Local chef and restauranteur plans new Ansley Mall restaurant.
Shaun Doty, the co-founder and executive chef of Yeah Burger, is trying his hand at chicken.
Doty will open a fast casual chicken concept that serves local free-range and pastured poultry at Ansley Mall, according to Amy Wenk with the Atlanta Business Chronicle (ABC).
The restaurant is set to open in September 2012 but a lease has not been signed, according to the ABC’s report.
Doty’s new fast casual concept will join an array of recently opened restaurants at Ansley Mall.
The shopping center, at 1544 Piedmont Avenue, was renovated in the past few years and welcomed Panera Bread and Boardwalk Burgers and Fries, shortly after Hallmark closed.
Developing…
29 Responses
I’m a Doty fan so I’ll probably try out any place he opens. But I’m amazed at the continuing popularity of Ansley Mall. It looks like the ugly 1980s strip malls I grew up with in the suburbs and getting around it, by car or on foot, is a pain in the butt. But Atlanta seems to love it, so I have to accept it.
Location, location, …oh, and location
Yeah, I don’t reallt understand the attraction of that piece of real estate either. I mean, the vast majority of retailers there are chains, and pulling into the place makes me feel like I’m in Kansas City and not the big city of Atlanta. Oh, wait…what was that? Kansas City is bigger? Oh, well, then I guess this makes sense.
Darin – I don’t know if it’s loved so much as it has what people want/need. And it serves quite a large area – Morningside, midtown, VaHi…
Good point, AJ. Ansley definitely houses a lot of popular businesses. I didn’t mean to complain about the retail selection there, which is certainly a good mix and successful. I’m just puzzled by the ongoing popularity of it despite the suburban strip-mall nature of the structure.
Being a smart-growth, walkable urbanism nerd, I’m naturally biased against this type of car-focused shopping center, so take my criticism with a grain of salt. But I can’t understand how anyone doesn’t get annoyed with the task of getting in and out of that place.
Your attempt at humor is giant dorky, lame, failure Urbanist. I mean, man.
A restaurant, such as this one, is exactly what Ansley Mall needs. There are many of us Morningside, VaHi, Midtown “health freaks” that visit Ansley Mall on a daily basis (for anything but food) and this will certainly help. Panera was a great addition, but if this place is anything like YEAH Burger, it should be a great success.
There is no question that Ansley Mall is ripe for redevelopment but the center pretty much stays 100% leased. Landlords don’t tend to fix properties that aren’t broken.
“There is no question that Ansley Mall is ripe for redevelopment but the center pretty much stays 100% leased.”
True. And I think that may be the source of my complaint — I kinda wish it wasn’t this heavily leased. Then there would be an impetus to redevelop it. My hope that it would turn into a new kind of structure that integrates well with the Beltline seems too unrealistic given the popularity of its current state.
As it is, the Beltline path (immediately behind Ansley Mall) will offer people nothing more than a view of the boring, beige, butt-end of a strip mall. There’s just so much more potential for this spot with the Beltline beside it. Seems a shame.
Unfortunately, if the center were in a position to undergo redevelopment, the likely finished product would likely be a boring, homogeneous, master planned community. You’d get some good faux urban apartments by Post or Cousins, one or two big anchors, a couple parking garages, and then a bunch of chain retailers (kind of like Ansley is now).
If I had my way, I’d raze the lot, widen the sidewalk, build 200 units or so of true urban apartments (in 2 buildings) with ground floor retail, that affront the sidewalk, build some underground parking that isn’t visible from the street by using the slope of the lot, and create a courtyard that provides easy access to the beltline trail, and has a few amenities. As those units filled up, I’d build more, and so on. Probably wouldn’t build over 15 stories tall, if that, and would look to include something like an 80/20 mix in some of the buildings. Oh the daydream…
Is that area considered midtown?
@InmanParker: Technically it’s a neighborhood called Piedmont Heights, although plenty of people probably say Midtown.
http://gis.atlantaga.gov/doc_archive/raw/d003500/p003943.pdf
Why stop at 15 stories Urby?
Let’s take it up to 40. I mean if you want to [expletive] up the scale os the neighborhood, then go for broke and really [expletive] up the scale of the neighborhood.
I hope that if they build a 40 story building on the Ansley mall site they preserve the Bearbucks and adjoining man garden.
Because then you’d just be looking at a glut of unecessary supply…kind of like the condo developers did over the past few years. Build 10-15 stories, then fill it up. Once that’s done, build another, and another, and another. Then, before you know if you’ll start to have dense infill areas teeming with people who actually occupy the buildings that are there, instead of reaching towers that sit half empty and feel like ghosts. Of course, once the smaller buildings are filled, then you can start building them bigger. But to go from zilch to 40 stories all over the place, would just be irresponsible…
Here are what the Beltline folks have in mind for the Ansley Mall and Piedmont/Monroe areas. Pretty bold ideas of how to redevelop the mall.
That looks like a good use of the space, as redevelopment. I would hope that the architecture changes, as it looks like project housing in the renderings (Atlanta does not need a Stuy Town), but it’s, conceptually, a good idea.
Will the chicken be named Colin?
“Will the chicken be named Colin?”
I don’t know that I can speak to that level of intimate knowledge about the chicken.
