Midtown attorney: Let's turn dead Dewberry site into pedestrian boulevard

For this installment of Bureau of Big Ideas, we’re taking an express lane straight to Fantasyland. But an Atlantan can dream, can’t he? 

David Reed is a patent litigation attorney and partner at Midtown’s Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton firm. He works at the 1100 Peachtree building. 

Like so many condo dwellers in surrounding blocks, that vantage point allows Reed a daily, bird’s-eye view of Dewberry Capital’s Campanile/Midtowne project, a stripped-bare skyrise site that city inspectors declared “abandoned” and “dangerous and unsafe” this year, prompting some city councilmembers to demand action, possibly by way of Atlanta’s blight tax. 

Reed’s office overlooks Dewberry’s high-profile Midtown site—where demolition began more than six years ago—and he’s kept up with “the city's limited ability to address the project and the ongoing safety concerns,” he says. Which has got him thinking outside the box. 

Reed submits the following proposal. A big idea, for sure, but maybe not so farfetched after all: 

“As a thought experiment, I’ve wondered whether the [Dewberry Capital] site could become something more transformative than another development. Instead of focusing on the Campanile building itself, what if it were the catalyst for turning Peachtree into a pedestrian boulevard through the heart of Midtown? 

With the success of Atlanta Streets Alive and the Beltline—and with the Connector, Spring, West Peachtree, and Juniper streets already providing north-south capacity—it doesn't seem impossible to imagine Peachtree Street evolving into the city’s defining public space akin to Strøget in Copenhagen or Istiklal in Istanbul (among many others).

One intriguing possibility would be to reroute southbound traffic from Peachtree to Juniper streets through the Dewberry property. 

If the city acquired the site through eminent domain, it would not only solve the Dewberry problem but also create the opportunity for a defining public space. 

Below is a rough sketch. 

Traffic could be rerouted back to Peachtree Street through other surface lots south of North Avenue. With all the highway capping proposals, a lot of people are putting time and thought into what Midtown might be in the future.  

This may be completely impractical, but it might be possible to flip the Dewberry problem into an opportunity that might not be available again.” 

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