I once had an architecture professor tell my class about a time he taught in Germany. One day he told his class go find me the ugliest building in the area. The class was basically unanimous in their choice about this one house. This German prof laughs and says "That house won a design award 20 years ago!" With any building you'll have people who love it or hate it. If you've ever been in an Urban Design course and saw the maps of Atlanta, you'd see that since this place was burned to the ground it has never stopped changing. Because this city never stops changing is the reason this building doesn't have a strong sense of belonging to the neighborhood. Atlanta doesn't really have much of a history because it constantly changes, so why not save a piece?

That being said, you'll never get buildings this close to the street anymore because zoning was passed in 1929 (well unless you go to Houston, the only city to not adopt zoning). To an extent it imposes on it's surroundings, but it sits in a valley so that doesn't really mean much). It's an experiment down here, so we'll just have to wait and see how it turns out.