For people who live in the suburbs of any city and commute to a major metropolitan area for work each day, one of the most frustrating and time-consuming elements is traffic. Poor weather conditions or a minor accident are enough to paralyze roads for hours.

In Atlanta, BellSouth Corporation, one of the largest employers in the city, has taken it upon itself to ease its employees’ traffic troubles. The company is capitalizing on the city’s mass transit options, having built offices along MARTA (Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) rail lines that carry commuters to and from points around the metro area. Through an elaborate system of three sites located near MARTA stations and parking/business facilities at four MARTA satellite parking lots throughout the city, the company is improving Atlanta in more ways than one.

The Plan

Initially, BellSouth’s intent was not to address the city’s traffic problems. The process actually began in 1998 when BellSouth decided to consolidate several of its Atlanta offices into three main sites. At the time, the Atlanta-based company was spread over 75 leases in multiple locations around the city. The company wanted to improve collaboration among employees, enhance communication and speed up decision-making, thus improving productivity. BellSouth chose Atlanta-based Carter & Associates to help devise a plan to bring together a large percentage of BellSouth employees in Atlanta.

The collaboration resulted in BellSouth’s Atlanta Metro Plan, a project that will relocate 10,000 BellSouth employees into three sites near MARTA transit stations. When the relocations are completed in 2003, the company will have consolidated and closed 25 of its Atlanta locations. The plan has allowed BellSouth to unite many of its Atlanta employees as well as address some of the issues that face the city. BellSouth employees will be encouraged to utilize mass transit to get to work. This will have the positive effects of reducing traffic and improving air quality in Atlanta.

In addition to the three new office sites, four dedicated parking facilities for BellSouth employees will be developed at the end-of-the-line MARTA stations. “After further evaluation of the employees’ needs, the decision was made to create four outlying parking facilities that are joined to MARTA parking structures,” says William Mitchell Jr., chairman of Carter & Associates. BellSouth and Carter are working with the transit authority to build parking decks at the College Park, Doraville and North Springs stations and one on-grade parking lot at the Indian Creek station. These facilities will be secure and reserved for BellSouth employees.

“There will also be business centers in the deck structures so employees can assemble for a meeting without having to travel into the city,” Mitchell adds. “It really is an effort to significantly reduce the transportation pressures that a company the size of BellSouth has on its city’s infrastructure. With limited parking available at the actual offices, it will be very important for employees to use mass transit.”

BellSouth’s goal is to have 30 percent of its employees using MARTA. Workers who ride MARTA will be taken directly to their new offices, which are located on or near MARTA stations. Carter and BellSouth evaluated over 50 different locations across the city and settled on three sites where 10,000 BellSouth employees will work: Midtown Center, Lenox Park Center and Lindbergh City Center.

The Sites

The BellSouth/Carter team worked with Thompson, Ventulett, Stainback and Associates, Cooper Carry, Inc. and Smallwoood, Reynolds, Stewart Architecture, three Atlanta-based architecture firms, to design the three separate sites. The result is three distinct properties — each has a unique look and feel designed to reflect and enhance the part of the city around it. “Midtown Center has the look and feel of urban buildings,” explains Trent Germano, executive vice president of Carter & Associates. “Lenox Park is more of a suburban environment, even though it’s in town, and Lindbergh is a mixed-use, new urbanism environment that has retail, residential, hotel and office components.”

Midtown Center

Midtown Center on Peachtree Street is located just north of the existing BellSouth Center, the company’s headquarters since the 1970s. Midtown One is a 16-story, 536,000-square-foot building on Peachtree and Fourth streets. Midtown Two is an 18-story, 300,000-square-foot building with a cafeteria, conference center and health club. MARTA commuters will exit the North Avenue station into BellSouth Center. To get to Midtown Two, workers will cross Third Street. Carter created a unique pedestrian walkway at this point that is designed to slow traffic at what was once a high-speed section of roadway.

Metro Plan was designed with the slogan ‘building great places to work’ in mind. Like all of the buildings in the Metro Plan, Midtown Center is bathed in color throughout “to add just a little bit of interest,” says Richard Gilbert, BellSouth’s director for the Atlanta Metro Plan. “We really put a stake in the sand with our employees. We said we were going to build great places to work, and we asked the employees to help us decide how to do that.” Midtown Two contains a 380-seat auditorium, the largest of three in the Metro Plan sites. Midtown One houses BellSouth’s network organization. There is one site available for a third new building at Midtown Center should the need arise.

BellSouth and Carter have worked closely with the Midtown Alliance to create a project that will help in the continuing revival of Midtown. “There are some spaces around the base of the parking garage for retail,” says Germano. “This is all part of trying to create a pedestrian-friendly environment.” Tenants signed thus far include Midtown Café, Philly Connection and Coney Island. Recently, the leasing of the street-level retail space at Midtown One began; so far, furniture store Desiron will open on the corner of Peachtree and Fourth streets. There is also additional space available for a restaurant fronting Peachtree Street.

