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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 proposed allowing future developers to build up to eight stories at 10th Street and Monroe Drive. (Looking northeast from Grady High School)

Some intown residents who’ve never been ones to shy away from city and developer battles say they’re none too pleased with the proposed vision of the Beltline near Piedmont Park.

According to preliminary plans for the Beltline’s segment that stretches from Ansley Park to City Hall East, future developers would be allowed to build up to eight stories at the congested corner of 10th Street and Monroe Drive.

That’s a far cry from the twin Towers of Babel that Gwinnett County developer Wayne Mason wanted to build on the same spot in 2006. But the reduction in size — and the fact that no specific development project’s been proposed — hasn’t stopped some residents from voicing concerns over what they say is an inappropriate vision for one of intown Atlanta’s most popular neighborhoods.

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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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Dave Williams of the Atlanta Business Chronicle reports that the Atlanta Development Authority has declined to hang on to the $6 million of Atlanta Public Schools funding generated from the Beltline tax allocation district.

Remember that whole deal? There was a lot of head scratching about whether the school board was in danger of violating its charter with such an arrangement. The “pay-us-back-over-10-years” thing sure as hell sounded like a loan, something cash-strapped APS isn’t allowed to do.

Well:

…on Wednesday, authority officials said potential legal complications surrounding receipt of the funds prompted them to decide not to take the money. Instead, the authority will focus on moving forward by the end of this year with a bond issue to support the Beltline project.

No word on exactly what those potential legal complications were. But it’s likely that the lawyering and research needed to iron out the kinks would’ve stressed more man hours and brain cells than the $6 million was worth.

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After several months of negotiations, the Atlanta Public Schools board yesterday approved a deal with the Atlanta Development Authority that will return $18 million to the cash-strapped school system.

At issue was $18 million the ADA had already collected from the Beltline and Perry/Bolton tax allocation districts, or TADs. TADs are complex — and controversial — redevelopment tools which use property tax increases to pay for roads, sewers and other infrastructure fixes in traditionally blighted areas. (Atlantic Station and downtown’s Ivan Allen Plaza are examples of TADs.) In February 2008, the Georgia Supreme Court banned school boards from participating in the projects. In November 2008, Georgia voters approved a state Constitutional amendment that would allow school boards to participate. In April, state lawmakers passed — and Gov. Sonny Perdue signed — a bill that fine-tuned TADs and allowed schools the option not to participate in the projects.

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BROKEN WINDOWS Some residents of Vine City feel that their neighborhood is crumbling before their eyes.

Ask lifelong Vine City resident and community organizer Byron Amos to recall his childhood in the historic neighborhood, and he paints a simple portrait: houses, children, residents mingling in narrow, friendly streets.

“A real neighborhood,” he says.

Ask him to describe Vine City today, and he’ll tell you this: “It’s a shell of its former self.”

Literally. Thanks to disasters both natural and man-made, the long-overlooked community so rich with heritage has devolved into the very definition of blight.

On Sept. 21, 2002, an unprecedented downpour, exacerbated by the city’s antiquated sewer system, flooded Vine City 6 feet deep. Some stranded residents were forced to swim through raw sewage to reach safety.

Continue reading “Down and out in Vine City”

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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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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The new bill clamps down on what local government officials can consider a “blighted” area.

From Dave Williams at the Atlanta Business Chronicle:

Only neighborhoods truly in need of taxpayer-funded redevelopment would qualify as tax allocation districts under legislation signed this week by Gov. Sonny Perdue.

The legislation, designed to accompany a constitutional amendment ratified by Georgia voters last fall, tightens the definitions of “blighted” and “deteriorated” areas under the state’s TAD law.

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Under the new law, only neighborhoods marked by substandard buildings, high vacancy rates and high poverty and unemployment could qualify as TADs. That way, only properties too unattractive to lure private investment could be redeveloped with TAD money.

School boards — which chip in the largest chunk of funding if they participate in a TAD — still have a choice as to whether they want to participate in the projects.

The tough economy has forced some cash-strapped school systems to renegotiate — or even rethink — their roles in TADs. Atlanta Public Schools and Atlanta Development Authority officials are in talks to split nearly $18 million that had already been generated from the Beltline TAD prior to a 2008 state Supreme Court ruling that said TADs were unconstitutional. (The school board says it still supports the Beltline, just that it wants to begin kicking in money this year.) Gainesville City Schools recently voted to opt out of a TAD in which it initially planned to participate.

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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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Andres Duany

The Atlanta Regional Commission didn’t ask Andres Duany to envision a mixed-use design for Gwinnett Place Mall when he visited the region in February. But he did anyway.

He imagined how the stereotypical shopping box out in the wilds of suburbia would look should our economy collapse. Residents would have safety in numbers, gathered in dense housing. They could raze the single-family sameness surrounding them and plant crops. They could erect a wall to protect them from the barbarian hordes. Duany even included a moat. Because that’s how badass Duany is.

