ATLANTA | One Museum Place | HEIGHT | 23 FLOORS

[micropundit]

London architect to design Wieland condo tower
Atlanta Business Chronicle - July 13, 2007by Lisa R. SchoolcraftStaff writer
Joann Vitelli
The 23-story, $325 million luxury condominium tower will be a modernist design by London architect David Chipperfield.

The condo tower, at 1301 Peachtree St., across from the High Museum of Art, will have 96 units that begin at $2 million, said Wieland, CEO of John Wieland Homes & Neighborhoods Inc., Atlanta's seventh-largest home builder. Construction is scheduled to begin Sept. 5 and the project is expected to be completed in fall 2009.

"Our main thought is that this is going to be the signature residence for Atlanta," Wieland said.

"There are a lot of high-end condominiums, but nobody has employed a world-class architect. Most of the towers are just towers."

Chipperfield says this is his first U.S. condominium project, although he has done similar high-rise residential projects in Berlin and London, he said. Chipperfield has also done design work for museums, including Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa, and Saint Louis Art Museum in St. Louis.

For Chipperfield, One Museum Place is special.

"It's the proximity to the High Museum campus," he said from his London office. "It's the fourth side of the High Museum piazza. It has to be considered in that context."

Wieland believes his first condo project "has a lot of architectural links to the past through the grid system and formality of the building."

A modernist building in Midtown "is a big deal because the Atlanta housing market has been pretty traditional," said Terry Herr, principal of Pieper O'Brien Herr Architects Ltd. But being near the High Museum, itself with modern architecture, would not seem out of place.

"Atlanta has been changing since the 1996 Olympics with more diverse populations," Herr said.

"When demographics change, modern architecture can be embraced by metropolitan Atlanta."

One Museum Place will distinguish itself not just in architecture, but as a pure luxury condo, Wieland said. The building does not contain a hotel.

Keep down your dukes
"Unlike the St. Regis, The Mansion, the [proposed] Mandarin Oriental or The Four Seasons, you don't have to duke it out with the hotel guests [for amenities]," he said. "When you go down to the lounge for a drink, it will just be the residents, not the guy who checked in four hours ago."

Working gallery
One Museum Place won't be short on amenities.

Residents will have private access to their residences via six pass-card-keyed elevators. No common hallways link condos. Other amenities include a pet wash area, three guest apartments for rent to residents for visitors, a private dining room and a media/lecture room.
There will be some interaction with the public at the tower. A small amount of ground-level retail space likely will include a restaurant and day spa.

The second floor will have nearly 14,000 square feet of gallery space, a working exhibition hall that will connect One Museum Place and the High Museum, Chipperfield said.

The High Museum will have an option to buy the gallery space 10 years after the opening of One Museum Place for $1, but for the first 10 years of operation, the Wieland Family Foundation will subsidize the gallery.

Programming will be overseen by Jeffrey Grove, the Wieland Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the High. Wieland expects the gallery to showcase the works of emerging contemporary artists.

[Dale]

Did I read that right ? $325 million ?!

[(four 0 four)]

Originally Posted by micropundit

"There are a lot of high-end condominiums, but nobody has employed a world-class architect. Most of the towers are just towers."

My guess is that Robert A.M. Stern (Mansion on Peachtree) would disagree!

The demolition of the existing buildings is well under way...it will be great to see this one go up.

[Trae]

Whatever happened to this one:

[Sketching]

Here is the current rendering as posted on the Chipperfield site.

[Coldrsx]

23 storey, 325million....thats absurd.

[Labtec]

23 stories for $325 million???

[smArTaLlone]

Well its more like a 23 story plus a ~15 story building but that still seems a bit extreme. I wonder if that figure includes the costs associated with the art gallery that will be in the tower.

[mayhem]

[Buck]

I love height, scale and design of the new plan but I loooooved the facade of the old one.

[jdelver]

A little digging, drilling, fencing going on (9/1):

[smArTaLlone]

street level rendering

[Stephenapolis]

That building loks pretty bland for that price tag. Must be spent on the inside details.

[maledictis]

OK is http://www.ompatlanta.com some kind of joke? You're really trying to hawk high-end condos with that piece of dreck of a Web site? From the grainy, low-resolution logo to the incredibly crappy single rendering of the building to the vapid copy ("Unparalleled residential amenities and services" Oh yeah? Like what?) this site has one message: "If you think this Web site is crappy, folks, wait'll you see the quality of the architecture and construction of this place!"

C'mon, John Weiland. You have to realize how embarassing this turkey is. Check out http://www.mansiononpeachtree.com/ or even http://www.1010midtown.com. Those sites not only beat your site up, they also take its lunch money.

