Fresh Loaf

NEIN Residents raised powerful pink slips to show opposition to Beltline's plan for Northeast Atlanta

After months of heated meetings, sitdowns and redesigns, Neighborhood Planning Unit F members on Monday night hoisted pink Post-It notes of disapproval in the air and voted overwhelmingly to reject the  Beltline’s proposed vision for Northeast Atlanta.

Armed with legal opinions, mocked-up photos and fact sheets, residents of Morningside, Piedmont Heights and Virginia-Highland packed the Hillside Facility on Monroe Drive to exercise their Maynard-given right and weigh in on the hot-button issue.

In doing so, residents joined several other neighborhood associations in opposition to the plan. Monday night’s final vote tallied 99-7, with four residents abstaining. Beltline officials were visibly discouraged.

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Beltline officials have hit back at an all-volunteer citizen advisory group tasked with monitoring the $2.8 billion project — and have essentially accused it of trying to take control of the Beltline.

The accusation was raised after the Tax Allocation District Advisory Committee, or TADAC, recently questioned whether an upcoming bond issuance would adequately fund affordable housing and public art along the 22-mile loop of parks, trails and transit.

TADAC also said Beltline officials have been reluctant to disclose information that could help the group make better recommendations about how public funds are spent on the project, which will include new parks, trails and (hopefully) transit along with much-needed affordable housing and economic development incentives. (For an excellent report on TADAC’s concerns and how everyone got to this point, check out the Jim Walls article linked above. Hell, we’ll link to it again here.)

In the Sept. 10 letter to Atlanta City Council, Beltline officials said the citizen advisory group’s recommendations “propose expanding TADAC’s scope and responsibility to make it the governing and operating entity of the Beltline project.”

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Up in New York City, residents, visitors and real estate agents are all agog over the High Line, a groundbreaking greenspace project that converted abandoned elevated railroad tracks into a breathtaking park. Take a look at photos and see for yourself.

James Corner, the visionary designer behind the High Line, will speak at the Georgia Tech College of Architecture’s inaugural Douglas C. Allen lecture on Nov. 2. Corner, who founded his firm james corner field operations in 1998, is considered one of best landscape architects of his generation.

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Syndicated columnist and curmudgeon Dick Yarbrough offered a unique solution this weekend to curb public sex in two Cobb County parks well-known for cruising:

“With a little instruction, dogs could be taught to severely dislike the gay lovers in Burruss and Wildwood [Parks] and bite them in the fanny and do what City Council should have done years ago – chase them off to Atlanta where they belong. Assuming that works, we will then tell the canines that cell phone users are really just possums with bad attitudes. The dogs will take it from there and then maybe the rest of us can have a little peace and quiet in Glover Park.”

Wow, this column serves to raise, like, so many interesting questions. How would we train these hounds to “severely dislike the gay lovers?” And “chase them off to Atlanta where they belong?” Hmm, not too clear on what you mean by that, but OK! Another: Why is Dick Yarbrough paid to write this stuff?

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The Atlanta City Council Finance and Executive Committee yesterday gave Beltline officials the green light to issue up to $267 million in bonds to fund the 22-mile loop of parks, trails and transit.

At a citizen advisory committee meeting on Tuesday at the East Atlanta library, Richard Lutch of Atlanta Beltline Inc. told members that project officials will issue bonds in the $145 million-$165 million range in October, a good chunk of which will go to refinance last year’s bond issuance.

Exactly how other cash raised from the issuance will be used for trails, parks and other Beltline features is still undecided. But officials have a basic idea.

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Sure, you’ve heard about the Beltline and how it’ll boast sleek streetcars, new parks and winding multi-use trails circling Atlanta’s urban core. Critics say it will never get off the ground and supporters say it’ll change the city forever. But it’s a tough bugger to grasp if if you’ve never seen the areas the $2.8 billion project will impact.

