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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On Oct. 14, Westview and West End residents received good news about the long-overlooked L&N railroad tracks in Southwest Atlanta: the Georgia Department of Transportation finally voted to allow the PATH Foundation to move ahead with a proposed Beltline jogging and biking trail.

For more than a year, Patrick Berry and other neighborhood residents waited for glimmers of progress on the abandoned tracks.

Unfortunately, all they saw were dumped mattresses, shopping carts, and blankets of kudzu piling up.

“When people came to the neighborhood, they’d see garbage and overgrowth,” Berry, vice president of the Westview Community Organization, says. “It gives the impression that nobody cares.”

Beltline officials say they’ve inked a deal with Trees Atlanta to begin a five-year kudzu removal process. Ed McBrayer of the PATH Foundation, which will oversee construction of the the trail, says he plans to meet with GDOT officials this week to discuss the project.

Once completed, the 1.4-mile trail will connect with the West End trail along White Street.

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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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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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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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South Peachtree Creek Trail in DeKalb County

Another shot has been fired in the ongoing dispute between a DeKalb County civic association and the nonprofit PATH Foundation over a one-mile multi-use trail north of Decatur.

On May 19, the Three Forks Heritage Alliance and three of its members filed an $8 million lawsuit in DeKalb County Superior Court against the trail builder, claiming it should return money it’s received to construct several projects in the county, including one that connects Medlock and Mason Mill Parks.

A press release from the alliance announcing the lawsuit claims that “monies paid to PATH on this and at least seven other projects should be returned, in whole, to the DeKalb County coffers, which currently has a $64 million deficit.”

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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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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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