Hotels and apartment towers usually try to curate a specific experience through convenient amenities, meticulously designed rooms and breathtaking views.
While Ponce City Market’s new 22-story tower offers all of those, its central focus is about relinquishing creative control to its visitors — from the duration of their stay to the arrangement of nearly everything in the rooms.
Scout Living opened Sept. 30 at the popular live-work-play destination along the Beltline in Atlanta’s Old Forth Ward neighborhood. Developed by Jamestown as part of Ponce City Market’s second phase, it’s a flexible rental building that allows tenants to select short stays like a hotel or longer leases like an extended stay.
“It gives a lot of flexibility with an upscale feel,” Alexandra Kirk, vice president of development and construction for Jamestown, said. “When a lot of people hear the words extended stay, they think something low-rise off the highway and not in the city.”
Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez
Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez
The 225-foot-tall building at 639 Glen Iris Dr. NE is Jamestown’s first foray into flexible rentals. Jamestown President Michael Phillips said it’s a concept that’s gaining traction among tourists, transplants and workers, especially if daily rents are at an attractive price.
“Everyone’s striving for the luxury. We’re striving for the middle,” Phillips said. “We’re striving for something that feels like a very comfortable reach up for a budget traveler and a really surprisingly good value for a luxury traveler.”
Travelers will know immediately that Scout Living isn’t trying to imitate a hotel or extended stay.
There’s no check-in desk or central lobby. Instead, guests are welcomed by a community foyer decorated with globes, camping paraphernalia and National Geographic editions that establish the building’s adventurous scout theme.
“It’s really important to us that this doesn’t feel like a traditional hotel lobby where you have a receptionist sitting behind a desk that you have to check in,” Kirk said. “This is supposed to be like the foyer of your home.”
Scout Living is managed by Washington, D.C.-based Placemakr, a flexible living operator that handles check-ins — and almost everything — digitally. Akin to some Airbnb rentals, guests are provided a digital room key and welcome guidebook before they arrive.
Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez
Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez
The rooms consist of one- and two-bedroom units, all of which are fully furnished. They’re also incredibly compact, ranging from 397 square feet to 787 square feet.
But like a modular play set, the name of the game is efficiency and customization. The kitchen table can be adjusted and moved to act like a coffee table or desk. A full-size fridge, freezer, washer/dryer unit, dishwasher and stovetop are stacked like Tetris blocks to neatly fit in a compact kitchen. And the smallest units have semitransparent glass-wrapped bathrooms that separate the kitchen from the bedroom, allowing natural light to permeate each room.
Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez
Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez
The rooms’ interior design is also minimalistic to ride the line between not feeling empty but allowing long-term guests to decorate.
“We wanted to make sure there’s pops of color, but there’s kind of a neutral palette,” Kirk said. “So if you’re staying long-term, you can add your own sensibility and your own accessories. But for anyone who’s coming for a short period of time, this still feels like home.”
Later this year, Miami-based Necessary Purveyor will open a restaurant and market on Scout Living’s bottom floor. About 7,000 square feet of retail space remains on the market.
The 22nd floor acts as the building’s amenity floor, featuring a rooftop pool, lounge areas, an expansive outdoor deck and a fitness room. But the building’s main amenity is its proximity to Ponce City Market — a converted former Sears warehouse that has become a defining project along the Beltline and helped spur hundreds of millions of dollars in development along the Eastside Trail.
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Scout Living rounds out Jamestown’s second development phase for the popular mixed-use district, which also includes a four-story mass timber loft office building named 619 Ponce and a 162-unit apartment building called Signal House. Each new building targets net zero carbon operations and offers a variety of mobility features, including on-site bike and scooter parking, designated rideshare drop-off sites and electric vehicle charging stations.
“I think they all kind of have their place,” Phillips said. “And in the ecosystem that is Ponce, it’s been really gratifying to see how well they’ve been received.”
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