Beltline volunteer and all-around good guy Angel Poventud agreed to lead CL’s Tara-Lynne Pixley and Benjamin Vanhorn on a tour of key spots along the proposed 22-mile loop of parks, trails and transit.

To read about where the project stands now, check out “The Beltline’s tipping point.”

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IMAGINE TRANSIT HERE: The path of the Beltline, seen here crossing Ponce de Leon Avenue, crosses through 45 Atlanta neighborhoods.

You can understand why Beltline officials have earmarked $10,000 in the project’s upcoming fiscal year for “crisis communications.”

Since the city embarked on its mission to build a 22-mile loop of parks, trails and transit around Atlanta’s urban core — a project that officials say will transform the city from a car-dependent hodgepodge of villages to a smart-growth wonderland served by streetcar — it’s faced its share of catastrophes.

In 2008, a state Supreme Court ruling temporarily stripped the Beltline of half its funding. Later that year, a controversial payout to Gwinnett County developer Wayne Mason raised questions over decisions about how the project allocated taxpayer dollars. In January, a bitter battle over rusty railroad tracks waged by the Beltline and a partnership of Amtrak and the Georgia Department of Transportation seemed ready to cripple the project.

But in all these crises, the Beltline emerged victorious. And on July 10, project officials had more good news to report.

After weeks of negotiations, Beltline officials struck a deal for two vital segments of GDOT-owned abandoned railroad tracks in southwest and southeast Atlanta. Atlanta Beltline Inc., the agency charged with implementing the project, now controls nearly 50 percent of the right-of-way it needs to form the spine of the 22-mile transit loop.

Continue reading “The Beltline’s tipping point”

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Beltline has secured a purchase option on segments highlighted above in red

The Beltline and Georgia Department of Transportation have agreed that key railroad tracks owned by the state agency will indeed be part of the 22-mile loop of parks, trails and transit.

GDOT Commissioner Vance Smith and Atlanta Beltline Inc. CEO Terri Montague announced today the agencies have struck a deal over a two vital segments of railroad tracks in Southwest and Southeast Atlanta.

The set of tracks in Southwest Atlanta stretch more than three miles from Allene Avenue to Lena Street. The other segment, which is much smaller, runs from Wylie Street to Memorial Drive in Reynoldstown.

According to the agreement, Beltline officials have exclusive claim on the properties until June 30, 2012. Until then, ABI will lease the segments and prepare them for public use — think hiking tours, urban sightseeing, etc.

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Crime isn’t the only issue Atlantans are rallying around this year.

More than 60 neighborhood groups, community organizations and some guy named “Arthur Blank” have joined forces as the Parks Atlanta Rescue Coalition, or PARC. They want City Hall politicians — as well as candidates — to remember greenspaces when they trim the budget.

The AJC’s Eric Stirgus reports PARC wants City Hall to:

• By next year, take concrete steps to make Atlanta’s parks safer.

• By 2012, commit one mill of property taxes, about $20 million, to operate and maintain city parks. (The current Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs budget is $29.6 million. The proposed 2010 budget is $25.3 million.)

• By 2013, create a plan to acquire and develop more green space.

It’s a long article but worth the read.

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Atlanta Beltline Inc. President and CEO Terri Montague told CL Tuesday that no cloakroom antics were behind her announcement that she’ll leave the ambitious public-works project on September 1. Simply put, she says: Now’s a good time for her to find another challenge and ensure the $2.8 billion project doesn’t lose momentum.

“This is about a transition in leadership,” Montague said at last night’s Beltline Quarterly Briefing at the Atlanta Public Schools auditorium. “Now is better than later to think about how that looks like, who that person is, and what’s best for the next stage of [the project's development]…In the grand scheme of things, now is a good time to make that change.”

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Atlanta Beltline Inc. President and CEO Terri Montague says she’ll depart the agency tasked with designing the 22-mile loop of parks, trails and transit on Sept. 1.

