Historic Fairlie-Poplar building could be razed to build retail, keep data center nice and cool

The Bell Building, the historic former telephone exchange along Auburn Avenue, isn’t the only Downtown edifice threatened with demolition.
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? Westplan Investors, the owner of a high-rise server farm at 55 Marietta St., wants to tear down an adjacent two-story building in Fairlie-Poplar to house utilities to keep the machines humming.
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? According to plans for a special permit submitted by Westplan to the city’s Office of Planning, the Forsyth-Walton Building located at 40 Forsyth St. would be razed and replaced with a four-story building. Retail and potentially a restaurant would be located on the first two floors. But it’s what will happen on the third and fourth floors that sparked the application, which was submitted by Norman Koplon, a one-time City Hall bigwig who now advises clients for the high-powered Troutman Sanders law firm.
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?According to the permit application, those top two floors will be used to provide “accessory power and HVAC uses for the Marietta Street Building when needed.” A Georgia Power vault would be located in the basement, the application says. Three underground fuel-storage tanks and a 5,000-gallon water storage tank would provide a “back up water supply for the HVAC chillers.”
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? 55 Marietta St., according to the application, holds a special place in Atlanta’s telecom history. Some time during the 1990s, building owners spent $10 million to take advantage of the strong fiber-optic network in the area and turn it into a “telecom hotel.” Since then, the application says, “some of the most significant carriers in the telecom business” — AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner, and many more — “have or have had data presence” in the building.
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? But the two-story Forsyth-Walton Building that Westplan wants to bulldoze has a special place in Downtown’s architecture. According to Fulton County property records, it’s a circa 1920 building with an Art Deco facade perched on a street corner and a nice contrast to the nearby architectural styles. It’s also part of the Fairlie-Poplar National Register Historic District, a picturesque and charming area that, to our knowledge, does not enjoy any protections. “Walking Dead” fans might also recognize the Forsyth-Walton from the popular TV show’s first season.
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? Ewoud Swaak, Westplan’s CEO, said he was unable to comment when contacted on Wednesday. He says the firm would issue a press release about the proposal in the coming week.  
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? Should the city give the OK for a historic building be demolished to keep a server farm a-hummin’? Expect debate on that very issue and others in the weeks ahead.  
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