NEW YORK CITY — On the last afternoon of the three-day LINK trip to New York City, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens was energized by all the possibilities he saw and by what it could mean for his hometown.
It was Dickens’ third LINK trip as mayor. His first was to Austin in 2022 and then to Montreal in 2023. The mayor clearly was impressed by the scale and scope of New York City, the most populous metropolitan area in the country.
“This one has been the one that has the biggest scale, for sure,” Dickens said in a 22-minute interview in a conference room of the New York Stock Exchange. “There’s the spirit of anything is possible, infinite possibilities, limitless potential when it comes to what you can do on a half-acre or an acre [of land], what you can do with old buildings and old structures or old parts of the city, landscape, adaptive reuse, commercial to residential conversions for housing, renovating old train stations and making them go vertical or have more mixed-use.”
Would that be an option for the Five Points MARTA Station — developing on the air rights of the station rather than the current proposal, now on pause?
“Yeah, that kind of thing for sure, talking about how transit-oriented development is mandatory in order for you to get the ridership that you need and to have the economic outcomes that you need, and then how everything works together.,” Dickens said. “If you invest in your economic development apparatus, you can attract businesses but also grow businesses that bring in employees that help the economy, and that then helps to pay for all these public goods, like transit, like housing. Big, a lot of big things.”
Dickens, however, balked at the notion that Atlanta may be guilty of thinking too small.
“The idea of the Beltline was a big thought,” he said. “It’s big. It’s bigger than the High Line here.”
The LINK program included a “Fireside Chat” with Clyde Higgs, president and CEO of Atlanta Beltline Inc. and Alan van Capelle, executive director of High Line Park Trust.
Dickens said the High Line has a good track record for art and green space. But the Beltline is going to be a 22-mile circular multipurpose path by 2030 while the High Line is only a 1.45-mile landscaped pedestrian path converted from an abandoned elevated rail line.
“There are some notes the High Line is learning from us about affordability,” Dickens said. “The High Line didn’t get affordability right, and that hasn’t been corrected. When the Beltline was not meeting its goals for affordability, I stepped in and did inclusionary zoning as a council member, and now we’re at a point where, instead of the Beltline going to hit 5,600 units of affordable housing by 2030, we’ve increased our goal to 7,200 units. So, the Beltline is moving in the right direction.”
The mayor then added: “So, we do think big. But to go about why New York is special and how they think big. There’s all, the financing that can happen. It’s an ecosystem. The banks are right here. The state contributes to its rail system. The Long Island Railroad makes money for them to get them around the state. So, commuter rail brings in money and helps bring in people and passengers.”
The mayor was visibly impressed by all the transit options he saw in New York — from Amtrak, commuter rail, the subway and bus network. Because of that transportation infrastructure, New York has been able to provide a rich array of alternatives to the automobile.
“I would like for us to reduce our dependence on the automobile,” Dickens said. “I really want us to in various ways — yes, with bike lanes; yes, with more pedestrians; yes, with more mixed-use development so that you can live, work and play. But yes, to a more robust rail system and bus system getting more people and riders. Our ridership has gone down at MARTA.”
Dickens said there will need to be a “mindset shift” when it comes to city design and creating more travel options, such as protected bicycle lanes.
“You have an environment where the business community, the neighborhoods, as well as commuters, are all having a wish list that’s competing with each other. Even the residents who say they want bike lanes still have cars and they don’t ride MARTA because the ridership is down. So, how do you lead through that? How do you be the mayor of and be the regional leader through that? You do some things incrementally, and you do some things… catalytically.
“We’ve chosen housing. Housing of any type, everywhere at all times, is our catalytic investment from this administration. We’re going to build a bunch of housing. We’re going to make sure we can have people in it that that that of all incomes in this city, so we can densify the city, get more people here, so then we can get more riders on the MARTA system. And hopefully that spurs the economic engine to then be able to have enough money to put in more bike lanes, put in more affordable housing, and keep on going in that direction.”
Dickens said the LINK delegation passed by a neighborhood, and it’s not the only one in New York, where the average price of a condo was $7 million. That comes with a pricey tax bill for NYC residents, which makes living in the city even less affordable.
While some mayors would love all that tax revenue, Dickens said it is not worth the high cost.
“You’ve got to make up for all these displaced people,” he said. “But New York has millions of visitors, millions of commuters that eat sandwiches, that pay to their transit system, that pay for parking, that comes in this place every single day and buys goods and services, so their sales tax revenue, their liquor tax revenue, their utilities, I’m drooling over that.”
Even though the City of Atlanta represents about 10 percent of the region’s population, Dickens said the city triples in size every day because of regional commuters and out-of-town visitors. The Atlanta region is also experiencing strong growth much like the Greater New York City area.
Dickens said there’s major economic development not just in Manhattan but in Brooklyn and Queens, as well as the other boroughs. is getting, you know, new development. Of course, we know Manhattan is every day as new cranes go up.
“The economic activity is everywhere. The 8.5 million people are hustling and bustling,” Dickens said. “That energy does move an area forward.”
Dickens did admit to being envious of how New Yorkers take full advantage of their transit system.
“When you get on New York Transit, you see kids, like little kids, teenagers, college students, senior citizens. There are people going to work, some people going to play. It’s used for everything,” the mayor said. “I want us to have that for connectivity.”
But Dickens said transit is important not just for the City of Atlanta but for the whole region.
As the Atlanta region continues to grow, Dickens said he would love for there to be more robust transit outside the MARTA jurisdictions of DeKalb, Fulton and Clayton counties. Dickens said he’s been on record of wishing MARTA rail or high-capacity transit would go to Gwinnett and Cobb counties. He’s hoping voters in both counties will pass transit referendums this November even though they will not be part of MARTA.
“Anything is a start,” Dickens said.
The mayor also expressed a desire for the state to become a bigger investor in the region’s transit system.
“The solution is for us to continue to beat the drum to the state legislature and the leadership of the state — to say, hey, don’t forget about Atlanta and the needs of the city. We make a lot of money for the state,” Dickens said, adding the whole region accounts for a large share of the state’s economy. “We need support in terms of transportation, support for bills that allow our housing to have inclusionary zoning citywide.”
The New York LINK trip was the mayor’s first as chairman of the Atlanta Regional Commission. In fact, it’s the first time a City of Atlanta mayor has chaired ARC, which organizes the trip.
Dickens said he views himself as a regionally focused mayor who is “collegial, supportive and present for the whole region.”
During the Aug. 14-Aug. 17 LINK trip, several of 145 regional leaders pulled the mayor aside to talk of ways there could be stronger connections among the various players.
“I’m not trying to be the mega mayor, a mayor over all of them,” Dickens said. “But I am interested in our region being exceptional. I think we are all exceptional. But there are ways we can coordinate better and collaborate better for the good of those people that cross those boundaries every single day.”
When Dickens went on his first LINK trip as mayor to Austin, many delegates thanked him for attending, which was not the norm for his two previous predecessors. At the Friday breakfast meeting of public officials, one leader told him: “Wow. You’re not only present. You’re present, present.”
Note to readers:
Although I was not invited to be part of the 2024 LINK trip, I have been committed to covering it. I decided to go to New York City so I could see first-hand several of the topics that were going to be part of the trip. Next week, I will share my insights into what I saw in New York and how I believe they can apply to Atlanta. I also have asked a host of people who were on the trip to share their thoughts on what the Atlanta region can learn from the Big Apple.
Click here to read the second column in this two part series on the 2024 LINK trip.
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