“It has been my privilege to serve the City and the BeltLine team in this capacity and to help the project achieve its early milestones and momentum over these nearly three years,” Montague said in a press release. “BeltLine implementation has come a very long way in a very short time—thanks in part to the project’s many partners and supporters.”

Montague joined the Beltline in July 2006. ABI says she’ll assist the organization in a consulting capacity until the end of the year to help with her successor’s transition.

More to come. The full press release is after the jump.

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The Atlanta Business Chronicle reports the Beltline will receive $1 million as part of a $1.8 million grant package from the U.S. government to clean up brownfields.

The grants, which include $400,000 from the federal government’s stimulus program and $1.4 million from the EPA brownfields general program funding, will help revitalize former industrial and commercial sites, EPA said. Brownfields are sites where expansion, redevelopment, or reuse may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant.

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A lot of it depends on what you want to see.

As part of its environmental study, Beltline officials are soliciting public input as to how the 22-mile loop of parks, trails and transit should take shape. A full list of meeting dates and locations is available in this post.

Officials last week released 14 short videos that show examples of the options under consideration for the project’s parks, trails and transit components, among other thing. They’re all in the player embedded below. To view the different videos, press play and move your mouse icon to the left or right along the bottom of the screen.

UPDATE: After the jump, the Beltline “fly-through” video.

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Jim Walls at Atlanta Unfiltered reports:

Atlanta school officials took action Monday to keep some or all of an $18 million pot collected for the city’s BeltLine project.

The Board of Education voted to change the effective date of its decision to allow school tax money to be spent on the BeltLine. The board first OK’d the funding in 2005. Under a complicated resolution that you really don’t want to read, the board said its decision will take effect this year instead.

In the meantime, the board plans to renegotiate the split for the $18 million that’s already in the bank.

School officials emphasized they still back the BeltLine. “We voted to support the beltline in December of 2005, and that support level is still there,” board Chair LaChandra Butler Burks said.

APS staff sent CL a copy of Monday’s resolution. Take a look at it here.

And why should any of this matter? Walls sums it up very nicely.

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Beltline officials on Monday will provide residents of Southeast Atlanta a chance to offer their opinion on how they want to move around the 22-mile loop of parks, trails and transit. Officials will also show them how they’ll move.

The meeting, the first of five Environmental Impact Study workshops, will be held at Trees Atlanta at 6:30 p.m. It will reportedly include a Google Earth animation that will take people on a virtual tour of the project’s path. Beltline officials will take citizen input on the how the trail and transit paths should be aligned, where station stops should be located, and what type of transportation — light-rail, streetcar, etc. — they think should be used.

The meeting is scheduled to end at 8:30 p.m. Click here for directions to Trees Atlanta. A list of the remaining workshops follows after the jump. To download a flyer that includes all the workshop dates and locations, click here. (Warning: PDF)

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A group of Inman Park residents have formed Keep High Speed Rail Out of Inman Park in an effort to fight the Georgia Department of Transportation and Amtrak’s plans to run commuter rail near the historic neighborhood. The ambiguously named group has a petition here and a YouTube video.

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Ryan Gravel

The Beltline Partnership, the fundraising and public awareness arm of the $2.8 billion project that imagines Atlanta circled by parks, trails and transit, has new board directors.

Most prominent among those, especially for people who keep their eyes on smart growth and transit projects in the city, is Ryan Gravel. An urban designer who envisioned the Beltline as a graduate student at Georgia Tech, Gravel now works at local architecture firm Perkins + Will. He’s become more engaged with the Beltline since the Georgia Department of Transportation and Amtrak unexpectedly announced they want to use tracks near Piedmont Park for a commuter-rail project, putting the project in jeopardy.

Ray Weeks, the partnership’s founding chairman, is stepping down now that his term on the board has ended. He will continue to serve as one of the organization’s chief fundraisers. Weeks is succeeded by AGL Resources CEO John Somerhalder.

The partnership’s roster includes some of the city’s biggest business names. Since its founding, the organization has been vital in securing private funds to help pay for some of the public-works project’s costs.

