Hardhats could soon outnumber business suits on the western fringes of downtown Atlanta near Centennial Olympic Park. Another new hotel is planned for the white-hot Luckie-Marietta District, which will add two national attractions next year to its roster of touristy jewels and restaurants around the park. Plans surfaced last month for a 150-room extended stay hotel at Ivan Allen Boulevard and Luckie Street, catty-corner to the Georgia Aquarium. Now, the Atlanta Business Chronicle reports Atlanta-based Legacy Property Group LLC wants to build a 129-room Homewood Suites by Hilton on a small plot fronting Marietta Street (and facing STATS restaurant).
[ABOVE: The new extended-stay hotel is planned for the front/back of the Hilton Garden Inn Atlanta Downtown hotel, along Marietta Street. Rendering: Shields Engineering Group.]
The project would finish the Park Pavilion mixed-use development that Legacy built several years ago. (Here's hoping it adds more street retail to that side of Marietta Street, too). Though downtown average room rates are soaring, Legacy told the newspaper they have yet to secure funding, but they don't expect that to be much of an issue.
Now, if we could only get something to fill the big gravel parking lot adjacent to this Legacy project (the lot facing the future College Football Hall of Fame). If you'll recall, a project called "Times Square South" has been bandied about for that site, and as of our last visual check, promotional signs still hyped the project down there.
Legacy was part of the group that announced the Times Square South back in 2011. Plans called for 350,000 square foot mixed-use development at 285 Marietta St. featuring office, hotel rooms, tourist attractions and retail. The marketing hook for the building (to be designed by Cooper Carry) is that it will have a giant video wall on its facade. The developers talked up the idea that this video wall — combined with downtown attractions like the World of Coke, The Georgia Aquarium and College Football Hall of Fame — will create a Times Square-like district in Atlanta, and attract hip, "Gen Y companies and their young workforce." Let's hope they get the financing/pre-leasing/et cetera to pull the trigger one day. That property can't sit empty forever, right?
· Legacy to build hotel in surging downtown [Atlanta Business Chronicle]
· Atlanta's Most Audacious Proposals: Times Square South [Curbed]
· Hotel Pitched Near Aquarium Where Tower Never Towered [Curbed Atlanta]
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