Last month, the smart-growth guru and father of New Urbanism converged upon Atlanta with a team of urban planners to conduct a nine-day series of site-planning sessions.

Duany’s team focused on five sites in metro Atlanta as part of the Atlanta Regional Commission’s initiative to prepare for the coming surge in the metro region’s aging population. In 2030, the commission says, one out of five adults in metro Atlanta will be over the age of 60. They’ll need a place to live. For people with limited mobility, the 40-story isolation towers we’ve stuck them in for the last few decades aren’t cutting it. The metro region’s sprawlish character isn’t hospitable for someone who can’t drive to the doctor, pharmacy or store. Simply put, the way things are right now, metro Atlanta isn’t prepared to accommodate many of the same people who helped build their communities.

Duany’s group aimed to see how the public and private sector can work together to change that. And for a wonk like me, it was a thrilling concept. After the jump, pretty pictures and lots of basic details.

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State Sen. Jeff Chapman

State Sen. Jeff Chapman, R-Brunswick, has been the most vocal critic of developer Linger Longer’s plans for Jekyll Island, the idyllic state park on Georgia’s coast. In this op-ed, entitled “They’re At It Again,” the senator says the governor-appointed board tasked with overseeing the island either misunderstands a recent study of the proposal or is misleading the public.

The Jekyll Island Authority (JIA) is at it again, this time endorsing a density study conducted by the Bleakly Advisory Group, which claims that the proposed 150 percent increase in the state park’s year-round residences and rental accommodations by the year 2023 would still make Jekyll “significantly less developed than other comparable coastal destinations in terms of resident and seasonal population, housing density and traffic volumes.”

Truth be told, Bleakly based his calculations on a U.S. Census Bureau Report that includes more than 5,000 acres of marshland, most of which surrounds the six-mile long Jekyll Causeway, as part of Jekyll Island. By artificially doubling Jekyll’s real size, Bleakly attempted to show that, on a per acre basis, the built-up Jekyll of the future would not be overdeveloped or overcrowded, when, in fact, the exact opposite would be true.

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Happy ending for the Beltline?

Residents and transit wonks hoping for a Friday cease-fire over unused railroad tracks called the “Decatur Belt” got good news today.

Officials from the Beltline, Georgia Department of Transportation, Amtrak and other transportation agencies say they’ve reached an agreement regarding the hotly contested rail segment that stretches from Ansley Park to DeKalb Avenue.

“These parties have reached a consensus on joint actions to develop and implement a plan to accommodate commuter rail, intercity and high-speed rail service in the region that does not require the use of the Decatur Belt rail corridor,” a joint statement says.

The agencies agree that a commuter, intercity or high-speed rail line could operate along modified tracks west of the city. Beltline supporters initially proposed such a concept, but Amtrak and GDOT rejected it, calling it difficult because those tracks are busy freight routes.

A technical committee recommends a long-awaited downtown train terminal proposed near Philips Arena which would accommodate the trains be redesigned, that Amtrak consider possible stations along MARTA’s Northeast line, and that the local, state and regional transportation agencies conduct a study of freight traffic options in metro Atlanta.

In other words: It appears that, barring anything insanely out-of-the-blue, the mixed-use, light-rail Beltline vision proposed near Piedmont Park is safe.

Background and the full release from the agencies after the jump.

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Beltline, Georgia Department of Transportation and Amtrak officials have until tomorrow afternoon to update the U.S. Surface Transportation Board about the fate of the Decatur Belt, a strip of abandoned rail in Northeast Atlanta which all sides say they need to control for very different rail projects. (Here are some maps of the project and area in question.)

Late last week, residents of several at-risk neighborhood organizations — including Poncey-Highland, Inman Park and Old Fourth Ward — asked Amtrak and GDOT to scrap their plans for commuter or intercity rail running along the Decatur Belt. (Click here to read their Word Document press release.) While all the agencies promised to work together to try and resolve the issue, they’re keeping mum on how things have progressed. On Tuesday, Mayor Shirley Franklin told U.S. Congressman John Lewis the sides are still negotiating. Nonetheless, keep checking back for updates about the story.

In other Beltline news, some areas of the 22-mile loop of parks, trails and transit that would require rezoning are scheduled to be discussed — and possibly voted on — by the Atlanta City Council’s Community Development and Human Resources Committee on Monday, March 9 at 6 p.m.. Included are project areas near Old Fourth Ward, Grant Park, Northwest Atlanta, and others.

A full list of the areas follows after the jump. If you want to get involved, stop by City Hall or contact your councilmember.

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First come the slots. Then come the men cavorting with white tigers and the true artistes! But until then…baby steps.

