At the crossroads of Buckhead’s once-raucous party scene, Hunter Richardson is pulling down columns that would have hoisted the $1.5 billion mini-city of another Atlanta developer’s dreams.
And in Alpharetta, Mark Toro is razing a community eyesore — a parking deck left half-built when the previous owner halted work in 2009.
It’s a symbol of the mixed-use misfire called Prospect Park, which published reports said would have cost about $750 million. The developers’ ambitions are still lofty. But they’ve come back to earth compared with the previous owners’ high-flying, ultra-luxe visions they are replacing.
It’s what residents in other metro Atlanta communities should expect at their own stalled projects if and when work begins again: plans that differ from their original visions in ways both big and small.
In Sunday’s newspaper, the AJC takes a deep look at the cost of ambitious developments. It’s a story you’ll get only by picking up a copy of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution or logging on to the paper’s iPad app. Subscribe today.
