Masonry Magazine March 2006 Page. 30
REDEVELOPMENT
and office space, a new City Hall, courthouse and public safety
building. This has changed the perception and the course of the city.
The first objective was to revive the downtown. Secondly,
assessments of community needs suggested that the city needed
to construct a library and a community center to provide broad-
er recreational services to its citizens. Thirdly, Smyrna was being
consumed in Atlanta's sprawl and losing its identity. Smyrna's
image, to the extent it existed, was suffering. In 1989, after many
hours of discussion and study, with assistance from leaders in the
private sector and several citizens' groups, the mayor and city
council retained architects from the Sizemore Group to manage
the process and design the recreation of the downtown area.
The Downtown Development Authority, engineers, apprais
ers, surveyors and attorneys were all brought together to begin the
process with city staff. The city then purchased much of the
downtown land. A new community center and library would be
constructed, relocating and restructuring the downtown. This cre
ated an opportunity to leverage future private sector development
in the town center, improving the overall community. City struc
tures would be of such a high quality that they would improve
Smyrna's image and clearly establish its new identity.
With this objective clearly defined, the council set forth
to achieve it.
Phase I of the restoration effort set the tone for future devel-
opment and encouraged private sector interest: the 55,000-
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CIRCLE 339 ON READER SERVICE CARD
square-foot community center, 28,000-square-foot library, a
main street, an attractive duck pond, a retaining pond for
future storm water requirements, a loop road to bypass the
pedestrian core, and a village green that became the focal point
of the city. The total cost for Phase I improvements, including
land and bond financing, was $15 million.
Mike Sizemore of the Sizemore Group, the architects
involved with the Smyrna redevelopment from the beginning.
commented on the project's use of masonry, saying, "Brick
above all gives a sense of stability. For instance, in public build-
ings, that's what all cities are looking for. Brick gives the build-
ings a sense of roots, tradition and stability that no other
material can match. It shows people that these buildings will be
here long into the future.
"Using brick, we can create forms that are also very stable,
not just look stable," he continued. "That's important in an era
when many public buildings look like they'd blow over in a
wind storm and some actually do. And finally, there is the
wide color palette available in brick. In Smyrna, we chose sev-
eral colors but focused on creating what we call "The Smyrna
Brick. There are a number of suppliers that can provide us with
that brick, that color and texture, so it's not a proprietary brick,
just one that has become the standard and the one that seems
to represent Smyrna best."
Obviously, in Smyrna there is a public preference for
local renewable and natural materials, so brick is high on
their list. Especially successful has been the introduction of
the brick materials and details into the interiors. The
resulting design is a clear expression of the values of stabil-
ity, order, human scale, history and warmth articulated
early in the process.
Throughout the country and especially along the Eastern
Seaboard and deep into Dixie, in big cities and small, rural
areas and booming growth areas alike, masonry has proven
itself as the material of choice in building, renovation and rede-
velopment. It just fits.
28 Masonry
March 2006
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