In Atlanta, inertia is presumably considered one of the seven deadly sins. The city’s explosive growth – according to CensusScope and Wikipedia, the city has grown roughly five-fold since 1960, and has a current population that approximates 5.6 million – underscores that Atlanta perpetually operates in growth mode.
However, growth’s downside is Atlanta sometimes struggles to honor its history. However, Atlanta isn’t bereft of historical gems. Now, Atlantans and visitors can enjoy an historic commercial cog that’s now a mixed-use showplace. In 1926, on Ponce de Leon Ave., one of Atlanta’s major east-west thoroughfares, Sears, Roebuck & Co. constructed a colossal retail store and regional distribution center in 1926 than spans nine stories, more than 2 million sq. ft. and 45 acres. For decades, the facility employed thousands as the Sears catalog and its contents embodied America’s middle-class growth.
However, as Sears lost the mantle of America’s predominant retailer, the company reorganized, and it shuttered the facility in 1987. Atlanta’s civic leaders purchased the facility in the early ‘90s and attempted to turn it into a city-hall annex with rentable commercial space, but it attracted few tenants and was abandoned by the early 2000s.
Jamestown Properties LLC, a nationwide developer that specializes in transforming historic properties into dynamic, multi-use spaces, purchased the property in 2011 for $27 million – according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution – and invested hundreds of millions more into creating a thriving hub of retail, restaurant, office and residential activity. Jamestown christened the property Ponce City Market, and tenants began moving in early last year.
To make such a property engaging, a balance between celebrating history, while making it attractive and viable to forward-thinking tastes, requires careful consideration and execution. To deliver impactful visual communications, Jamestown hired NYC-based Airspace to develop the project’s environmental graphics. Airspace’s principal, Jill Ayers, had also developed the wayfinding program for Jamestown’s property at NYC’s Chelsea Market.
“After speaking with Jamestown about their vision, we took the approach that all new elements would feel like they may have once been seen on the property,” she said. “The two, large, exterior signs represent variations on the original signage that was once mounted to the building.”
Henry Inc. (Decatur, GA) fabricated Ponce City Market’s main-ID and wayfinding signage, as well as various tenant signs. Its portfolio includes signage and graphics for Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park, Heineken’s U.S. headquarters in NYC, and Disney’s Art of Animation Resorts, among many other, large-scale projects. Gay Construction, general contractor for the site’s construction, hired Henry.
A commanding neon sign grabs curbside attention. Henry fabricated the sign, which perches 50 ft. above grade and measures 71 ft. 8 in. tall, with a CNC-routed aluminum cabinet and channel letters, which were installed over an aluminum frame. More than 500 linear ft. of neon are powered by 18, 9,000- and 10,500V transformers. White LED modules illuminate the complementary “City Market” sign that measures 126 linear ft. and is powered by four, 120V power supplies.
Behind the street and facing the Ponce parking lot, a 123-ft.-wide, horizontal, rooftop further announces the Ponce brand. The letters were built from an aluminum skin and frame, with letters installed on steel-angle stringers. Each letter features six neon strokes, which were wired in three separate circuits; two, four or six strokes could be lit at a given time. Its neon encompasses 2,810 linear ft., with 48 transformers, which range ranging from 9000 to 15000V, 30ma transformers on a 277V electrical system. Gay Construction built the galvanized-steel support structure.
A sleek, metal-fin sign on the façade of an annex building provides another attractive entrance message. The fins comprise custom-perforated aluminum built with a 90° mounting base bolted to stringer tubes that run around two sides of the building. Each blade contains a slice of a letter and a perspective distortion, so the slices had to be precisely positioned to align for the proper viewing angle. A 3-D, electronic rendering was drafted to simulate the angle prior to production.
The “crate” wayfinding system features probably represent the most appealing directional graphics I’ve seen. The crates were built from raw, rough-finish poplar, and painted with acrylic-polyurethane paint. For stability, they contain internal, bottom-heavy, aluminum frames. Clearcoated, raw steel provides their angle corners, and bronze hardware provides a rustic, attractive look. Airspace added palettes to the design when it became clear they would have to periodically be moved.
Jeff Grundman, Henry Inc.’s project engineer, said the blade sign presented the job’s major challenges: “It’s a recreation of a sign that was hung in the same sport during the 1950s. Engineering a solution that would meet code when installed on an undocumented wall built in 1926 would prove interesting. The engineering responsibility fell on Gay, but we had to work closely to make sure the plans could be built.”
Moving the rooftop letters into place also provided a challenge. The parking lot conceals more parking levels below and an intricate drainage system, and wouldn’t support a crane’s weight. Installers moved a crane to the side of the building and elevated the letters on custom dollies. Once there, the crew hand-rolled them over a custom-built, plywood roadway, and then used a hand-crank to set them on smaller dollies that were rolled between a safety fence and the mounting structure until they were in position. Finally, a custom, winch-and-davit system helped installers lift the letters and bolt them down.