Full release, with details of who’s joined the board, after the jump.

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Congratulations, fellow citizen! If things go according to plan, come Friday at 10 a.m. you’ll be a co-owner of 66 acres of prime property in Northeast Atlanta.

The Atlanta City Council today approved 9-1 the issuance of $64.5 million of Beltline TAD bonds. Councilmember Felicia Moore was the lone vote against the deal.

Atlanta Beltline Inc. Finance Director Richard Lutch says the project will meet the Oct. 31 deadline set by Gwinnett County developer Wayne Mason and settle the $45 million debt Mason is owed for property near Piedmont Park.

Beltline leaders will also use $3.5 million of the bond funds to buy out the remaining stake in the property held by Barry Real Estate and Ben Rainey, its private partners in a joint venture that was created to purchase the land from Mason late last year. Beltline leaders must then must transfer the property to the Atlanta Development Authority. (The land must be owned by a public agency to meet tax-exempt bond regulations.)

After the vote, Tax Allocation District Advisory Committee Chair Eugene Bowens, Sr. said that the citizens’ group — while supportive of the deal — still feels it’s not being involved enough in how funds from the TAD bonds are used. By law, the committee is charged with ensuring those public funds are spent in a “fair and equitable manner.” Numerous times in the past — most notably when Beltline leaders decided to spend a large chunk of funds to pay off the Mason property in affluent Northeast Atlanta — the committee has said they have been kept out of the loop. He said TADAC members were only notified of today’s bond deal at a meeting last night with Beltline leaders.

This development raises many questions, such as what direction the project takes now and where it will focus its energy, how the city plans to act on property that it must rezone if it plans to sell, and how future allocations and deals will be handled. Feel free to chime in below if you have any thoughts.

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If Atlanta City Council gives them the OK, bonds set to be issued this week to pay for Beltline projects will be worth $64.5 million — a much lower amount than the $117 million initially anticipated before bond markets ground to a halt because of Wall Street’s meltdown.

Atlanta Beltline Inc. CEO Terri Montague says more bonds will be issued in mid-2009. The tax-exempt bonds will be split in half and sold to Wachovia and Suntrust with a 6.2 percent interest rate. She says the reason the offering is much smaller is because debts — most notably, the Wayne Mason property in the 22-mile project’s northeast quadrant — must be paid. Additional bonds are planned to be issued in in mid-2009. Montague says the affordable housing component will receive roughly $8.5 8.8 million.

Beltline leaders will also have to buy out Ben Rainey and Barry Real Estate, its private partners in a joint venture that purchased the 66-acre Mason property, to meet regulations established for tax-exempt bonds. Montague says the two partners agreed to settle for $3.5 million — they originally wanted $10 million.

Beltline officials appear before Atlanta City Council at 3:30 p.m. to seek its approval before proceeding with the deal. Should City Council fail to approve the bond offering, the city would lose both the property and $26 million its already paid to the Masons.

Should voters approve Amendment 2 on the General Election ballot, Montague says, the next Beltline TAD bond offering could potentially be much larger.

More updates to come.

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Sources tell CL that Atlanta City Councilmembers were given notice that a special-called meeting will be held at City Hall tomorrow at 3 p.m. Details are vague, but the event could mean developments are underway for the 22-mile loop of parks, trails, transit.

Why? Well, as we’ve been reporting, the Oct. 31 deadline for Beltline leaders to settle the debt on property purchased from Gwinnett County developer Wayne Mason is drawing near. The property — a 66-acre parcel of land and transit right-of-way located near Piedmont Park in the project’s northeast quadrant — generated controversy this summer when Beltline leaders decided to allocate nearly half the TAD bond funding to settle the debt. If it’s not repaid, the Mason property could enter foreclosure.

Because of the virtually shutdown bond market, those TAD bonds have been delayed until the project’s financial wizards could secure the best possible deal. Beltline leaders would most likely have to brief City Council on their progress.

