Tag: A.J. Robinson

It’s a “stitch” as in a way to sew together the moribund patch of no-man’s-land between the Civic Center MARTA station on West Peachtree Street and Folk Art Park at Piedmont. A. J. Robinson, Central Atlanta Progress’s president, floated the idea in 2016: a cap on I-75/I-85 to create a pedestrian-friendly space about two-thirds the size of Centennial Olympic Park. Basically, we’d build a roof over about 4,000 feet of the Downtown Connector and plant trees on it.

The first time I took the Atlanta Streetcar, on its third day of operation, I waited alone at the Peachtree Center stop across from the Ellis Hotel. It was raining, but the shelter kept me dry. The stop is about two blocks from our downtown office, and I wanted to check out for myself the project that took almost three years and $98 million to build.

From the moment you push the oval Polaris button inside the glass elevator of the Hyatt Regency, the stomach-flipping wonder returns. In nineteen seconds, you’re rocketed up the atrium’s hanging ivy–accented twenty-two stories, through the roof, and out into the Downtown sky. Then you ascend into the space-pod lounge, hovering 312 feet above the lobby of the forty-seven-year-old hotel.