project: HISTORIC WESTSIDE VILLAGE MASTER PLAN
date: 2004-2005
location: ATLANTA, GA
client: H.J. RUSSELL / TRAMMELL CROW RESIDENTIAL
contact: LYLE FOGARTY, PROJECT MANAGER

Located in the Vine City neighborhood, on the western edge of Downtown Atlanta, Historic Westside Village is a commercial center that offers not only a town center to the residents of the neighborhood, but a glimpse into the community’s past. Located on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, and set in the midst of the five-college Greater Atlanta University Center, the Village is a mix of vibrant upstart retail and historic building stock waiting for rehabilitation. Urban Collage was asked to be a part of a redevelopment team that looked at strategies for new growth within the old urban fabric, and developed a master plan for unbuilt portion of the Village – a plan designed to introduce new housing options ranging from townhomes to condominiums, focused around the expansion of a neighborhood-scaled and historically-appropriate retail center. The plan was designed not only to foster new growth, but also to preserve the historic and walkable character of the Westside Village that existed in the past, and still, in part, exists today.

As a part of this plan, Urban Collage worked with in concert with the Georgia State Historic Preservation Office and an independent architecture firm to coordinate the completion of an ‘Historic Assessment Survey’. This survey helped identify historic assets within the neighborhood and provided targets for potential rehabilitation and redevelopment.

Implementation Highlights:

• Ground-breaking for the first phase of the project occurred in 2005, and the construction of over 200 condominium units and almost 60 townhomes are now complete.

project: SUWANEE CITY HALL PROGRAMMING
date: 2005
location: SUWANEE, GA
client: CITY OF SUWANEE
contact: MARVIN ALLEN, CITY MANAGER

Urban Collage, Inc. assisted the City of Suwanee, Georgia by conducting a utilization study and needs assessment for the City’s administrative and police / court facilities. The three month study included a review of existing facilities, a series of programming interviews and several task force meetings to quantify and plan for future space needs. The approved plan calls for 40,000 square feet of new and renovated administrative space including a New City Hall, renovation of the existing City Hall building to accommodate the City’s growing police department and modification of the existing municipal court facility to improve staff efficiency and safety.

Planning for the new facilities included site strategies to integrate the New City Hall with new development along the edge of Town Center Park, space programming for the construction of a 20,000 SF facility with potential expansion to 30,000 SF, identification of needed adjacencies, architectural blocking diagrams and an outline of next steps to begin design of the new facility including preliminary schedules and budgets.

The new City Hall was recently completed and the Police Department has moved into the old City Hall.

project: DOWNTOWN LIVABILITY CODE
date: 2003
location: ATLANTA, GA
client: CENTRAL ATLANTA PROGRESS
contact: JENNIFER BALL, VICE PRESIDENT OF PLANNING

The Downtown Livability Code is the result of an initiative of Central Atlanta Progress and the City of Atlanta to review and update a Special Public Interest (SPI) Zoning District for downtown Atlanta.

Through a three-phase planning process, Urban Collage created comprehensive graphic “Development Standards” which act as a companion piece to the SPI Zoning text. The standards included illustrative explanations for specific regulations, architectural guidelines and examples of “best practices”. The purpose of this process was to promote a more vibrant downtown with a mix of uses and an enhanced street environment.

Urban Collage, facilitated an involved consensus building process between property owners, city staff and residents to validate existing conditions and issues and create a vision for 9 distinct subareas within downtown Atlanta. The process included weekly work sessions with a 25–member working committee and quarterly meeting with the 60-member advisory committee. Special task forces created for historic neighborhoods within downtown guided the creation of a historic preservation component in the code and development standards.

Form-based code components:

• Building and sites: included standards for site planning, density, articulation and historic preservation.
• Public spaces: incorporated standards for sidewalks, furniture standards and materials, supplemental zones, plazas and open spaces and bikeways.
• Parking: included standards for on street, surface and structured parking