Full Circle Real Estate Group: Athens Real Estate, Sustainable Real Estate

A new set of plans for the Selig Enterprises project at the 10-acre Armstrong & Dobbs tract in the east end of downtown Athens have been submitted to the local planning board, showing a slightly scaled-down commercial component and more residential units.

The plans, made publicly available Monday at the Athens-Clarke County Planning Department, call for about 102,000 square feet of commercial space and 375 multi-family units with 990 bedrooms. Plans discussed in December had the more than $90 million project at 125,000 square feet of retail space with about 250 housing units with 600 bedrooms.

Gavin Hassemer, the Athens-Clarke County planner handling the project, noted major changes to original concepts for the property, such as a notably smaller anchor tenant, at about 38,000 square feet, versus 90,000 square feet almost two years ago, and a plaza that would face the Firefly Trail and give traffic coming into the development from Oconee Street a clear view of the greenway. The size of the anchor tenant, and talk of it housing a Walmart, set off a polarizing debate in Athens about the size and substance of the project off East Broad and Oconee streets.

Read more Courtesy of Athens Banner-Herald

U.S. home prices rose 9.3 percent in February compared with a year ago, the most in nearly seven years. The gains were driven by a growing number of buyers who bid on a limited supply of homes.

The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index increased from an 8.1 percent year-over-year gain in January. And annual prices rose in February in all 20 cities for the second month in a row.

Phoenix led all cities with an annual gain of 23 percent in February. Prices jumped nearly 19 percent in San Francisco. In Las Vegas, home prices increased 17.6 percent and in Atlanta they rose 16.5 percent.

News courtesy of The Athens Banner-Herald

Breaking news from our friends at The Flagpole:

This will come as no surprise to well-traveled Athenians, but the 40 Watt Club is among the best music venues in the country, according to Rolling Stone.

Twenty-four musicians, agents, promoters and managers (including Athens' Bertis Downs) were asked to rate "the most rocking small rooms in America." The 40 Watt came in 18th.

Says the venerable publication:

    Years before Michael Stipe used to stage-dive into the crowd at this legendary Georgia nightclub, the future R.E.M. frontman would count pennies to get in as doormen stared him down. (He later befriended Nirvana's Dave Grohl over veggie sausage at a restaurant the morning after the Seattle band performed at the 40 Watt.) Originally the rehearsal space for local rock heroes Pylon, the 40 Watt morphed into a bona fide club in 1979, drawing the B-52's, Sonic Youth, X, Patti Smith and Drive-By Truckers.

Once again, Athens has made a Forbes magazine list of noteworthy communities, this time as one of “The 25 Best Places to Retire in 2013.”

The community’s latest recognition from Forbes is based on its “college-town cultural amenities,” a median home price of $133,000 and a “good state tax climate.” Forbes did ding Athens a bit, though, noting a “below average air quality.”

The magazine considered a wide range of factors in developing this year’s list of best places to retire, evaluating data from 400 American cities on everything “from living costs and taxes to crime to the availability of doctors and the opportunity to stay active with outdoor exercise and volunteer work.”

Athens was the only Georgia city to make the Forbes list, but interestingly, a couple of cities toward which Athens has looked for inspiration in local development — Austin, Texas, and Asheville, N.C. — were also on the list.

Click here for the full article from The Athens Banner-Herald