Atlanta parks are missing something: retail spaces
- Matt Guenther
- 19 hours ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 12 hours ago
Have you seen those videos comparing the outdoor dining experience in Europe versus in the United States?
This is a bit overplayed. There are plenty of nice places to eat outdoors in our city that aren't just a view of a parking lot.
But there are reasons those videos resonate with a lot of Americans. For one, most Americans live in the suburbs, where cars are a necessity and patios overlooking parking lots are common. Secondly, Americans visiting Europe choose to go to picturesque places, not a Nando's outside central London.
Still, there is some truth to the comparison. Many of Atlanta's urban (not just OTP) retail spaces are on busy thoroughfares or parking lots. Think of The Local on Ponce, businesses on Edgewood Ave and Memorial Drive, or Little Rey on Piedmont and Cheshire Bridge. These are places people want to walk to and sit outside at but offer a less than ideal streetscape.
What is a city like ours to do about this? Are we going to turn Peachtree Street into a pedestrian boulevard? Maybe a few times a year. Can we give Atlanta a picturesque city center with cobblestone streets? Not likely. Could we activate the pedestrian-friendly spaces we already have with more things for people to do? Yeah, actually.
Retail needs parks and parks need retail
If there's one example that highlights this, it's the Beltline. When critics call it a "glorified sidewalk," they're wrong. A sidewalk is a place you walk next to cars. The Beltline is a place you walk without them. That difference is what makes it so popular. What other places in Atlanta excel in the absence of cars? Parks.
And when are our parks most popular? When there are playgrounds, food vendors, live music, and festivals. City parks aren't like Yosemite. They're supposed to be filled with people. To bring it back to the Beltline, that's why it works. It is a destination because there are many things to do once you're on it and people to do them with.
Cities much smaller than ours have these types of spaces. Around the world, towns support public squares that blend free experiences (playgrounds, fountains, fields) with paid ones (restaurants, markets, and shops). Atlanta has a lot of parks, but in most cases, our retail spaces turn their back on them or are absent entirely. Instead of activating the edges of these parks with small-scale retail, we treat parks as distinct places that should be empty when the sun sets.
Parks with retail feel more vibrant and safer at night. Considering how much of Atlanta's walkable and pedestrian friendly spaces are our parks, it makes sense to encourage people to use them even after sunset. How might we do this?
Starting small
In some cases, a small change might make a big difference. Big Softie in Old Fourth Ward is highly frequented and sits in this space to the left of 3 Parks Wine:
Meanwhile, this really nice pocket park part of the New City Properties development across the street is usually pretty empty.
Imagine a small circular retail space with a Big Softie or a coffee shop in it. It might dramatically increase the number of people wanting to sit there, whether they were eating ice cream or not. That's just one example.
Connecting parks with their edges
Piedmont Park has a lot of opportunities to increase foot traffic in the evening. Park Tavern and Henri's are good examples of some small scale retail and there are plenty of other spaces that could be utilized.
Consider also the Shake Shack and Willy's at 12th Street. This is the view from the park to those restaurants:
Piedmont Park is a prime amenity in Midtown and these restaurants sitting right on its edge don't engage with it.
Central Park could stand to benefit from either retail space in the park or better connection with spaces on its edge.
A new park is an opportunity
The Midtown Improvement District recently acquired 98 14th Street, the site once proposed for a new Symphony Hall and later a residential tower, with plans to turn it into a public park. I think this is a great opportunity to pursue something beyond just green space. Right now, the lot sits between a parking garage, three office buildings, and across the street from a few hotels.
A hypothetical simple green space with a walking path, some trees, and a water feature.
Without retail, I'm afraid this area will end up underutilized like the green space to its northwest corner: pretty, but largely empty.
Consider instead something like the Praça de Lisboa in Porto, Portugal.
The Praça de Lisboa is an award-winning park in central Porto designed specifically to invite pedestrians in. It has three layers: underground parking, a semi-covered retail walkway in the middle, and a hilltop garden with trees and lawns. Google Street View images create a striking visual of how well-utilized this space is. If we use that as a blueprint for the 14th Street lot, we could end up with something like this:
The darker gray represents the semi-covered retail corridor starting at 14th Street and heading northwest where it could link up to the existing green space on West Peachtree. The lighter gray would be the walking path above through the park area and serve another function: connecting 14th Street to Promenade Tower's existing green patio area and onward to 15th Street.
I asked an AI to generate images of what a park could look like at 14th Street: one with retail spaces and one without it. Which one would you rather go to at night?
AI-generated images of what the park on 14th Street could look like.
I may have asked to make the park without retail "scary" for dramatic effect.
Bottom Line
This doesn't have to be a hugely expensive public works project. It just requires us to reorient our thinking about city parks from needing to be distinct, isolated destinations to instead as walkable, pedestrian friendly areas within our urban fabric. Parks would benefit from greater activation at more hours of the day (and potentially from revenue from retail spaces) and we as Atlantans would get more walkable third places open in the evening with things for all of us to do.