's walk to the park,
go to the coffee shop down there, or just mix with your neighbors."
That's what makes Glenwood Park different from other mixed-use
developments being built in Atlanta. But that's also what could
hurt it.
The Sembler Co.'s project on Moreland Avenue is a big project
with a lot of retail space and little residential. Highland Walk
on Highland Avenue is a big residential project with a little retail
thrown in. Atlantic Station has a retail-residential mix comparable
to Glenwood Park, but its scale is far larger. Atlantic Station
is a mixed-use city; Glenwood Park is a mixed-used neighborhood.
"It's quite unusual," says David Goldberg, a spokesman
for Smart Growth America. "I'd say it's the first new development
in metro Atlanta that really lives up to the aspirations of new
urbanism and smart growth."
Josh Chamberlain, a computer programmer with Scientific-Atlanta,
and his wife, Jenny, moved from Mableton into a 2,100-square-foot
townhouse in Glenwood Park last month. "Sometimes in the suburbs
you tend to get the same mix of people you are always hanging around,
and we enjoy the diversity of the different people and their different
ideas," Chamberlain says.
Sounds nice. But it's also a radical departure from traditional
development in Atlanta. And there's no precedent that says Brewer
will be able to pull it off.
Developments like Glenwood Park have been successful in other
places, such as the village of Seaside, Fla., the City of Villages
in Concord, N.H., and Harbor Point in Boston. But Atlanta is strictly
a car town. And creating a development where the car is demoted
to second-class citizen is a substantial wager - especially when
the developer isn't a real developer.
Nor is Brewer an environmentalist. His brainchild, Green Street
Properties, is a development company, after all. He's an entrepreneur,
walking the thin line between capitalism and environmentalism.
Rarely do those two "isms" mix successfully.
Brewer spent a minimum of $11 million of his own money on Glenwood
Park. And even though early sales have been brisk, Brewer still
faces some significant challenges. "I'm the biggest investor,
so there's some ongoing financial exposure there," he says.
One major challenge is filling the development's retail space.
Only two retail tenants - a Latin restaurant called Babalu, and
Perk, a coffee shop - have signed leases. Brewer says discussions
with several retailers and restaurateurs are underway. But none
of the spaces in Glenwood Park are big enough for a grocery store
such as Publix or Kroger. Brewer purposefully designed the neighborhood
that way, but the plan could come back to haunt him. The Sembler
Co.'s development on Moreland Avenue, with a Target, Kroger, Lowe's
and Best Buy, will likely lure the bulk of shoppers - and other
retailers - attracted to the area.
But Goldberg says, "I think it is going to be a success in
terms of its design, and I'm pretty sure it's going to be a market
success. It's kind of a new way of putting all the pieces together,
and the retail may take longer to establish itself."
Goldberg says he thinks other developers will look to Glenwood
Park and - if it's a success - will follow suit.
"The intown and inner suburban markets are pretty hot now
for urban style development," he says. "I think the early
projects like Glenwood Park that do a good job will be emulated."
Glenwood Park's grand opening will be held June 18 from 2-5
p.m. The neighborhood is located at the intersection of Glenwood
Avenue and Bill Kennedy Way (formerly the Glenwood-Memorial
Connector). For more info, visit www.glenwoodpark.com
