Like a gap-toothed smile, the north side of Marietta Square has a big crater where a historic building once stood. The hole has been there for going on five years, and now its owner wants to fill it with a brew pub featuring a rooftop patio. Most everyone in town is excited, because this is a really great idea. A no-brainer.
But not so fast. Philip Goldstein owns the hole. He’s the guy half of Marietta thinks spends his days figuring out ways to pull a fast one. That Goldstein and his family own most of the buildings on the square, that he has served on the Marietta City Council for 35 of his 56 years, that he has sued that same council concerning that same property makes the situation all the more intriguing. And weird. So, the property sits.
The latest holdup is due to differences in preservation philosophy, architectural taste and perhaps long simmering personality conflicts between town functionaries the Goldsteins in general and Philip in particular. Earlier this year, the Marietta Historic Board of Review voted 7-2 to turn down Goldstein's proposal for a three-story brick building. Goldstein reconfigured some of the features, but his changes left the board shrugging last week.
Historic board member Becky Paden, who has written about and researched Cobb, said the proposed building’s architecture falls flat.
“There’s not much style to it; there’s just no elements to it,” she said. “It looks like a box, like a warehouse. He had an opportunity to do something remarkable for the square. Instead it looks like Philip pulled the plan out of a drawer.”
Goldstein doesn’t take the criticism personally. If he did, he’d have slunk out of town long ago.
On the wall of his sprawling but cluttered office is a large black and white photo of him, age 10, standing in front of the family clothing store on the square. Attached is a quote, “If you wait until you don’t have opposition, you’ll never accomplish change.”
He said that in back in 2000, when he fought, unsuccessfully, to build a 12-story building off the square. The next year he bought the old optometrist’s building that is now the hole. Nothing has operated there since.
Goldstein eventually tore the old building down in 2010 and tried to build a five-story building, a move that horrified historic purists. Many of them had also screamed in the 1970s when the Goldsteins bought the old Strand Theatre on the square and tried to bring in the golden arches. A decade later, they tried to build a 10-story edifice there, with a similar outcome.
The Strand is now restored and run by a non-profit group. The organization’s lease ends when Philip will be pushing 100. He plans to be around.
But back to the hole. Having a property lay fallow for 14 years isn’t what Goldstein envisioned. But he takes it in stride.
“I come from a different concept; my concept is generational, not just for today,” said Goldstein, whose family has been on the square since 1912. “We feel that what we own, you’re a temporary owner. You increase what you own and pass it on to the next generation.
“I have time on my side. If it doesn’t happen in my generation, it will happen in another generation.”
Goldstein is soft spoken, polite and a little wry. Often, when considering a question, he pauses as if considering which of 14 versions of the answer he should go with.
Almost everyone mentions how smart Philip is. Both friends and foes call him Philip.
Historic board members say their antipathy to his proposals is not personal.
Former Mayor Bill Dunaway thinks it might be. Decades of legal maneuvers and tormenting others has caught up with Goldstein, he said. “He is paying the price of ill will. He’s not a warm personality. He’s Philip.”
Goldstein often performs an odd ritual in council meetings, jumping down from the dais to sit in the audience as a citizen when he has personal business matters coming before his peers. He’ll address the council and then bound back to his council chair. When he sues the city, Plaintiff Goldstein is precluded from executive sessions where fellow council members discuss legal strategies.
Asked if some of the opposition he faces is personal, Philip smiled. “Next question,” he said.
In talking about Goldstein, Dunaway, who sold him the old pharmacy building on the square in 1999, seems to convey a grudging admiration. But he’s quick to reject that interpretation.
“I don’t like him,” Dunaway declared. “I respect his intelligence. But I don’t like what he’s done to the city. I’ve never seen him do an unselfish act on the city council. He always has an angle.”
Goldstein certainly knows how to work the system. Exhibit A: In the 1980s the Goldsteins rented the Strand to a church. A Goldstein tenant next door wanted a liquor license. But an ordinance prohibited pouring alcohol within 300 feet of a house of worship. So Goldstein canceled the church’s lease for a day, got the council to approve the license, and reinstated the church lease the next day.
I know this because it is in a framed AJC article on Goldstein’s wall.
On Thursday, he spoke of the features he added to his proposed brew pub to win over the historic board: precast headers on the large windows, bricks turned sideways under windows, several rows of light bricks to give the exterior contrasting lines, and a green roof cap. He wants to keep the steel cable railing — which some historic board members hate — on the roof because it does not impede diners’ views.
“They wanted more character,” he said. “But I think that’s in the eye of the beholder.”
He said Dunaway’s old building, which was next door, had a blue metal facade before Goldstein reconfigured the property into four old-timey storefronts with cornices.
Current Mayor Steve “Thunder” Tumlin said Goldstein got busy last year with the brew pub idea after Marietta officials mentioned they might condemn the property and build a tourism center.
Coincidence, Goldstein says.
Tumlin said the controversy may even help Philip.
“Ironically,” he said, “this drama is going to make it have even more anticipation about its opening.”
About the Author
