Atlanta, Georgia

Southern Living, Spring 2004 by Brown, Ben

A downtown plaza serves as the gathering place for a whole region. The heart-of-the-city business district transforms itself into a viable mixed-use neighborhood, with young couples moving into lofts and people their parents' ages snapping up luxury condos. Restaurants and bars cater to new residents, the after-work crowd, and an evolving entertainment area. Urban life blossoms.

So where is this place? New York? Chicago? Think again. Think Atlanta.

Not so long ago, that wasn't the case. "The Big Peach" was mostly about business. You cruised in from the burbs or the airport for a meeting, and you were out of there before traffic backed up on I-75/85. And, yes, the streets rolled up behind you.

Nowadays, downtown Atlanta, which began emerging with preparations for the 1996 Olympic Games, provides an urban lifestyle not known since the automobile's coming of age.

The best place to sense that is Centennial Olympic Park, the most obvious legacy from the 1996 Games. The state-owned park turned a run-down warehouse and parking lot district into an urban plaza, stretching north from the CNN complex toward the Coca-Cola headquarters. It's the largest new park created in an American city in the last two decades. A hit from the beginning, it appeals not only to tourists but also to locals, who count on it as a regular venue for concerts and holiday celebrations.

Almost overnight, the park increased the value and the possibilities for property on its borders and in the blocks beyond. The new downtown aquarium, scheduled to open in 2005, will link to the park from the north, and the World of Coca-Cola museum is relocating right next door.

Even without such tourist attractions, the park has made urban space more desirable. Restaurants, bars, and shops now occupy the floors beneath converted lofts where once only office buildings or warehouses stood.

"We'll always have that commercial component," says A. J. Robinson, a developer who serves as president of Central Atlanta Progress, the nonprofit corporation that advocated downtown revitalization. "But now we have the start of a real residential community around the park. We know a lot of people will live downtown if we give them the right choices."

Jamie and Jennifer Henderson made their choice. They live with their black Lab mix, Ben, in a 1,500-square-foot loft in the Fairlie-Poplar district between Peachtree Street and Centennial Olympic Park. "More people are moving in all the time," says Jamie, "but it's still a pretty tight-knit community, like a small town. You know everybody and their dog. It's like Mayberry."

In the time the Hendersons have lived downtown, restaurants in the immediate neighborhood have doubled. "And there's more variety now," says Jamie. "There used to be either expensive fine dining or fast food. The new places offer casual dining aimed at the people who live here."

There's a trade-off to living in a high-density district that aspires to near round-the-clock activity. That suits Jamie and Jennifer, though, who are in their thirties and have no children. Easy commutes to work and access to urban cultural offerings are worth more to them than the space and quiet of the suburbs.

"When we want a quiet night," quips city-struck Jennifer, "we go somewhere else." BEN BROWN