Plans for a forthcoming Margaritaville Wyndham resort have been unveiled by Garvin Design Group, an Atlanta-based architecture firm, to a wave of criticism. Per a recent permit filing, the resort is slated for Nassau Street in downtown Atlanta, and will be a 21-story tower. The plan would mean demolishing a building rooted in local history.
Wyndham and Margaritaville developers will have to tear down 152 Nassau Street, a historic structure that’s believed to be the birthplace of country music. According to Kyle Kessler, a local architect and volunteer with Historic Atlanta, in 1923 the building held the offices and studio of record producer Ralph Peer, where some of the first country music hits were produced. Kessler has created a petition on change.org to prevent the demolition, hoping that the developers will instead incorporate the site. As of now, the petition has more than 5,600 signatures.
“This 1920s building is not Atlanta's most architecturally significant one, but it gives us a unique connection with our country's and community's cultural heritage," Kessler says. "Not only can we see and feel a sense of that history, but we can also hear what a pioneering record company's engineers and an unprecedented diversity of musicians accomplished there.”
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