“One of the purposes of the retail is to bring nighttime pedestrian traffic back to Midtown,” says Gilbert. “Our project is helping to rejuvenate Midtown.” Carter’s development team plans to further contribute to the revival of the area through a comprehensive street improvement package that is intended to create a 24-hour, pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use environment.

Lenox Park Center

When BellSouth acquired Lenox Park in 1998, there were already three office buildings, a Marriott hotel, the Cancer Society Building and an assisted living center on the site. BellSouth built two more office buildings, which are fully occupied, as well as a parking deck. The 2180 Lenox Park building is a 12-story, 365,000-square-foot facility; the 1025 Lenox Park building is a nine-story, 350,000-square-foot facility. The buildings are connected by a series of covered walkways that circulate through a park, which features lakes, a large central lawn and benches. The site, formerly a country club, also contains condominiums, apartments and townhomes. Two sites are available for additional office buildings.

The facilities of Lenox Park are prime examples of BellSouth’s plan to create great places to work. Like all of the buildings that are part of the Metro Plan, every floor at Lenox Park has been designed with offices at the core so as to permit maximum entry of natural light. Every floor also provides a large, central collaborative area that offers employees places to work on laptops or in small groups in an informal setting. These areas are also places for employees to take breaks or hold impromptu meetings.

Lenox Park is located about 5 miles north of BellSouth Center, and the Lenox MARTA station is just four stops north of BellSouth Center and the Midtown buildings. MARTA riders can take a free shuttle from the nearby Lenox and Buckhead stations in order to reach the Lenox Park site.

Lindbergh City Center

The idea for Lindbergh City Center began as a completely separate project from the BellSouth Metro Plan. In March 1998, MARTA selected Carter & Associates to develop a transit-oriented mixed-use development on 47 acres surrounding the MARTA Lindbergh Station. At the same time, BellSouth was looking at sites for what would become its Metro Plan.

BellSouth’s vision for three sites on MARTA rail lines was a perfect match for Carter’s plan for Lindbergh City Center. Lindbergh became the third site of the Metro Plan, and work began on a 4.8 million-square-foot pedestrian-friendly environment that currently includes 1 million square feet of BellSouth office space, and will ultimately include 380,000 square feet of retail space, 566 apartment units, 380 condos and a hotel. The project, located along Piedmont Road about 3 miles north of downtown Atlanta, is also the site of the current MARTA headquarters building.

Carter will soon begin leasing the retail space at Lindbergh, which will line both sides of its main street. Tenants will include restaurants, a drugstore and/or grocery store, bank and fitness center. Germano describes target tenants as neighborhood retailers and notes that the company wants retailers that will complement the project. “We’re going to take our time and find retailers that are right for Lindbergh,” he says. By the end of the year, 3,000 BellSouth employees will occupy the office space. Development of the residential portion, to be located above the retail, will be subject to market demand.

Many BellSouth employees working at Lindbergh City Center will have to ride MARTA due to a limited amount of parking. But compared to a $55 per month parking permit, BellSouth’s subsidized $12 per month MARTA pass will surely look a lot better to most employees. BellSouth provides a subsidy for its employees to get this discounted pass, further encouragement to utilize mass transit.

One more unique point is that MARTA will provide security for the entire site. “Lindbergh Center is truly a public/private partnership between Carter and MARTA,” says Germano.

A Great Place to Work

One of the most important factors to consider in all of this is employee reaction. Based on multiple surveys administered to employees, Mitchell and Gilbert note that there has been an overwhelming 95 percent positive response.

Besides amenities that employees can enjoy and utilize such as large, colorful cafeterias and areas on each floor created to encourage collaboration, each site has an auditorium and a suite of conference rooms, some with video-conferencing capabilities. All of the buildings in the Plan also feature destination elevators, a system that has never before been seen in Atlanta. Instead of pressing an up or down button, people select their desired floor on a keypad outside the elevator. The elevator then calculates and groups people by floor destination. Once inside, there are no buttons to change floors. This design creates an express elevator system, which eliminates the number of elevators while carrying the same capacity as another system.

“This is unlike anything we’ve ever done before,” says Gilbert. Indeed, the Atlanta Metro Plan is unlike anything anyone has ever done. Although transit-oriented developments have been discussed in other cities, this is one of the most unique and innovative projects of its kind.


©2003 France Publications, Inc. Duplication or reproduction of this article not permitted without authorization from France Publications, Inc. For information on reprints of this article contact Barbara Sherer at (630) 554-6054.