After ​23​ years of servicing Georgia Tech, the Engineer’s Bookstore located at the corner of Means Street and Marietta Street has closed. The new owner of the property has submitted an application to the City of Atlanta (NPU-E) for alcohol sales for a proposed gas station on the site. The Engineer’s Bookstore building, constructed between 1927-1930, has been a significant and sentimental building in Georgia Tech student campus life.​ ​The building is also a “contributing building” within the Means Street National Register Historic District. This is a federal designation administered through the National Park Service (also recognized by the State of Georgia’s Historic Preservation Division).

This property is within the Marietta Street Artery neighborhood, an urban community of adaptively re-used former industrial buildings, and appropriately designed new structures, with a focus on developing for a pedestrian and bicycle scale. It is contrary to the Marietta Street Artery Association’s energy and investment over the past two plus decades to see the Engineer’s Bookstore building torn down for the development of a gas station. Losing this building would be a step backward for our community and another critical loss for our city.

Connect Atlanta designated Marietta Street as a core bicycle connection within the City. Not only would the community lose an amazing storefront with decades of character and a rich history, but a gas station is an incompatible use within the planned corridor, the neighborhood’s future vision, and movement toward alternative, environmentally friendly transportation infrastructure and comparable development. It runs counter to the following plans and initiatives:

Our city has seen too many buildings similar to Engineer’s Bookstore torn down for irresponsible, unnecessary uses, bad design, and detrimental community effect. Let’s stop that trend and act!

What’s our neighborhood’s goal?

The neighborhood stakeholders include many commercial real estate experts who have personally and professionally found creative and economically viable uses for properties similar to this building. Therefore, the neighborhood is very much willing to work with this new property owner to identify responsible, neighborhood compatible, and economically viable uses for this property. The neighborhood’s hope and goal is that the building not be torn down.

What can you do to help save the building?

sign this petition as a vote against the gas station and mini market

email your comments and concerns to Mayor Kasim Reed mayorreed@atlantaga.gov; Councilmembers Ivory Young ilyoung@atlantaga.gov and Andre Dickens ADickens@atlantaga.gov; CCing ArteryAtlanta@gmail.com​​

spread the word!

Please feel free to contact us at ArteryAtlanta@gmail.com. On behalf of the entire Marietta Street Artery community, thank you!​ ​