Oh and while you're at it, KILL the incredibly pretentious "Understandably priced from $2.5M" message on the construction fence. Barf.

[MarketsWork]

maledictus, the marketing for One Museum Place is not targeted at the general public or at this forum, so we shouldn't place too much emphasis on a website. A website is fine for buzz and quick reference, but these top-end condos are not going to be sold on the internet. Wieland knows his market -- which is people just like himself -- and he knows how and where to reach them. Heck, they already know each other. You might "hawk" a $180,000 or $300,000 condo, but an exclusive building like this, across from the High with nothing but $2,000,000+ condos, will be filled quietly and discretely. John Wieland is no fool.

[maledictis]

Originally Posted by MarketsWork

maledictus, the marketing for One Museum Place is not targeted at the general public or at this forum, so we shouldn't place too much emphasis on a website. A website is fine for buzz and quick reference, but these top-end condos are not going to be sold on the internet. Wieland knows his market -- which is people just like himself -- and he knows how and where to reach them. Heck, they already know each other. You might "hawk" a $180,000 or $300,000 condo, but an exclusive building like this, across from the High with nothing but $2,000,000+ condos, will be filled quietly and discretely. John Wieland is no fool.

Wow, Marketworks! Was I ever WRONG! This is genius! A Web site for a condo that's specifically NOT aimed at potential buyers! Now how clever is that?! It's a DECOY! It's clearly aimed at all those people who have no interest in plunking down $2M+ for a condo. Its hideous design is meant to tell anyone who is seriously thinking about purchasing a unit, "Not so fast, mister or ma'am, this site ain't for YOU!"

Man what fools those people at The Mansion on Peachtree, Trump Towers Atlanta and other high-end condo projects are for crafting those beautiful, informative Web sites chock-full of detailed floor plans, renderings from multiple angles and extensive lists of amenities. FOOLS! What a huge waste of time. As if their customers even touch a computer. Filthy Internet! Only the poor and unstylish would ever get their information from it.

Thanks for clearing this all up, MarketWorks!

Oh and by the way, "discretely" and "discreetly" aren't the same word. Ummm... yeah.

[MarketsWork]

Thanks for the spelling correction, which is objective and always appreciated. But your swipes at Wieland over the quality of his website are condescending and downright juvenile. As I argued before, the kinds of people who will buy these condos are not the kinds of people whose decisions will be swayed one bit by the website.

One Museum Place is a unique concept for Atlanta; this is not a building which includes some top-end units, but a building filled exclusively with them, with services catering only to their specific needs, and located directly across from the High and Woodruff center. Wieland's target market is people like him, very wealthy art lovers -- and that's a fairly tight circle of people who run in the same circles. The very private, detailed and glossy presentations will be presented one-on-one to qualified prospects, so I doubt if Wieland gives much weight to whether a faceless internet poster thinks the website is a "joke" or a "piece of dreck." Lighten up, Francis!

[maledictis]

Originally Posted by MarketsWork

Thanks for the spelling correction, which is objective and always appreciated. But your swipes at Wieland over the quality of his website are condescending and downright juvenile. As I argued before, the kinds of people who will buy these condos are not the kinds of people whose decisions will be swayed one bit by the website.

One Museum Place is a unique concept for Atlanta; this is not a building which includes some top-end units, but a building filled exclusively with them, with services catering only to their specific needs, and located directly across from the High and Woodruff center. Wieland's target market is people like him, very wealthy art lovers -- and that's a fairly tight circle of people who run in the same circles. The very private, detailed and glossy presentations will be presented one-on-one to qualified prospects, so I doubt if Wieland gives much weight to whether a faceless internet poster thinks the website is a "joke" or a "piece of dreck." Lighten up, Francis!

Awww sorry to bash your work on the http://www.ompatlanta.com site. Didn't realize you had created it yourself, MarketWorks.

Gosh I guess none of us poor, dumb, art-hating philistines "get it," huh? You're so smart, Blanche. Thanks for creating such an informative and lovely piece of... HTML.

[MarketsWork]

I don't know who built the website, maledictus, but I don't think it's bad at all. You must have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed to be spewing all that bile over a promotional website! Perhaps you're smarter than John Wieland and know his market better than he does, but I doubt that. Or perhaps you're just trying to live up to your screen name.

[maledictis]

Ahh.. I see I hit a nerve. Well of course you don't think the Web site is bad at all. No surprise there.

Well like they say down here in the south, never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and it annoys the pig. Guess it's true, eh Porky?