Fresh Loaf

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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RATTLED: Little Five Points resident Kyle Keyser says his Dec. 17 mugging reflects how brazen Atlanta crime has become.

On Dec. 17, local video producer and blogger Kyle Keyser stopped at the Pizza Hut on North Avenue to pick up a late dinner for his roommate’s boss. Five men stood outside the pizza joint. One asked Keyser if he’d buy him some food. Keyser, sympathetic to the man’s hunger, said sure.

But the restaurant was closed, and as Keyser returned to his car, the five men surrounded him and pushed him against a nearby vehicle. One shoved a gun to his neck. They demanded money. Keyser said he didn’t have any but handed over his ATM card.

The men took Keyser’s cell phone and wallet and ordered him to lie on the ground. One suspect, pistol in hand, took aim.

“I’m gonna shoot him,” Keyser recalls the suspect saying. “I’m gonna shoot this motherfucker.”

“Don’t shoot him,” pleaded the guy who Keyser had offered to buy food.

“Naw,” the gunman said, “I’m gonna shoot him in the leg.”

Keyser, face down on the pavement, braced himself for a bullet. Instead, he saw five pairs of sneakers walk off. He sensed he had an exit, jumped in his car, and sped toward Midtown to call the police. He says bank receipts show the suspects purchased food with his card at a gas station a block away.

“OK, people get mugged and asked for money,” says Keyser, whose house has been broken into twice. “There’s a certain amount of crime that you associate with living in the city. It’s not forgivable, but it’s understood. You know it’s going to happen. What concerns me now is the spike in violent crime.”

Read the rest of this story.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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D.L. Bennett of the AJC has an article that addresses what many of us have assumed — the intown building boom is hitting the skids. The rush to build homes to welcome the influx of new residents was broadsided by the foreclosure and credit and resulted in shuttered-up houses and dwindling property values.

Says Ben at Terminal Station:

The combination of factors hitting these areas is brutal.  First, all the subprime mortgages that got people into these homes in the first place reset and foreclosures follow.  Housing prices plummet, and you might think there would be a wave of people who could get into some infill homes for a great price.  However, tighter credit standards are going to prevent people from getting loans, and the cratering economy will further depress things.  So these homes will just sit empty for who knows how long.

The city has received $12 million to buy foreclosures, but it will barely make a dent in the problem. I don’t really know what sort of policy solutions are available. There needs to be an infusion of capital somewhere to buy these houses and get them occupied. I know some folks who are buying up cheap houses (~$30k), renovating them, and renting them to people with Section 8 vouchers. The problem is that this is not a recipe for revitalization. Instead, it can become a recipe for concentrated poverty and can prevent new residents from wanting to move in. I’m not enthusiastic about an infusion of capital of this sort, but it is probably the only sort of private capital available.

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One downside of living in New York my colleague Scott Freeman didn’t point out in his list of reasons it sucks to reside in Gotham: You have to look at the posh patios of your upper-crust neighbors.

A friend of mine who lived in Little Italy rented a sixth-floor walk-up behind a building rumored to be owned by Hugh Jackman. It boasted a rooftop basketball court and never once did we see someone use it. So my bud woke up to that every morning: Essentially, something she could never have, and even if she did, she’d be too busy gallivanting in San Tropez to practice alley oops.

Atlanta’s kind of wacky in the sense that for the last two decades, if you had a sizable bank account, you sure as hell didn’t live in the towers of privilege. You decamped to Buckhead, Cobb or North Fulton. But as the city core continues to evolve and these dwellings become more popular and expensive, we’re probably going to see rooftop patios and porches that try to make up for the downsizing and elimination of a yard.

But what’s out there now? Castleberry Hill boasts some crisp rooftops and patios, for one. Does anybody know of other standout examples that make you bite your knuckles? Get jealous? Maybe want to repel through their windows under the cloak of night and steal all their precious artwork and silver?

Yes, this feels dangerously like just the type of real estate porn and worship that’s so rampant in New York, but so be it. Send photos or leave comments if you’ve noticed a spot that’s interesting or something people have done that takes advantage of their space.

(Hat tip to Gawker and Gothamist, screenshot from JWilly’s Flickr)

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