Residents, preservationists facepalm over Engineer’s Bookstore demolition plan

Atlanta has very little of that kind of fabric left... A Citgo Easy Mart doesn’t make us unique,’

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Back when email was still new for a lot of the kids at Georgia Tech, the Engineer’s Bookstore across the street was selling must-reads on multivariable calculus, thermodynamics, and the like out of a circa-1930 building on Marietta Street. The bookstore had moved in to the building following a 1993 restoration. Before that, the spot’s tenants had included an appliance repair shop and a five-and-dime.
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But Amazon and e-books haven’t been kind to independent book dealers, and campus development has shifted east to Tech Square. Engineer’s quietly closed a few weeks ago (its sister Southern Engineer’s Bookstore lives on in Marietta.)

Now the building is set to go as well; a developer wants to put a gas station on the site. But the planned tear-down in the Means Street Historic District has caused some neighbors and preservationists to grumble about how Atlanta — and Atlantans — treat old buildings.

Bill Gould lives almost behind the store, in the Allied Factory Lofts, which he redeveloped.

“When I discovered the Allied building, that whole block was blighted, kudzu-covered, bombed-out-looking,” Gould said. But he couldn’t resist reusing and adapting it.

Gould admits he’s not such a “number-cruncher” and is drawn to projects that move him. But he says projects like Krog Street Market or the Westside Provisions District show that the value of preserving architecture outweighs any hurdle a developer might hit while redoing an old building. Old buildings draw even people who aren’t passionate about history or culture, he said, because the buildings are just out-of-the-ordinary. They’re truly unique.

“Atlanta has very little of that kind of fabric left. It’s the only thing that makes us unique. A Citgo Easy Mart doesn’t make us unique,” he said.


Gould said among his neighbors, there is pretty vehement opposition to tearing down the bookstore building. Neighbors also say a gas station does not fit with a longstanding vision of a bike- and pedestrian-friendly Marietta Street corridor.

Max Mandelis says she’s attracted to repurposing buildings because what the old craftsmen left behind feels different than what’s built today. The real estate broker turned a 1912 building on Marietta Street into showroom space, event space and offices. Its long-gone builders set wooden columns made of heavy timber that cannot be replaced today, she said.

“Imagine tearing down a structure that has these elements that we can’t even build anymore,” she said.

Trains rumble along the tracks there just as they have done since before Marietta Street was paved. That’s part of the draw.

“People come to the building for a party and say, ‘This is cool, this is old, this is not typical Atlanta, we’re not used to this here,’” said Mandelis. But she said the reason Atlanta tears down its buildings is probably the spreadsheets that developers use to map out costs versus profits. The payoff can be larger from a tear-down and new build than a restoration.

“If the numbers can work in another way then I think some of these investors would change course,” she said.

Reynoldstown architect Eric Kronberg is a big fan of adaptive reuse. As for why Atlanta tears down its buildings, he’s got an explanation ready.

“When people wonder why we tear everything down in Atlanta, the parking requirements are probably about 80 percent of the problem,” said Kronberg. 

By and large, Atlanta rules say a building must have a certain number of parking spaces depending on what’s done in the building: a restaurant, homes, shops, whatever. Buildings built before 1965 typically don’t have parking on the site, Kronberg said. That’s the first year city rules required parking spaces to a notably greater extent and degree than previous codes mentioned, according to Kronberg.

So in an old building such as Engineer’s Bookstore, when the tenant has departed and there’s little or no parking, “your choices for a new use are significantly constrained by the parking, because if you try to change the use, whatever grandfathered zoning it had goes away,” he said.

Scrounging up more parking adds to the “cost” column in that developer’s spreadsheet, and drives up the costs for the tenants and clients of that building.

Sure, some people are still going to drive and store vehicles, said Kronberg. But the city could maximize on-street parking, he said, while the off-street parking spaces now required are too much. “In the days of Uber and Lyft that we now live in,” Kronberg says, “that’s ridiculous.”

The city, it should be noted, is aware of this kind of critique. Parking requirements may indeed be cut in a city zoning review that’s currently underway.

Omair Pasha of the Premo Propety Group said his company’s plans for the site include a gas station, convenience store and quick-serve restaurant. Having prospected the site, he said via email, “it is clear that Georgia Tech students and faculty (and the surrounding community) need the kind of facility that we build in close proximity to the campus particularly in light of the fact that no such store is near that side of the campus.”

Pasha said he realizes that some people in the community may have reservations about the plan, but the company thinks the development is a much-needed amenity.

Count Gould as a neighbor with reservations, to say the least.

“I think the rights of existing businesses, existing homeowners and property owners should outweigh the rights of individuals coming in from elsewhere and trying to just find a way to maximize a personal profit at what ultimately would be the expense in terms of quality of life, and even detriment, to businesses around them,” he says.

On August 2, Neighborhood Planning Unit E is set to review an application from the store for a license to sell beer and liquor. The site is just across the street from a Salvation Army 130-bed rehab center and chapel, which is sure to be brought up as an objection to the license.

pdate: This article clarifies comments from Eric Kronberg about parking rule changes in 1965. The changes that took effect that year were notable and broad, but previous versions of city laws had also mentioned parking.