The project is Lenox Marketplace, a high-density retail project that is located in a very urban setting along Peachtree Road, the primary artery extending from downtown Atlanta north through Buckhead. Peachtree Road is also a favorite location of high visibility development. While not noted for its pedestrian friendliness in the past, primarily because of the volume of traffic, Peachtree Road is the most visible frontage and the obvious target for streetscape and pedestrian enhancements. With the increased availability of public transportation, provisions for pedestrian safety and welfare are critical.

The site is an entire square block fronting on Peachtree Road. The developers of Lenox Marketplace, The Sembler Company and Jamestown chose to wrap a "big box" retail development around a multi-story parking garage. The highly urban aspect of this design maximized the site's usable development envelope, but it also left a wide streetscape around the project on all four sides. To meet the conditions of zoning, which included wide landscaped buffers and sidewalks, the developers retained Ecos Environmental Design, Inc. to develop the hardscape and landscape plans.

The project was also unique in that it contained such typical big box tenants as Target, Galyans, Staples and a Publix supermarket, as well as two stories of local retail tenants. Big box tenants are normally found in more suburban power centers with on-grade parking. Parking is accessed by one entrance to the "wrapped" parking structure from each of the four frontage streets. The masses of the big box structures are lessened by facade treatments, including awnings and glass, and lower scale local tenant space. Hiding the parking left a clean building facade that allowed the Landscape Architects to concentrate on creating a streetscape that accentuated the architecture and provided a safe and attractive pedestrian way. A single vehicular entry/exit on each facade allowed for less visual and physical disruption to the pedestrian hardscape.

Hardscape Elements

The Lenox Marketplace is retail project located in a very urban setting along Peachtree Road, the primary street extending from downtown Atlanta north through Buckhead. The key players for the recent project included: Landscape Architects, Ecos Environmental Design, Inc.; Developer, The Sembler Company and Jamestown; Architects, Ozell Stankus Associates: General Contractor, Bovis; Landscape Contractor, Duke-Weeks Landscape; Hardscape Contractor, Donnelly Howard Group.

The Landscape Architects chose to use a curvilinear edge between the sidewalk and the planted buffer so that the street trees would have an expanded planting bed, thus insuring viability. The column lines of the building drove the rhythm of the scalloped edge. A twelve-inch band of concrete unit pavers projects out from the column lines toward the street to divide the scalloped waves.

Concrete paving is certainly the most common type of paving used in hardscape installations, offering an economy of scale and flexibility in installation. However, it can also be one of the most difficult of materials to achieve a designed finish. The hardscape design of Lenox Marketplace used long, wide panels of concrete in each wave segment allowing for single pours without extensive breaks for expansion joints. This allowed the Landscape Architects to develop a distinctive tooled joint pattern that added texture and flow to an otherwise monolithic slab.

The joint patterns were seen as an important element in the hardscape design. The curvilinear edge provided an opportunity to use a curvilinear tooled joint to accentuate the flow of the sidewalk. The cross-joints were laid out parallel to the unit paver bands, with the curvilinear tooled joint parallel to the scalloped edge. We knew that the tooling pattern was very intricate and would be difficult to properly execute, and would make or break the implemented design. It was one of those design decisions where we held our collective breaths while praying for a good concrete finisher.

The Challenges of Peachtree Road

Peachtree Road also dropped in elevation along the frontage. We used a thickened edge slab along the landscape buffer to allow the grade to drop off to meet the curb elevation while not exposing the edge of the slab. We held the slope along the curb line to a maximum of 3:1 to limit erosion. The change in elevation along the frontage required the use of ramps to meet accessibility requirements. Along the primary Peachtree Road frontage, the ramp is curved to match the wave pattern, allowing for continuity in the overall hardscape design. The steel railings were similarly curved to follow the ramp. The curvilinear aspect of this ramp also created an opportunity to install a planting between the ramp and the walkway above, diminishing the amount of retaining wall that was visible.

At the main entry doorway to the retail spaces at the corner of Peachtree Road and Oak Valley, the grade again worked in our favor as it transition up along Oak Valley. While there are steps leading up to the doors from the corner, we were able to create an accessible route at grade along the western edge that wrapped around an in-grade planter.

Lighting the Site

The site is an entire square block fronting on Peachtree Road. The developers of Lenox Marketplace chose to wrap a "big box" retail development around a multi-story parking garage. The highly urban aspect of this design maximized the site's usable development envelope, but it also left a wide streetscape around the project on all four sides. To meet the conditions of zoning, which included wide landscaped buffers and sidewalks, the developers retained Ecos Environmental Design, Inc. to develop the hardscape and landscape plans.

The final element in a successful project, the general contractor and its sub-contractors, played a very critical role. Bovis was the general contractor for Lenox Marketplace and did a tremendous job of coordinating a very complex project. We also had the good fortune to have two very capable sub-contractors involved in the landscape and hardscape installation. Bovis had hired Duke-Weeks Landscape to perform the landscape installation and the Donnelly Howard Group (DHG) to lay out and install the hardscape. As mentioned earlier, we felt that the hardscape installation with all of the curved edges and curved, tooled joints was not going to be an easy task. DHG did a splendid job of laying out the hardscape, calling Ecos out to the site to observe the layout of the forms prior to pouring the concrete. We held our breath while awaiting the tooling of the joints and were thrilled to see tightly controlled curves that centered in the slab as clean and dynamic as our drawings had shown them. Duke-Weeks Landscape also did a terrific job of procuring and installing the plant materials and matching the street trees.

Along the primary Peachtree Road frontage, the ramp is curved (left) to match the wave pattern, allowing for continuity in the overall hardscape design. The steel railings were similarly curved to follow the ramp. The curvilinear aspect of this ramp also created an opportunity to install a planting between the ramp and the walkway above. The Lenox Marketplace is a prime example of the proper way to blend in appropriate hardscape elements within a large retail complex. The design of the ramps allows easy access to the many amenities at the site, while securing the safety of numerous pedestrians.

Kerry Blind, FASLA is the president of Ecos Environmental Design, Inc. and was the principle designer of Lenox Marketplace.