Atlanta’s new neighborhood for sky dwellers

Atlanta now has a neighborhood of sky dwellers.

The City Council recently approved its first “vertical neighborhood” — Buckhead Heights, made up of 500 homes in three condominium towers near Lenox Square.

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KEVIN DUFFY / kduffy@ajc.com

Larry Wilson, left, and John Bailey stand on the 26th floor balcony of Bailey’s condominium at the Grandview in Buckhead. The Grandview and two buildings in the near background, The Villa at Buckhead Heights and the Oaks at Buckhead, are all part of Atlanta’s first vertical neighborhood, Buckhead Heights.

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Councilman Howard Shook, who was instrumental in Buckhead Heights’ formation, said the new neighborhood “means Atlanta is maturing as a city.”

The irony is Buckhead Heights, one of about 240 neighborhoods in the city, was born during a severe slump in the residential market. Unsold condo inventory is at a record high.

Homeowners at the Grandview at Buckhead Heights, the Oaks at Buckhead and the Villa at Buckhead Heights will now have a say in zoning decisions and other matters.

Grandview Larry Wilson said high-rise dwellers have concerns that single-family neighborhoods might not have, such as preserving on-street parking in the face of dense development.

“Issues like that are particular to us,” Wilson said.

Other concerns include safeguarding views and dealing with shadows as more buildings go up.

“All of a sudden to have a new neighbor block your pool isn’t very fair,” Wilson’s neighbor, John Bailey, said.

The trigger for creating Buckhead Heights was CityPlace, one of the most ambitious high-rise residential projects Atlanta has ever seen.

The Related Group of Miami plans to build nine residential towers, some as tall as 42 stories, on 16 acres in the new neighborhood. Those buildings could mean 5,000 additional residents some day.

The project is on hold, but “when the market gets better we are anxious to get going,” said Bob Dorfman, a senior vice president with Related. The first building, a joint project with Cousins Properties, is the 33-story One CityPlace.

Dorfman said establishing Buckhead Heights “shows that the area is maturing as a condo lifestyle area.”

But Benjamin Flowers, an assistant professor of architecture at Georgia Tech who studies how politics, culture, power and architecture intersect to form the built landscape, takes a different view.

Flowers said defining a neighborhood based on building height demonstrates that Atlanta, a decentralized city with three urban clusters — downtown, Midtown and Buckhead — hasn’t fully embraced tower living.

“I have a hard time understanding the utility of that distinction,” he said. “In some ways it reflects an unspoken unease about what it means to live in urban conditions as opposed to the single-family home.

“The idea of this is a different kind of neighborhood because you’re in a different kind of building,” Flowers said. But “shared geography is more important than shared building type.”

Creating Buckhead Heights took about a year. Much of that time was taken up with a petition drive that required that 75 percent of the owners in the three buildings approve the idea.

Artificial or not, more vertical neighborhoods are likely as high-rise living grows in popularity, said Patrick Corleto, a former Norcross city councilman who lives on the 25th floor at the Grandview and works for a company involved in planning.

“You’ll see a lot more of these,” Corleto predicted.