Regardless, we’ll be there and update once we hear word.

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Beltline bonds scheduled to be priced this week have been delayed until mid-October, a spokesperson for the 22-mile loop of parks, trails and transit says. Project leaders say the bonds — estimated to be worth $117 million — are now scheduled to be issued the week of Oct. 20.

Timing is of the essence, however, as that issuance cuts close to an Oct. 31 deadline to settle outstanding debt on a vital piece of property in northeast Atlanta near Piedmont Park. The property includes transit right-of-way and was purchased late last year from Gwinnett County developer Wayne Mason and his son, Keith. The decision to allocate the majority of Beltline bond proceeds to the Masons was opposed by community groups, but ultimately determined necessary to ensure the future of the project.

Should Beltline leaders not settle the Mason debt by the deadline, the property could risk foreclosure, placing valuable intown property on the real-estate market and in turn, making it harder to secure.

The national market for municipal bonds — for years the go-to financing mechanism that’s kept cities apace — has been essentially closed since the fallout on Wall Street, leaving many projects as grand as the Beltline and as everyday as highway repairs in a lurch. Athens-Clarke County recently put three long-planned sewer treatment plants, to be paid for with bonds, on the backburner until the market improves.

Atlanta is currently sitting on four upcoming bond issuances: The Beltline and Perry Bolton TAD bonds, the General Obligation refinancing bonds, and the Downtown Redevelopment bonds. Dana Boone, the city’s debt and investment chief, says most buyers in the market are hesitant to make purchases until Congress acts on the controversial bailout package. (The U.S. Senate approved the $850-billion, 450-page package last night.)

“The belief is that there are not a lot of issuances going out to market and postponing deals because there aren’t a lot of buyers in the market,” Boone says. “The costs would be too high. The issuers that are pursuing bond issuances are those with high needs.”

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The Army Corps of Engineers’ regional headquarters in Mobile, Ala., has seen fit to issue a news release explaining that Georgia’s new, Sonny-signed law allowing guns in taverns, parks and subway trains does not apply to the lakes and parkland it manages. Here’s an excerpt from the release:

“This clarification was prompted by several inquiries received by the Corps concerning the law and media reports about the law’s application to parks,” said E. Patrick Robbins, Public Affairs Officer, Mobile District.

Robbins, however, does not indicate whether the inquiries came from people worried about recreating amid heavily armed crowds or from folks eager to bring their shootin’ irons to a federal reservoir. This being Georgia, you never know.

We haven’t heard from the Department of the Interior yet, but we’ll go ahead and note that the new state law doesn’t apply to any federal property, such as Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park, the Chattahoochee River Recreation Area or the MLK Historic Site.

If you’re confused about what rules apply where, you might just want to leave the Smith and Wesson in the glove box, like God intended.

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Per Mayor Shirley Franklin’s suggestions to the council, 11 recreation centers in the city are to close down for repairs. No word on the specific centers yet. Dianne Harnell Cohen, director of the city’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs, says the centers were planned to be closed before the $140-million shortfall:

“We will be renovating 11 recreation centers for the Opportunity Bond, which must be spent during the 2009 budget. The renovations were planned before the need for budget cuts was determined. We will have some abbreviated hours at the recreation centers, tennis centers and natatoriums. We will have 19 Camp Best Friends sites this summer. All youth athletic activity will continue in place.”

Two rec centers will be shutting down permanently, as well. Again, from Director Cohen:

“The Cleveland Avenue recreation facility, owned by Fulton County, was used only in the summer. The facility is very old and is no longer functional. There are no plans for renovation because one of our best facilities – a class 4 facility Rosel Fann with full gymnasium and natatorium is less than a mile away.

The Arthur Langford recreation facility has been under discussion for a long time because the YMCA built its new mega center there a year ago. We have been working with the community and will continue to in order to integrate programming at the center with the YMCA so the entire community and the building can be well served.”

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