And today, the Atlanta City Council voiced its support  for a plan that could drastically change Underground Atlanta and bring gambling — well, video lottery terminals — to the long suffering downtown attraction. Council voted 11-0 to approve a resolution supporting the proposal and form a committee to study the project.

Underground Atlanta leaseholders Dan O’Leary and John Aderhold say a remake of the area could bring jobs and much-needed revenue to the city. The two recently proposed a $500 million redevelopment plan that would convert Underground Atlanta’s 12 acres into a complex featuring a 29-story hotel, restaurants, shops and lottery terminals.

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Duany

Last week, acclaimed New Urbanist Andres Duany visited metro Atlanta to design several mixed-use sites for the Atlanta Regional Commission. He was deliciously brutal in his criticism.

“If Decatur’s great, it’s only in the absence of anything better.”

— Duany rips into the Atlanta neighborhood that the audience claims to be the most walkable.

“The only reason Atlanta isn’t mortified by its urban sprawl is because of its landscape. This the best-looking urban sprawl in the country.”

— Duany claims the region’s low-rolling hills help mask the dumb-growth.

“You have [massive parking decks] all over Atlanta. Who the hell wants to drive to the 15th floor? You feel like a loser even if you find a parking space.”

— Duany says the city’s parking decks should never be taller than five stories.

“Your streets are fantastically dangerous. And it isn’t the muggers. It’s the motorists used to driving fast.”

— Duany points out that the city isn’t safe for pedestrians.

Note: Now that I’ve been provided with maps and designs, I’ll be writing more later in the week about Duany’s presentation and plans. He’s got a lot of interesting ideas for metro Atlanta — Toco Hills and Grant Park, in particular.

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On Feb. 2, nearly 30 officials from various local, state and federal transit agencies, most of whom were locked in a bitter dispute over Beltline tracks near Piedmont Park, sat down with Congressman John Lewis’ staff in his Atlanta office. Their purpose: Let’s figure out what we’re going to do with “The Decatur Belt,” a segment of city-owned property near Piedmont Park that includes tracks vital to the Beltline project.

Officials have declined to comment on what was discussed at the meeting and how things have progressed. In a joint press release issued the day of the sitdown, agency officials said they would work toward a common solution and report progress in 30 days.

According to MARTA’s notes of the meeting, obtained by CL in an Open Records Request, some of the transportation agencies sound — contrary to many of their comments after news of the dispute broke — seemingly unsure of their options. And they really didn’t want to involve the media. What’s more, the notes suggest a disappointing  — but not entirely surprising — reality: Local and state transportation agencies, at least prior to the Feb. 2 meeting, were not communicating with each other in a productive manner.

But with federal funding and millions of dollars in taxpayer and private investment on the line, the officials said they needed to figure this one out.

Download the meeting notes here. To see who attended the sitdown, download the meeting’s sign-in sheet here. UPDATE: GDOT has responded with its notes from the meeting. They’re much more detailed than MARTA’s. In them, GDOT says it wants to explore what other parts of the city would be suitable for a train terminal into which commuter rail or inter-city rail could operate. That transcript is pasted after the summary.

If you’re adverse to downloading the files, I’ve written a rather lengthy rundown of the meeting after the jump.

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Architecture magazine Metropolis this month profiles the effort by Fulton County Commissioner Robb Pitts to raze — or is it renovate? — the historic Atlanta-Fulton County public library located downtown.

The library, completed in 1980, is the final work of famed Modernist architect Marcel Breuer and considered a masterpiece. The architecture community, enraged by the idea, wants to preserve the building.

From the magazine:

Having secured $85 million last November through a bond referendum, Pitts hopes to incorporate retail, dining, and performance space into a high-visibility property. An early choice was a site facing Centennial Olympic Park, a tourist destination bordered by such attractions as CNN Center, the Georgia Aquarium, and the World of Coca-Cola. But opening a new main branch would mean abandoning the existing one—a design that many argue is already a world-class piece of architecture.

It’s an excellent article and worth your time. Read it in full at Metropolis’ site.

To read more about or to join the preservation effort, visit local artist Max Eternity’s website.

(Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

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The hardest part about making progress in metro Atlanta is fixing the mistakes of its past — namely, the sprawl created in part by an auto-dependent lifestyle and cheap land stretching out in all directions.

Thankfully, the Atlanta Regional Commission has some idea of how to turn that sprawl into walkable and livable areas — places you actually want to be.

Today, the commission announced several new sites for its Livable Centers Initiative, an award-winning program that funds planning studies for cities and counties to help retrofit sprawl-afflicted areas. The two closest to home? The Donald Lee Hollowell-Veterans Memorial Parkway Corridor in Atlanta and Cobb County and the North Druid Hills Road Corridor in DeKalb County.

More details from the commission about those sites after the jump.

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