Sometimes, the best way to put this amorphous city in context is to paint the picture from hundreds of feet above it. Thus, recent drone tours on these pages have spotlighted block-altering new developments in Old Fourth Ward, the skies over Vancouver—err, central Midtown, the sprawling Echo Street West project, and the city at large, from Buckhead to downtown.
Now it’s time to check in on neighborhoods directly west of Midtown.
Few places in Atlanta have changed as drastically in the past decade as the Howell Mill Road corridor, through neighborhoods such as Home Park and the Marietta Street Artery.
That type of high-dollar investment, as illustrated below, has burst at the seams and is spreading to the edges of Georgia Tech and neighborhoods like Howell Station/Knight Park, English Avenue, and Bankhead.
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^ Atlanta's latest reimagined warehouse complex is coming together along a bend in West Marietta Street. Westside Paper, an adaptive-reuse project being developed in a joint venture between Third & Urban and FCP, calls for 245,000 square feet of mixed uses that have added new-construction elements to a repurposed 1950s warehouse.
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^ The western flank of the new Westside Paper complex abuts a future BeltLine spur trail. At left is a massive QTS Data Centers expansion that kicked off earlier this year. The first phase alone calls for 1.15 million square feet of development—the bulk of it two data centers, plus roughly 250,000 square feet of offices.
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At bottom left, the Westside Paper section reserved for phase two, as seen in recent weeks.
^ How the two under-construction properties relate to each other, with the residential section of the historic Howell Station/Knight Park neighborhood just beyond.
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^ With West Marietta Street seen at top, QTS' project is expanding a 100-acre campus across 36 more acres—making the Southeast's largest data center substantially bigger.
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^ A block south of QTS’ property in the Howell Station/Knight Park neighborhood (off screen, at left) is the Westside BeltLine Connector trail opened last year—and recently extended by a mile as part of the BeltLine’s Westside Trail.
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^ In future phases, QTS' plans call for a 350-unit residential building at the corner of West Marietta and Herndon streets, 50 townhomes along Herndon Street (bordering Howell Station homes), and a commercial building on the section northeast of the data centers. Westside Paper, meanwhile, announced its first slate of retail tenants in December.
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^ Pivoting toward downtown, recent changes to the skyline include the Seven88 West Midtown condos (at right, now priced from the $300,000s) and Toll Brothers' The Osprey building (at center), which is across the street from a site where 312 more units are on the way, according to filings in March.
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^ Lastly, a look at the first two buildings in the Star Metals District (bottom, center) and the growing, 14-acre Interlock district, where the second phase (middle, beneath a crane) is set to include more retail, offices, Georgia Tech student housing, and a Publix, lending the area a walkable grocery option.
• Come along for a drone tour of Atlanta's rapidly changing skyline (Urbanize Atlanta)
