David Pendered

It’s a small sale in terms of the overall size of Grady Health System, but this one is significant.

The authority that oversees Grady has sold an unused building and parking lot in Roswell. Proceeds from the sale will pay for community-based health care services aimed at reducing the amount of costly care people otherwise may seek at Grady’s emergency room.

This real estate sale is the latest example of the extent of change that has swept over Grady since the reorganization of the region’s largest public hospital.
Continue reading →

Atlanta’s development authority is slated to adopt a plan to create jobs and spur economic development at about the same time Atlantans begin considering whom to elect next year as mayor and to the Atlanta City Council.

Invest Atlanta has agreed to pay consultants $265,000 to devise and deliver a plan by December. Invest Atlanta is expected to consider adopting the plan at the end of the year, or in early 2013.

The consultants’ bill will be paid by Atlanta Housing Authority, Georgia Power, Central Atlanta Progress, and Invest Atlanta. Mayor Kasim Reed serves as chairman of the board that oversees Invest Atlanta.
Continue reading →

A spay and neuter program for animals whose future offspring may otherwise be destined for DeKalb County’s troubled animal shelter will be the beneficiary of a bowling fundraiser scheduled for Sunday afternoon in Stone Mountain.

Proceeds of the event will go toward a sterilization program in a county where more than 5,000 animals a year are euthanized, according to a report issued in February by a county task force.

DeKalb’s a kill rate was about 60 percent of the 8,500 animals handled annually at the county’s shelter, according to the report. DeKalb’s rate is higher than reported in Cobb, Fulton and Gwinnett counties, although those counties handle fewer animals.

Continue reading →

So many big transportation proposals for metro Atlanta are in the cauldron that even some top policy makers have trouble keeping pace.

As GRTA board member John Sibley III said of one region that has two major projects planned and a study underway: “I have a problem seeing what is likely here.”

Sibley got his questions answered about the I-75 and I-575 corridor, in Cobb and Cherokee counties. However, the answers prompted his colleague, Dick Anderson, to wonder aloud about the campaign message for the July 31 sales tax for transportation.
Continue reading →

Whether by choice or chance, state and regional transportation officials have announced a slew of new projects in the four months leading up to the July 31 vote on the proposed 1 percent sales tax for transportation.

The projects range from the regionally significant to locally symbolic – the Northwest Corridor tollway through Cobb and Cherokee counties, and the replacement of the scenic safety fence along the 17th Street Bridge in Midtown.

Two of the larger projects don’t have enough money for construction – the Northwest Corridor and MARTA’s expansion plan in DeKalb County.

However, taken as a whole, the announced projects illustrate the potential power of the government and private sector to reduce the region’s overall traffic congestion and maintain the roadway system. As individual tasks, each project offers the promise of reminding drivers, i.e., voters, how their commute can be improved by having even one of their problem areas addressed – as is promised by advocates for the transportation sales tax.
Continue reading →

Sandy Springs has moved into the public comment phase of a redevelopment study of the Roswell Road corridor that has an interesting objective: Success.

Mayor Eva Galambos rattles off from memory two previous efforts that came to naught, the first of them in 1967. That was 38 years before the community incorporated, and occurred at a time when Sandy Springs wanted to become the retail district that instead went in 1971 to Perimeter Mall. A second study in 2002 fizzled out.

“In neither instance did we know the property owners, and in neither case did we have economic realities as part of the plan,” Galambos said Thursday. “I don’t want anymore plans that are pie-in-the-sky and not realistic.”
Continue reading →

MARTA’s board of directors hopes that no across-the-board fare hikes or service reductions will be required to balance its budget for its next fiscal year, the executive director of the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority told her board Wednesday.

If MARTA’s board can stick to that plan, the only fare hikes that will go into effect this year, on Oct. 7, would be in three areas already slated for increases: Half-fares, up a nickle; One-way mobility pass, up 20 cents; Mobility pass, up $6. Those hikes were approved in 2010 as part of a three-year phased package.

MARTA has scheduled four public hearings on its proposed budget: Two on May 15 (Sandy Springs and Decatur); and two on May 17 (Atlanta City Hall, College Park).
Continue reading →

The Atlanta BeltLine is in the final phase of choosing advisors to create plans to implement the BeltLine vision and to win support from state and federal officials.

The BeltLine is seeking two separate teams. One team is to devise a strategic plan that will guide the project’s development over the coming two decades. The other team will devise and execute a government affairs plan that is to include legislative and policy goals at the state and federal levels.

Teams are to be chosen and at work by early July, though consultants who want to be considered still have time to apply. The hiring of consultants to create a formal plan for funding and development is a milestone in the tenure of Brian Leary, president and CEO of Atlanta BeltLine, Inc.
Continue reading →

Three separate proposals for major apartment developments in Atlanta indicate that landowners are setting the stage for a hoped-for recovery in the housing market.

There is no indication that construction is set to begin anytime soon, or whether the units are aimed at the rental or owner market. But the very idea of expending the effort and expense of asking the city government to approve additional dense housing developments is a testament to the belief that major investors will return to back big deals in Atlanta.

The Atlanta City Council today is slated to start the formal consideration of requests that would allow for the following three developments:
Continue reading →

Atlanta is sitting on at least $68 million in cash, plus more than $200 million in borrowing capacity, in a program designed to foster development in blighted neighborhoods.

The cash and available debt evidently has accrued as a result of the bust in real estate development. With so few projects brought forward by the private market, the city’s program to help them – a program fueled by property taxes – has laid fallow. Few parks, sidewalks, roads or sewers have been created or even upgraded with the special fund during the downturn, even as its coffers swelled.

Mayor Kasim Reed’s administration intends to revise the program as part of its first effort to devise a citywide economic development plan. The city’s previous comprehensive economic development plan expired at the end of 2009 when its chief sponsor, former Mayor Shirley Franklin, left office.
Continue reading →