Neighbors start petition to thwart Amsterdam Walk redevelopment

First came the naysaying yard signs. Now comes the online campaign. 

Despite revisions to Amsterdam Walk redevelopment plans that shrunk some buildings by nearly half of their initial planned height, among other changes, neighbors in surrounding Morningside-Lenox Park are formally organizing to ask the city to reject the project soon. 

According to a Nextdoor campaign titled “CALL TO ACTION,” some nearby residents are lobbying neighbors to email and call Atlanta City Council members to voice displeasure with Portman Holdings’ recently unveiled Amsterdam Walk plans that would stand nine stories or less beside the Beltline. 

Since controversy over the project went quiet last summer, Portman has revised another aspect of the proposal, the residential unit count, bumping up the number of planned apartments from 840 to as many as 1,100. 

That’s the main bone of contention with neighbors who argue the lone artery in and out of Amsterdam Walk, Monroe Drive, is already impassable with traffic clogs at certain times of day. Adding a "landlocked" project with 1,435 parking spaces—and an estimated 13 percent bump in daily car trips—would exacerbate the problem and impact quality of life, the Nextdoor petition asserts. 

The naysaying “is not based on opposition to creating more affordable housing,” the petition reads. “It is a question of whether this proposal is appropriate for Amsterdam Walk… We think the answer is obvious. We need smart and sensible development. We need A Better Amsterdam Walk!”

Portman officials tell Urbanize Atlanta that 28 months of engagement with neighborhood groups has brought positive results for all involved, but the company has decided changes on such a considerable scale will never please everybody, and that bringing the project in its current incarnation before the city is the next logical step.   

As outlined in an online meeting Monday attended by more than 150 neighbors, Portman officials have altered the project enough they feel it should pass muster with eight city councilmembers and move toward development stages, as Rough Draft Atlanta reported.

According to the petition, the city council’s Zoning and Community Development/Human Services Committee will be voting on Portman’s development applications as soon as March 17. It advises neighbors to attend that meeting en masse and ask that the current version of the Amsterdam Walk vision be denied, stressing the plan “is neither feasible nor appropriate in scale.”

That committee functions to make recommendations to the full city council on urban redevelopment, land-use plans, housing, and other matters.  

Throughout the saga, Amsterdam Walk's future has been divisive, even among neighbors. 

Leadership with both the Virginia-Highland Civic Association and Morningside Lenox Park Association voted in May last year to support the rezoning and redevelopment. 

But also in May, the area’s Neighborhood Planning Unit, NPU-F, voted strongly against—282 to 84, or 77 percent—Portman’s plans. The following month, the city’s Zoning Review Board followed suit and also rejected the plans 3-2. 

Mike Greene, Portman’s senior vice president of development, said the company’s goal when neighborhood conversations started in September 2022 was “a wholehearted and honest desire to find an acceptable solution for all.”

“Unfortunately, we were not able to win over everyone,” Greene wrote via email today. “After much deliberation internally, we determined it wasn’t going to be possible to make everyone happy, and it was time to elevate the decision to our elected leaders who carry a wider view of city needs.”

Spread across 11 acres, the former warehouse district isn’t the bustling commercial and dining hub it used to be, but new segments of the Beltline’s Northeast Trail next door have boosted its cachet. 

The petition describes Portman’s proposal as the largest development neighborhoods Morningside-Lenox Park and Virginia-Highland have ever seen. 

Overall, the Amsterdam Walk project’s density would remain the same—1.18 million square feet—as plans called for last year, according to Portman. 

The number of buildings has been cut back from four to three, and those will stand a maximum of nine stories, as opposed to heights up to 17 stories initially proposed. With shorter and wider buildings, the public-accessible plaza space would be reduced from earlier plans but will still meet the minimum 20 percent required by the city, according to revised plans. 

Per the Nextdoor petition, neighbors also have beef with the loss of communal spaces at Amsterdam Walk. 

Portman “did nothing to reduce the scale by a single [square foot],” reads the petition. “They did this getting rid of public greenspace to cram [in] more nine-story buildings.” 

Find a refresher on what revised Amsterdam Walk development plans would entail in the gallery above. 

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