Neighbors of proposed self-storage facility in Virginia Highland request revisions to original design – SaportaReport

by Fulton Watch News Feed

By Guest Columnist BARRY BRANCH JR., a Cooledge Avenue resident of 25 years.

In a little over a month, many current and former residents of Cooledge Avenue, a small, close-knit street with just over thirty homes located in Virginia Highland at the point where the neighborhood borders Midtown, The Beltline and Piedmont Park, will be gathering for a block party to celebrate the historic street’s 100th anniversary.

But on the eve of this party, there is an impending development at the bottom of the street along Monroe Drive that threatens to dampen the celebration – a proposal by the Atlanta Botanical Gardens (ABG) to build a five-story self-storage facility.

Barry Branch, Jr. is an Atlanta native who grew up in Buckhead, and has, for the past 25 years, owned a residence on Cooledge Avenue in Virginia Highland. He spent 20 years working in the commercial real estate finance and real estate investment banking fields with large financial institutions in Atlanta and Washington, D.C.

Cooledge Avenue and adjacent Cresthill Avenue are unique in that they are believed to be the only two original brick streets remaining in the city of Atlanta. But for almost thirty years, the brick on Cooledge Avenue was hidden under a layer of asphalt applied in the early 1970s to facilitate a bus route. In mid-1998, after two years in which almost every resident of the street joined together to raise $24,000 and petition the city of Atlanta to remove the asphalt and repair the underlying brick, Cooledge Avenue was restored to its original historic condition.

This cooperative and collaborative spirit epitomizes the residents of Cooledge Avenue who have joined forces together over the years with their Virginia Highland and Midtown neighbors to defeat several large proposals along the southeastern edge of Piedmont Park that would have completely altered the park’s natural beauty and required the destruction of many large old growth trees and the demolition and rezoning of…

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