A blocky, almost windowless Virginia-Highland construction project that makes suburban Walmarts look interesting appears to be nearing completion. And it overlooks two of Atlanta’s most popular intown attractions.
The controversial self-storage facility stands up to five stories at the doorstep of the Beltline’s Eastside/Northeast trails and Piedmont Park, one of the eastside’s most pleasantly walkable areas. In such a vibrant setting, the structure's blank walls are unmissable.
Two low-rise commercial buildings were demolished at the site last year (1011 Monroe Drive and 597 Cooledge Ave.), where Cantoni Furniture and Illuminations Lighting had most recently done business. The high-profile corner is located a few yards from where the Beltline’s popular Eastside Trail and new Northeast Trail section link to each other with an expanded, improved pedestrian crossing at Monroe Drive.
Public Storage, a national self-storage provider, is building a larger facility to replace those commercial structures. That use has drawn the ire of both Beltline development authorities and neighborhood leaders.
Upper floors of the new building over Monroe Drive, facing Piedmont Park and Midtown. Josh Green/Urbanize Atlanta
Renderings vs. Reality: How the Monroe Drive facility was projected to look, according to renderings submitted to Beltline development arbiters in 2023. Public Storage/Atlanta Beltline DRC
The self-storage company hasn’t clarified exactly what it’s building, or when it plans to deliver, despite repeated requests for more information over the past two years. (Neighborhood leaders have told Urbanize Atlanta they’ve also been left in the dark.) We again asked Public Storage officials this week for an estimated delivery date on the new building—and if it will offer any uses beyond personal storage—but those inquiries weren’t answered.
The construction timeline is important to other parts of Atlanta. How so? It’s kind of complicated.
On the flipside of Piedmont Park, the Atlanta Botanical Garden’s $160-million expansion project hinges on the Public Storage facility project being finished and open. The Garden’s 8-acre expansion will consume adjacent land where Public Storage has operated for years. In exchange, the Garden is swapping the Monroe Drive property, which it bought for $13.5 million in 2023, with Public Storage, so the company can maintain a presence in the area. The Botanical Garden also bought Public Storage’s facility on Piedmont Avenue, immediately north of the current gardens, for a reported $40 million.
Blank walls continue on the facility's northern facade, along Cooledge Avenue. Josh Green/Urbanize Atlanta
A nature-centric mural by Thomas Turner on the building's southern face. Because murals, as any urbanist knowns, make it all better. Josh Green/Urbanize Atlanta
Following several design updates, drawings shared by Public Storage representatives in early 2023 with the Atlanta Beltline Design Review Committee lent an idea what’s in store for the intown corner. According to those plans, the finished self-storage project would include office space and bike racks with a large, nature-themed mural on one wall.
Now finished, that towering art piece by Thomas Turner, an Atlanta-based surrealist painter and illustrator, could be one aspect of the building that’s overdelivered.
During planning stages two years ago, the project’s lack of retail space or residential uses such as townhomes peeved Beltline DRC members, who criticized the concept as “a missed opportunity” and “a use that does not belong on the Beltline or anywhere near it.” A competing business, Extra Space Storage, has operated another self-storage facility next door on the same block, along Kanuga Street, since the Eastside Trail was but a weedy former rail corridor.
The new Public Storage building's proximity to the Beltline's most patronized section (at right), as seen in late September over Monroe Drive. Josh Green/Urbanize Atlanta
Botanical Garden officials told Urbanize Atlanta in November they hope to break ground on the expansion late this year, with completion sometime in 2027. (The ETA has since been revised to early 2028.) But that’s all contingent on Public Storage relinquishing their current building on the Garden’s expansion site, officials said.
So please, have a thorough look around the new Va-Hi self-storage project in the photo gallery above. And then take a second to answer today’s poll:
