Fresh Loaf

Estimated number of metro Atlanta office jobs lost in the last three years: 50,000

Number of square feet of vacant commercial office space in metro Atlanta: 24 million

Number of years real-estate experts estimate it might take to fill the region’s empty office space: 12

Estimated cost of two full-page Wall Street Journal ads purchased by the Buckhead Coalition to market vacant condos and commercial spaces: $554,000

Number of years since Atlanta’s annual population growth was as small as it was over the past year: 19

Number of single-family building permits issued in 2009 in Atlanta, as of September: 114

Number of single-family building permits issued in Atlanta in October 2006 alone: 178

Number of years real-estate experts estimate it could take to fill vacant condos in such intown areas as Midtown and Atlantic Station: 4

Number of floors proposed for a new Midtown office tower that law firm Alston & Bird may build: 30

Sources: Atlanta Business Chronicle, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

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The recent ruling by U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson that told Georgia to start kissing ass or coming up with water-supply solutions might have also sparked a cottage industry of sorts: developers with nifty ideas about how to make a profit while also ensuring more water for cities who fear their taps — and tax base — could run dry.

It’s happening right here.

Last week, sources told CL that Atlanta and Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport officials had been approached by a private developer with the idea of selling Dawson Forest — a 10,000-acre tract of North Georgia land owned by the airport — and building a reservoir. The city bought the tract of land in 1971 in anticipation of a second airport.

According to tentative details, a tributary of the Etowah River would be dammed to create the large body of water. Officials were tight-lipped and sources couldn’t connect all the dots, but Dave Williams of the Atlanta Business Chronicle was able to get the goods.

(more…)

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The Atlanta Regional Commission yesterday said that metro Atlanta experienced its slowest year in growth since 1990. Between April 2008 and April 2009, only 24,700 people moved to the 10-county metro area. (That’s after years of averaging more than 77,000 new residents each year.)

Atlanta, which had seen an average of 7,400 residents flock to the city every year since 2000, added only 3,400 new residents.

“We’re definitely seeing the impact of the recession,” Mike Alexander, chief of ARC’s Research Division, said in a press release. “We experienced slower growth in all 10 counties and in the City of Atlanta. Even so, Atlanta continues to lead the region’s growth.”

There’s a little bit of good news, though, something that’ll at least put a smile on the faces of smart-growth aficionados and urban planners. The ARC last week voted to extend its award-winning Livable Centers Initiative program until 2012. Created in 1999, the program offers grants to local governments to plan and design walkable communities where once there had been just cars and congestion.

It was expected to run out of funds and go into limbo late last year, but the $3 million promise of cash means metro residents might have a better chance of seeing blasé suburbanscapes turned into enjoyable places once the economy recovers and development begins anew.

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Pretty please? Wouldn’t it be nice to do the right thing and help metro Atlanta continue to sprawl? I mean, we did kind of pass legislation in 2008 saying we’d look into redrawing the border so we could tap that mighty river you got there. We could just avoid all that red tape and work it out, right?

Whattaya say?

Tennessee officials still have no intention of letting Georgia tap into the Tennessee River, despite a federal court ruling last week that set a three-year clock ticking for Atlanta to find a new water source.

“Tennessee officials are not rethinking this issue,” said Gov. Phil Bredesen’s spokeswoman Lydia Lenker on Monday.

$@%#! Oh well, maybe we can just learn to conserve the water we have. Wait, what? $@%#!

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A new AP report on census figures shows Atlanta is among the 25 fastest growing cities in the U.S.

The bureau found the population shifted from 520,368 persons in July 2007 to 537,958 in July 2008, about 3.4 percent.

We’re all so accustomed to gridlocked traffic and construction cranes that “Atlanta is growing” doesn’t seem like news.

It is.

Remember, despite the metro area’s half century of uninterrupted rapid growth, City of Atlanta lost population from the 1970s until the 1990s.

Also of noted: Last week the Atlanta Regional Commission released a report showing metro Atlanta is the second fastest-growing metro area in the country this decade after Dallas. By 2040, metro Atlanta is expected to be home to 8.3 million people.

Good thing local and state leaders are working so well together to meet our transportation and water needs.

(Correction: A previous version of this post incorrectly stated the 2000 U.S. Census showed a decline in Atlanta population from 1990. Here are the correct numbers.)

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The Atlanta Regional Commission says metro Atlanta will continue to grow, albeit at a slower pace than it enjoyed during the 1990s. Nonetheless, expect to call approximately three million more people neighbors by 2040.

In its latest monthly forecast, which is basically like Christmas for a fact-loving pagan wonk like myself, the commission’s researchers say:

slower growth in population and employment is likely to be the norm across the country, as well as in the Atlanta region. Many of the factors affecting metro Atlanta are nationwide phenomena. For example, the average family continues to shrink, including those of second and third-generation immigrants. Combine fewer births with the decrease in the number of baby boomers over the next 30 years, and it’s clear that natural attrition will play a large part in moderating the Atlanta Region’s growth.

By that time, its residents will also be a lot older and younger, too — which will mean fewer people to fill available jobs.

(more…)

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Poncey-Highland community members and Atlanta City Councilman Kwanza Hall next week will begin a four-month planning effort to determine how the intown neighborhood should grow.

Councilman Kwanza Hall

According to a press release from Hall’s office:

Among the topics to be considered during the four-month process are land use issues; traffic calming; greenspaces and streetscapes; historic preservation; and sustainability.

The second community meeting for the master plan, a public workshop, is scheduled for Saturday, June 27, from 9 a.m.-12 p.m. at Druid Hills Baptist Church. The workshop will include child-friendly urban design activities led by the Atlanta chapter of the American Institute of Architects. At the end of the morning, children will share their vision for the future of Poncey-Highland with the adult participants in the workshop.

The meeting will be held on Wednesday, June 17, in the Carter Center’s Cyprus Room from 7:00-8:30 p.m. For more information call Hall’s office at (404) 330-6038 or send him an email.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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Attention all wonks! Atlanta is once again featured in a story about the changing faces of cities. The Wall Street Journal reports cities nationwide are seeing whites moving back into cities in large numbers as African-Americans move out. Big shock, I know, but they’ve got great numbers to prove it.

From the article:

Today, cities are refashioning themselves as trendy centers devoid of suburban ills like strip malls and long commutes. In Atlanta, which has among the longest commute times of any U.S. city, the white population rose by 26,000 between 2000 and 2006, while the black population decreased by 8,900. Overall the white proportion has increased to 35% in 2006 from 31% in 2000.

The WSJ focuses heavily on Washington, D.C. and San Francisco, but we get a little play in there, even a mention of how the next mayor’s race may feature the first competitive white candidate since the 1980s.

For an Atlanta-focused — and well-written — take on the the city’s gentrification, check out this article by Governing Magazine’s Rob Gurwitt.

(Many thanks to the mysterious “Christa” at PecanneLog for the find.)

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Using data from the Internal Revenue Service, the info maestros at the Atlanta Regional Commission analyzed the migratory patterns of metro Atlantans. When not doing that, they go through your trash. Here’s what they noticed about your fellow man:

According to the data, the 20-county metro region gained more than 800,000 residents from other states in 2000-2005, the majority of which moved into the 10-county core. We gain more than we lose, however, as a little more than 600,000 Georgians moved out-of-state. The primary origin state was New York, adding 38,000 residents to metro Atlanta and highlighting the fact that many of Georgia’s newest arrivals originate from the Northeast. You’ll also notice more people moving from the region’s core to the hinterlands than the other way around. To view more statistics, click here.

If only the IRS kept data showing how many people move out of Georgia because of congestion, air quality, crime, drought, the housing market and the fear of firearms on MARTA buses, this graphic would be sooo much cooler. But the ARC researchers did an incredible job nonetheless.

(Graphic courtesy of ARC)

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Tee hee.

From the office of Gov. Sonny Perdue:

Kumho Tire to Locate First U.S.

Manufacturing Facility in Macon

Korean tire company to create 450 jobs, invest $225 million in Bibb County facility

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No, not you, Shelbinator.

Mysterious Mickey at Atlanta Water Shortage is pissed — I repeat, pissed — at Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby and his earmark-slippin’ ways. According to 11Alive News — and a bevy of others — the distinguished gentleman from Alabama snuck an earmark into yesterday’s pork-laden budget bill that would prevent the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from making any changes to outdated water release manuals. The article says Georgia has wanted the Corps to do just that for years, to take into account metro Atlanta’s booming growth. Alabama’s held out until the states could agree exactly how they’d share the water. From That Other Paper:

In October, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced it would start the three-year process to rewrite manuals for the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint and Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa river basins, which together supply metro Atlanta’s water. The ACF includes Lanier and drains south into Florida; the ACT includes Allatoona and drains southwest into Alabama.

Shelby’s provision would bar the agency from spending money updating the manuals unless the corps provides certain information up front, including a 25-year projection of water use in both basins.

Ladies and gentlemen, via press release, Sen. Saxby Chambliss … he’s pissed, too!

“The governors of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida are finally at the negotiating table finding a way forward on this very difficult issue,” Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., said Wednesday, referring to recent water-sharing negotiations. “It is mind boggling to see this language in the omnibus bill intended to block that progress.”

The gentleman from Alabama says he’s just looking out for the health, safety and welfare of the citizens of his state. I suppose that would include Atlanta-based Southern Co., which, according to Open Secrets, was his biggest political contributer in 2006. The company’s subsidiary, Alabama Power, operates 24 power-generating facilities in the state.

According to SourceWatch, Shelby is an interesting character — friend of Big Tobacco, a holdout on a bill that cut off business ties to firms associated with Darfur, and basically an earmark-happy kind of guy.

For example, even though Shelby has put the quash on the Corps’ planned updates, he’s nonetheless gonna give it some new digs. Included in his earmarks was $5 million for what the Associated Press calls his “pet project.” The senator wants to uproot the Corps from its current field office — even though it never requested it — and then raze the riverfront spot to allow the area to be developed.

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… comes from an editorial in Sunday’s Macon Telegraph. A last-minute change in the statewide water plan would allocate the resource to different parts of Georgia based on “service delivery regions” — areas that are not based on watersheds but instead on what critics call purely economic concerns and, in the words of the LaGrange Daily News, “the hydrologic equivalent of gerrymandering.” Critics are up in arms and shaking their heads with disbelief. The window for public comment on the plan is now closed; it’s now up to the Georgia Water Council to pull together the details and present it to the General Assembly next month.

The Telegraph piece echoes the voices of other outside-the-metro-region editorial boards — both literally and figuratively — and eloquently conveys the anger felt by our fellow Georgians when it comes to Atlanta’s water consumption. It also issues yet another warning to Atlanta that its growth, which has fueled its success for decades, could very well be to the detriment of both ourselves and the rest of the state.

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For the moment at least, the age-old image of Atlanta as a maelstrom of sprawl appears to be changing.

The Atlanta Regional Commission released a report that says conversion of forested and agricultural land in the 13-county metro area has slowed by 70 percent in the last two years. In addition, the ARC was able to identify nearly 170,000 acres of protected greenspace in the 20-county metro area. That’s roughly the size of DeKalb County, the report says.

The ARC attributes the reduction of forested- and agricultural-land development to the recent housing-market slump and, to a lesser extent, the growing popularity of living intown and mixed-use developments. Instead of cutting down trees and building in a new area, developers will convert or build on previously developed property.

According to the report, voters are also in favor of preserving greenspace — no special ballot measure geared toward greenspace acquisition or protection has been voted against in the 20-county metro region since 2003. Paulding County has the most protected greenspace in the region, at 16 percent, with Rockdale, Bartow, Cherokee and DeKalb following at 8.9, 7.8, 6.5 and 6.2 percent, respectively. An interesting fact judging that a couple of those counties, notably Cherokee and Bartow, are often considered some of the biggest examples of sprawl in the region.

To view the report, click here.

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Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle sure knows how to speak out both sides of his mouth. He’s parroted the state line in local interviews that Atlanta’s rampant growth over the years doesn’t factor into the current water shortage. But when Cagle makes a trip south of Macon, where editorial boards have chastised the metro region’s builder-friendly mind-set, the lieutenant governor sings a different tune.

“If we simply manage to catch more of the water that falls from the sky we’ll manage the growth for years to come.”
— Cagle to the Associated Press on Oct. 16

“I think there is a concerted effort to try to create fear among Georgians by stopping growth with the threat of no longer having the water resources.”
— Cagle in an Oct. 17 Capitol Impact article

“We are not in the permitting process in terms of buildings, and we do not intend to be.”
— Cagle tells the AJC on Oct. 25 that the General Assembly will not consider legislation putting the brakes on growth

“Communities have got to begin developing in that concept [not allowing new growth unless there is an adequate water supply]. You have to have conservation, you have to have a reasonable managed growth plan, you have to manage that resource in a responsible way. Nobody wants unbridled growth …”
— Cagle caters to rural beliefs in a Nov. 6 Moultrie Observer article about the drought

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Because Delta Tango Commentmeister wants his facts — I won’t fault you for that, sir or madam — and it seems like he or she doesn’t want to hear them from me, I give you two dollops of opinion sandwiched between two slices of reality from various other news sources.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is saying the “81-days-till-we-literally-fall-dead-in-our-tracks” water supply estimate for Lake Lanier is inaccurate. Mussels and sturgeons are canaries in the coal mine and don’t deserve the blame they are a-shoulderin’. And you better get a handle on that development, Georgia, and make this drought a learning experience rather than just another catastrophe. Why? Because our neighbors think we’re water hogs and they shouldn’t have to support our growth.

Late this afternoon the state filed a lawsuit against the Corps in the Middle District of Florida Federal Court requesting that the agency immediately stop releasing water from Lake Lanier and the state’s federal reservoirs. Gov. Sonny Perdue will address the press tomorrow at Lake Lanier, fresh off the plane from his jaunt to Japan to hash up some more biz-nass for Georgia.

You guys have any questions we should ask the governor tomorrow at the press conference?

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From yesterday’s LaGrange Daily News …

“I wish the state was as organized as we are locally,” [Jeff] Brown said. [Editor's note: Jeff Brown is a former state representative and is current chairman of the West Point Lake Advisory Council.]

The state already should have been doing a better job of curtailing growth, he said, putting a moratorium on septic tanks within a certain radius of metropolitan areas.

“There are so many things the state should have been doing all along,” Brown said.

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