If the Phoenix flying out of the ashes is Atlanta’s symbol, then the “construction crane” would be that soot-covered bird’s roost.
And as the cranes go up, several popular Atlanta-area nightspots and beloved eateries are going down.
It’s the Atlanta Way. In with the high-end mixed-use. Out with the old and unique.
On New Year’s Eve, celebrants gathered to say goodbye to the East Andrews Entertainment District, a gathering of taverns and clubs designated for something secret and new.
It’s happening all over. In December, in the emerging “downtown” of Sandy Springs, Bruce and Sally Alterman held a prolonged hug-fest with longtime customers as their popular Roswell Road bar and grill, The Brickery, is headed for urban renewal.
Manuel’s tavern recently closed for a re-do that will be blended with the “live, work, play” development we keep hearing about. The experience there will inevitably change, no matter what they say.
And recently, as my family ate a holiday dinner at Alfredo’s, I confirmed an ugly rumor I had heard — yes, the ugly duckling on Cheshire Bridge road that has served marvelous Italian food for 41 years is indeed closing.
Alfredo’s longtime owner, Perry Alvarez, the smiling, gap-toothed Cuban immigrant who is the face of the place, has been expecting something like this for years.
High-end apartments, naturally, will soon occupy the space. There will be 245 of them, Alvarez has been told. Another episode in the never ending Attack of Apartments.
“What can you do?” he said. “That’s progress. It’s all about the money.”
Cheshire Bridge has long been known for its, ahem, eclectic collection of businesses — restaurants, strip joints, a leather bar, used tire stores, a hookah place. Now it's becoming the Next Happening Area.
Property along that drag is pushing $1 million an acre.
“The young kids want apartments. What do you call them? Mi-yenials?” said Alvarez, true to his native Spanish, in which the “LL” in millenials would be pronounced “Y.” “They don’t want to buy houses. They want to enjoy life now.”
The apartment dwellers can enjoy the titillating haunts of Cheshire Bridge, until those, too, are bulldozed for more of the same.
Alvarez is 72, which is kind of mature to start over, but he wants to try to make another go of it. “I have people working here and I don’t want to put them on the street,” he said.
There is a sense of loss among longtime customers who enjoy the dark, no-windows atmosphere of 1970s-style paneling, low ceilings and the feeling that a capo di tutti capi of the Cosa Nostra could be holding court there. (Before you admonish me for perpetuating Italian stereotypes, Alfredo’s embraces the genre, with a Pacino/Godfather photo montage in the men’s bathroom.)
The phones are ringing with customers wanting to dine there before the restaurant closes sometime in 2016. “One customer said it’s the fourth generation coming here,” he said.
Ten miles north in Sandy Springs, Bruce and Sally Alterman spent time this week getting the Brickery ready for auction. The 24-year-old restaurant closed just before Christmas as the strip mall just outside I-285 will be scraped to make way, he said, for “50,000 square feet of retail with 340 apartments above it.”
He’s been told it will be about an $80 million development. He has no ill feelings or regrets. He understands the score: “It’s part of the dynamic that growth creates. This is a big space that needed development.”
His popular little eatery just stood in the way.
The Altermans have doggedly tried to find a new, affordable space in the vicinity but have had no luck. Such a space no longer exists. He paid about $14 per square foot in rent and figures the new development would demand three times that.
“I’d have to serve burgers that were 20 bucks,” he said. That of course is not him. He likes to “out-small” the big chains. He doesn’t want to serve salad dressing delivered in 5-gallon buckets.
The Brickery was a favorite with local pols, church groups, the large Jewish community, with just about everyone.
Some longtime patrons seem more upset about the circumstances than the owners.
“It’s almost like they lost their dog,” Alterman said. “This is where their memories happened. Sunday night with the kids. Celebrations. We underestimated what this meant to their lifestyles, memories and life patterns.”
As Newer, Bigger, Better (at least in tax-base generating) become the norm, something is lost.
“Replacing that authenticity becomes a challenge,” he said. But it has happened before and will keep occurring, especially in a metro area forever chasing rebirth. He mentioned iconic, now-defunct restaurants in town like the Coach and Six and Herren’s or the Snack and Shop deli in Buckhead.
“The authentic independent restaurants get caught in the cross hairs,” he said. “But I’m not a victim of what was going on here. I’m just part of the consequence.”
In 2007, the party scene of Buckhead was bulldozed to make way for what developers then boldly called a mix between “Beverly Hills’ Rodeo Drive and Manhattan’s Madison Avenue.”
A subsequent recession kept a big hole in the heart of Buckhead for several years and the developers retooled with somewhat less ambitious plans. That new retail/entertainment is up and running and now Big Development is gazing a few blocks northwest to where the new party district sits.
Sam Massell, the Mayor of Buckhead, has complained in print about late-night “misbehavior” in that area — as he did previously about the old party scene — and now the land underneath the scraggly collection of one-story buildings there is worth too much to keep scraggly one-story buildings.
Managers of the property, which includes a comedy club, a speakeasy, a pickup bar and other watering holes, are real tight-lipped about what’s going in.
But it doesn’t take a real estate Mensa to envision another mixed-use, live-work-play apartment/condo effort on the horizon.
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