MARTA on Thursday selected the partners who will transform 15 acres of unused parking space near Brookhaven station into a huge development boasting a park, a hotel, shopping, office space, apartments, condos, and senior independent living, among other amenities.
A partnership to build a mixture of offices and retail on a smaller, 2.14-acre parcel at Chamblee station also was approved Thursday by the MARTA board.
The two newest transit-oriented developments in DeKalb County at Brookhaven and Chamblee are part of an aggressive plan by MARTA to capitalize on underused parking areas beside its stations, allowing them to be developed into walkable villages that put potential customers at its doorstep. The details of the long-term lease arrangement still have to be hammered out and approved by the MARTA board.
The two projects bring to seven the number of transit-oriented development properties that MARTA has offered up to potential investors in the past two and a half years. The others include King Memorial, Edgewood/Candler Park, Avondale, Arts Center and Oakland City.
The development planned for Brookhaven would be the largest undertaken to date, and could become a showpiece for the newly formed city. The first phase to be constructed will be apartments, offices and retail. The next two phases will be built based on market demand, to include more retail stores, affordable senior independent living and condominiums, said Amanda Rhein, MARTA’s senior director of Transit Oriented Development.
A park with public gathering space will be added on both sides of Peachtree Road and be connected through an existing tunnel that goes beneath the road.
Brookhaven Mayor Rebecca Chase Williams said she was eager to see the plans, which will still have to clear the city’s rezoning process.
“We have always looked at the Brookhaven MARTA station as the heart of our city,” Williams said. “So we’ve been very excited to work with MARTA and partner with them to make this really what we hope will be a showplace.”
The partners selected for the project are the Integral Group and Transwestern Development Co. (calling themselves Brookhaven City Center Partners). The next step is for MARTA to negotiate details of a long-term lease arrangement with them.
Bates Mattison, District 3 City Councilman, helped form a Citizens Review Board to provide feedback to seven potential developers about what residents wanted to see built. Reached by phone Thursday afternoon, Mattison said he had not seen the plans, but he was encouraged to hear that MARTA had chosen Brookhaven City Center Partners. It was one of four teams that the Citizens Review Board recommended.
“We hope that it’s such a good development that people around Brookhaven, when they have friends and relatives visit, they want to bring them to that site and it becomes a place where people want to hang out,” Mattison said.
The Brookhaven MARTA station has about 1,500 parking spaces. As part of this project, 900 spaces that MARTA says are not being used would be eliminated.
“They came in with a proposal that brings in residential, hotels, a library, and including the DeKalb Housing Authority all as partners, while also preserving some green space,” said MARTA CEO Keith Parker in an exclusive interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “It is as innovative a package of a live, work, and play area as you could find.”
Parker said that residents will be able to walk from their door to the MARTA platform, which will help boost MARTA’s ridership and bottom line.
“They are built-in customers,” Parker said.
MARTA expects to gain an additional 800 to 1,200 new customers per day from the Brookhaven project alone.
The Chamblee station development will be constructed sooner as a joint venture by Pattillo Industrial Real Estate and Parkside Partners (calling themselves Trackside Partners), with groundbreaking expected next summer and opening about a year later. That development will not feature any homes, but instead will have a mix of 38,000 square feet of offices and 13,000 square feet of retail space.
A pocket park is part of the plan, and the development will include a connection to Chamblee’s existing rail trail.
An anchor tenant, Pattillo Industry, has already been identified, Rhein said.
The transit agency put out a request for proposals from developers interested in building near Oakland City earlier this week. MARTA wants to transform a closed south parking lot on 3.7 acres into a mixed-use development that would be mostly residential, perhaps with a coffee shop or pharmacy, Rhein said.
About the Author