It is fun to watch all of these intown diners swarm to gentrified burgers, barbeque and now chicken. I guess when you wrap it up in great design and keep it inside 285 it’s somehow more legit, but these are the same people that used to ridicule us just a few years ago for loving these exact same foods.
@Urbanist
While I agree that there definitely needs to be more apartments in Midtown. The scale of 15 floors in this neighborhood is off, as well as not likely because that would generate a horribly small footprint. That would change the construction type to something much more expensive (steel/concrete) while not generating enough revenue because there would only be 100 units per building. It would be difficult to get a developer to jump on that unless they were creating over priced apartments which there are enough condos in the $2000 a month range available for rent in true Midtown where access to transit and amenities is much easier.
Secondly, the apartments will never work until the developers (namely Amli, Lane, Novare, who are all most likely to jump on that) step up their game. Local building codes have allowed them to trim back the quality of construction even further than in some cities. So while in the first year or two these shiny new apartments will attract good residents, the deterioration of the construction, the poor sound qualities, and the shitty management will drive away any of the good tenants, turning it into shit. That is exactly what has happened with the buildings by Lindbergh. Great exterior buildings, great finishes, but horrible construction. Their sound qualities are terrible, the management teams are careless, and the construction was done for speed and cost savings rather then long term and quality. Now those buildings are attracting horrible clientele, and driving away the good residents (check their reviews, sudden drop in rental rates, and the influx in crime they have seen in the past year-approximatley 3-4 years after they all opened). About half of those buildings in the area are struggling greatly to keep an occupancy rate that is acceptable. Until we can force developers to stop treating apartments as shopping malls (the typical; build it, stay involved for 3 years until profit is made, chop it up and sell it to a lower class management company, then watch it slowly die) the apartment idea will not maintain long term viability, eventually dragging down the shiny new development they were a part of. I dont believe in the theory that renters drag down neighborhoods or property values, but when bad management companies and developers are behind the projects it is destined to happen.
We need more smaller developers or a team of them that have a longer term vested interest in these projects. It would also help combat that concern we all have of it being some homogeneous development with the standard lineup. And with the glut of condo rentals available in the city, poorly built apartments will struggle to remain competitive to attractive clientele. I actually found myself in that position. Stay at a place that was slowly going the way of the birds, or pay the same for a privately owned unit in a building that has maintained itself since the 80’s. The latter has proven to be much much more satisfactory.
It will be a failure. Chicken is a poor menu anchor
@ Brad – I don’t think a lot of “in-towners” are “swarming” to gentrified burgers. I think a lot of Georgia Tech / GSU students (not really in-towners…at least not with much staying power) are swarming to places like Yeah Burger, and a lot of tasteless suburban parasites are coming into town for a big night out – which equals a fancy burger and a show at the Fox. There is a moderate level of local patronage, but it’s likely from people who are holding over in Atlanta, with aspirations no greater than owning a poorly constructed, over-sized home, built in the same style, design, and aesthetic of every other home in their community, along a street full of middle management pencil pushers who are married to under-qualified teachers or housewives who’s biggest accomplishment is making it through an episode of The View without eating an entire chocolate bar.
The build quality all over metro Atlanta is terrible. New homes last about 3 years before the siding bowes.. Every apartment cluster seems to degrade,taking down the area with it.
That may be partly why you can buy a house for 80k around Atlanta. It’s not that way elsewhere in the nation. New construction here is down 5% or so since 2006.
@Old South
It is that way in every sunbelt city. The exact problems are occuring in plenty of other cities, especially those like Charlotte and Nashville. You just dont see it as well because you dont live in the cities and experience it on a day to day basis. Its a case of the “grass always appears greener.” As long as substandard building practices and regulations are in place then we will continue to see this kind of crap pop up in new developments. Birkdale Village in Charlotte was finished in ’03. By 06′ the siding was literally falling off the sides of the buildings. The problem with building quality especially applies to the new urbanism projects along with suburban homes and apartment buildings. It is not as prevalent in older cities because their building codes are much more strict as well as the rehabilitation of many older, better built buildings.
I don’t see the homes in Vegas and AZ with quite as rapid deterioration. In Dallas, everything is brick, so those homes will certainly last.
Just my opinion.
Code requirements out west are different for a variety of reasons. And while their brick may not be falling off the way siding does here, many of those homes have serious foundation and structural issues. And they are issues not always apparent to the naked eye. California, Arizona, and Las Vegas are all notorious for these problems. In fact if you take a stroll through any of their phonebooks you will see a completely ridiculous amount of home foundation repair companies. Brick also does not equate to a home being sound. Especially in today’s method of application. It serves only as a veneer. So while the materials may deviate, the shoddy work has not. Those homes and buildings have the same lifespan as our vinyl sided pieces of $hit.
Restaurant will be called: Bantam & Biddy
Urbanist: Feel superior, much? I’m amused by the fact that you think people who live ITP are somehow more enlightened than those poor bastards who stumble around in the persistent night of the post-apocalyptic wasteland that is OTP – oh, except for those troglodyte students and those “middle management pencil pushers” married to the underqualified teachers or bobbleheaded housewives… I suspect the list of the terminally uncool (who happen to live ITP) is much longer than this. In fact, I suspect that if we could get you to finish the list of the terminally uncool, the only name NOT found on it might be yours! 😀