21 acres, 600 apartments, restaurants, retail & a specialty grocery store; That is the Sandy Springs Gateway in a nutshell.
Demolition has begun on the Chastain and Versailles apartments that line Roswell Road and take up a large portion of this parcel. Windsor Parkway is assumed to be re-routed so that it squares up with Roswell Road and according to the site plan will have two left turn lanes onto Roswell Rd and one right turn lane. It’s hard to tell what will happen with the current strip of Windsor Parkway that will be abandoned.
From a Chastain Park perspective this will add to the already congested West Wieuca strip between Roswell Rd and Lake Forrest Drive. The 600 apartments will have a dedicated left turn lane off of West Wieuca to enter, that driveway will also serve as an exit for the apartments. Currently it’s not uncommon for this strip to be lined with cars from Roswell Rd to West Wieuca in one direction or the other. We can expect this to be much worse in the future given this new driveway, not to mention the increased traffic entering and exiting Roswell Rd in this area.
This project was contested at Chastain Park Civic Association meetings due to the traffic release onto West Wieuca and concerns of traffic added to this section of Roswell Road. The City of Atlanta only owns a sliver of the property, and that is the West Wieuca driveway. My hopes were that this driveway could be avoided or used for ingress only, but I don’t think the city stood much of a chance given the tiny stake of ownership.
On the bright side we will gain new restaurants and shops, and a specialty grocery store. Not sure what this will be given we have Publix, The Fresh Market and Kroger all within spitting distance. Maybe Dean and Deluca will come to the Atlanta market, but I don’t see that happening in this location with Buckhead Atlanta coming out of the ground at the same time.
Curbed Atlanta posted the site plan and renderings of what the Sandy Springs Gateway will look like. Here are a couple of them. Check out curbed for their article and images.
images via atlanta.curbed.com
