Dear Friends of Glenwood Park:
I am writing today with a construction update, some fun news, and some disappointing news.
First, the fun news. In Washington DC on June 21, Glenwood Park will receive a prestigious international award – a Charter Award from the Congress for the New Urbanism (the “CNU”). This is perhaps the most prestigious award for neighborhood design excellence that we could hope to win. We are one of seven winners in the Neighborhood, District, and Corridor category. I think we are the first Charter Award winner ever from Georgia. Katharine Kelley and Walter Brown from our company will be traveling to Washington to attend the CNU conference and receive the award. We hope they will return with heads not swollen too far past their current sizes. Seriously, the Glenwood Park design is very good, if I do say so myself. A new neighborhood that features a truly lively fine-grained mix of different uses and housing types on beautiful people-friendly streets with attractive parks and public spaces is pretty rare indeed. So we are proud to be recognized so prominently and so early in the process, and we will dedicate ourselves even more to making sure the built reality of Glenwood Park is even better than the plans.
The disappointing news is that we learned last week that The Children’s School will be unable to follow through with their plans to move to Glenwood Park. They have determined that in today's economic environment it would be difficult for them to complete a capital campaign in the near term that would allow the construction of the campus that they had envisioned at Glenwood Park. And given the relatively compact size of their potential site in Glenwood Park, it would be impractical for them to try to pursue a phased move or phased construction program on the site. So, faced with that reality, they are going to withdraw from their contract to purchase 6 acres in the northeast corner of Glenwood Park. We have loved getting to know The Children’s School and their marvelous staff and Board. We are sad that they won’t be moving to Glenwood Park, as the thought of all those wonderful children bringing life to that corner of the neighborhood has always been very appealing to us. But, on we go. We are confident that we will find another use for those six acres that will be just as exciting and just as favorable for the neighborhood.
On the construction front, getting regulatory approval for our sewer structures slowed us down some, and the torrential rains of May slowed us down some, but now with drier weather work is forging ahead briskly. We have removed about 25,000 cubic yards of wood chips that were buried in one area and sent them to a plant where they are being used as fuel to produce electricity. We have continued to break up the concrete that covers most of the site, we have dug down to the bottom of the deepest excavation we will have, and are currently constructing a sewer junction box there. With that in place, we will be ready to lay the remaining sewer pipe that connects to that structure. With that done, we can proceed with grading, other utility installation, and building streets, sidewalks, and buildings.
We are close to being able to share information with you on the first batch of houses that will be built in Glenwood Park. In my next update we hope to be able to provide information on the builders in the Glenwood Park Builder’s Guild, and how the potential house purchasers among you can begin working with our sales team.
Until then, best wishes and thank you very much for your interest in
Glenwood Park.
Sincerely,
Charles Brewer
Chairman, Green Street Properties
Green Street Properties
1175 Peachtree St NE, Suite 400
Atlanta, GA 30361
404-879-2230
www.gsprop.com
www.glenwoodpark.com