Wednesday, February 10, 2010
News Beltline picks big names to design project
Posted by Thomas Wheatley @thomaswheatley on Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 5:56 PM
One firm designed one of the most celebrated greenspace projects in New York. The other includes the visionary who dreamed up the Beltline as a Georgia Tech grad student. Together they'll be in charge of deciding how the Beltline, Atlanta's proposed 22-mile loop of parks, trails and transit, will actually look.
The $2.8 billion project's board of directors today named Perkins+Will and James Corner Field Operations as the lead design team of the Beltline. According to project officials, the two firms won a competitive-bidding process for the not-to-exceed $9.5 million contract.
“The eyes of the nation are on Atlanta's Beltline as a model for smart growth and urban redevelopment,” Mayor Kasim Reed said in a statement. “The selection of this world-class team to design the Beltline corridor is a great step forward for one of the most significant projects in our city's history.”
Now, you're probably wondering, "I've been to all those study groups. Wasn't that designing?" That was planning. The study groups — a new crop of which are just now starting up — allow Beltline-area residents the opportunity to say how they'd like their neighborhoods to evolve (or stay the same) as the project takes shape.
But design is very detailed. And Perkins+Will and James Corner Field Operations will focus on the design of the project itself.
That means they'll oversee everything from the placement of utilities and multi-use trails. They'll lead a team of 19 other design firms on tasks including: civil and structural engineering, transit, stations, bridges, tunnels, historic preservation, public art locations, and signage. (Basically, the nuts and bolts of the project.) Their work will determine all future Beltline design and construction.
Project officials say the firms' work will help make the endeavor more competitive for federal funding — which many say is vital should the Beltline become a reality much sooner than 2032, as Reed has said he'd like to see.
Founded in 1998 by landscape architect James Corner, New York-based James Corner Field Operations is best known for creating open spaces in nontraditional urban environments. (See its work on the Fresh Kills landfill.) The firm's most celebrated endeavor — Manhattan's High Line — transformed a rusty set of abandoned, elevated railroad tracks once eyed for demolition into an innovative greenspace that cuts through 22 Gotham blocks. As that project's lead designers, Corner and his team oversaw it through planning to construction.
"The Beltline is one of the most original and exciting [infrastructure projects in the world]— a large-scale greenbelt that will recast the identity of Atlanta, reconnect its neighborhoods, and enrich the public life for all of Atlanta's citizens," Corner said in a statement. "As with New York's High Line, the Beltline will bring new life and vitality to the old, derelict infrastructure of industry and railroads, retooling these infrastructures for new social and environmental purposes."
Perkins+Will is an internationally recognized architecture and design firm with offices throughout the country, including Atlanta. Local projects include the Centers for Disease Control, Georgia Tech's Klaus Advanced Computing Building and Fulton County Schools, among many others. The firm's team will be led by Leo Alvarez, John Threadgill and Ryan Gravel, the urban designer who first proposed the Beltline. Gravel sits on the Beltline Partnership, the project's fund-raising and publicity arm. (A Beltline spokesman tells CL that the Beltline Partnership played no role in the selection process.)
“First-rate design is critical to the success of the Beltline, and Perkins+Will is honored to help Atlanta carry its vision forward as lead of the corridor design team," Gravel said in a statement. "For me personally, clearly the Beltline has been a passion over the last 10 years, so I am particularly excited to be a part of this process.”
(Courtesy Georgia Tech College of Architecture)
Comments (9)
Showing 1-9 of 9
gret, some designers have been chosen. i was afraid that the beltline was gonna drag the whole process out...
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Very exciting to see the folks behind the High Line on board. If the Beltline ends up as successful as that project has ended up being, this will be very big for Atlanta, even minus a transit element. My hope is that a well-designed Beltline will tie the intown neighborhoods together in a way that undoes the harm caused by the massive interstate trenches separating the city.
I have a great idea how we can use the BILLIONS of Dollars we are going to put into the GREAT BELTLINE DREAM. How about cleaning up the areas around the EXISTING Marta tracks so that people ACTUALLY live within walking distance of the already built public transportation rails? Then we can spend some of the billions on making the MARTA nicer and modern with some additional security, cameras etc. This way I won't feel like I need a bullet proof vest when I am taking it. Perhaps in the vicinity of some of the rougher stations (west end, etc.) we can spend the effort and billions of $$ cleaning the areas up. If we clean up the neighborhoods, maybe people would want to live there (like in DC, Boston, NY) instead of outside the city. this way we can actually use the tracks that are already built instead of spending billions of dollars and decades of time creating new trails!! I don't know....just a thought.
@Tom, make MARTA-walkable areas livable? Now there's an idea! Let's write off the gifts to Wayne Mason, Ryan Gravel and the other Beltline banditi and do something that has a chance of working for once.
This is a great design team and a huge step forward for the Beltline. Question Man, Fred Yalouris is the Design director, not the designer of the Beltline.
This is just more BS PR window dressing regarding a failed project delivered to you by the swine over at ADA/ABI. The BeltLine, as a transit system, is not going to happen. A few extra parks here and there simply means a few extra parks the City will have no funds to maintain (TAD money cannot be used for maintenance and upkeep of the BeltLine parks), so the few parks in a few years will resemble the overgrown scrub areas they are today, except they will produce no tax revenue at all as they will be owned by the City. The BeltLine as a whole is a complete farce. Brian Leary has no clue. He was forced out of AIG since that company is tanking, so his only option was heading up Atlanta's very own version of the "bridge to nowhere."
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