It all comes down to this, folks: Hundreds of Atlantans have voted, the Final Four has been halved, and now, Atlanta's Worst Parking Garage Tournament is set to crown a winner/loser at last!
In the spirit of March Madness and bracketed competitions, we accepted reader nominations to help determine a field of the most disengaging, unsightly examples of cars-first urban spaces Atlanta has to offer.
The list of options, especially downtown, was unfortunately vast. We began with a field of eight.
From those options, the inglorious Championship match has emerged! It pits Midtown versus downtown. NOTE: Voting closes at 5 p.m. Tuesday.
Without further ado, let’s meet the Championship contestants, beginning with Atlanta’s crappy parking deck equivalent to the No. 1-seeded Kansas Jayhawks:
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Google Maps; submitted
Literally Crumbling
Location: Peeking over the Connector, near the southbound Courtland Street exit
First-round votes: 38 percent
Final Four votes: 56 percent
Commentary: Meet the early front-runner—and dominant force throughout the hallowed tourney. At first blush, this mess of steel pipes, brick, and concrete might appear to be leaning and shedding things, but Google imagery shows it’s been in pretty much the same condition since 2007. Unfortunately, the historic but neglected Medical Arts Building the garage is attached to is becoming just as unsightly.
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Google Maps
Block of Shame
Location: Spring Street, spanning from 4th to 3rd streets
First-round votes: 17 percent
Final Four: 19 percent
Commentary: For better or worse (okay, worse), Midtown still has a dog in this fight. And what a mangy, unremarkable, lifeless dog it is. We all know the Walk of Fame. Here’s the opposite—the Block of Shame. It consumes a full block along Spring Street, exemplifying the fortress-like disengagement for which the worst urban parking garages are known.
