Category: David Pendered

By David Pendered

Proposals to reduce funding for the Atlanta BeltLine, the Ga. 400/I-285 area, and transit lines to Emory University and Cumberland Mall are up for discussion at Thursday’s meeting of the Atlanta Region Transportation Roundtable.

These reductions are among more than $730 million in amendments proposed to the $6.14 billion draft project list the roundtable adopted last month. Almost $12 out of every $100 dollars in the draft list would be redirected, if the amendments are adopted into the referendum for the 1 percent transportation sales tax.

The proposed commuter rail line from Atlanta toward Macon also is back in play. Clayton County proposes to keep it alive with $20 million that would be trimmed from plans to develop Tara Boulevard into a major roadway.

By David Pendered

Emory University and its environs would benefit from the single largest transit investment that’s planned in the proposed 1 percent sales tax for transportation.

The route called the “Clifton Road Corridor” is earmarked to receive $700 million in sales tax funding. The new line would stretch 4.3 miles from MARTA’s Lindbergh Station to a proposed station at the junction of two CSX rail lines, near the corner of North Decatur and Clairmont roads.

The route would serve Emory, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and a $250 million mixed use development started last summer by Cousins Properties and Gables Residential.

By David Pendered

Metro Atlanta does not have a clear picture of what sort of entity may be created to govern more than $3 billion in proposed transit investments that will be on the ballot in next year’s vote on a 1 percent transportation sales tax.

Cobb County Chairman Tim Lee cited the lack of clarity in governance as a reason Cobb wants to shift some funding from a proposed rail line, which would link MARTA’s Arts Center Station in Midtown with the Cumberland Mall area, to improving Windy Hill Road and establishing bus service from north Cobb to Midtown.

If any clarity is to come, it isn’t likely to arrive before the waning days of the 2012 state legislative session. State lawmakers could well take the entire session, possibly into April, to haggle over and adopt whatever recommendation comes from Gov. Nathan Deal’s Transit Governance Task Force.

By David Pendered

More than 40 homes and businesses across metro Atlanta will open their doors Saturday to display their solar energy devices.

The self-guided tour will provide a rare, up-close glimpse of the technology that is expected to contribute to the nation’s response to providing energy through renewable resources.

The Georgia Solar Energy Association sponsored a preview tour Friday, giving about 25 persons a sneak peak at the technology that ranges from rooftop devices at a downtown residential condo building to the solar powered vehicle chargers at Atlantic Station.

This story has been updated

By David Pendered

The role of local politics in regional transportation planning emerged Wednesday at the Atlanta Regional Roundtable, which is devising a project list that would be paid for with a proposed 1 percent sales tax.

Three major amendments were formally introduced, and each involves transit. A fourth amendment involving Atlanta’s BeltLine would complete an East-West connection through the city, along North Avenue, linking two proposed segments of the BeltLine with a streetcar.

Here are the highlights of proposals involving Atlanta, Clayton, Cobb and DeKalb counties. The roundtable is to consider them at its meeting Oct. 6:

By David Pendered

The final round of planning for Atlanta’s downtown Gulch is to begin in earnest before the end of the year.

The state is moving forward with its effort to redevelop the Gulch, even though a presumed anchor tenant – commuter rail between Atlanta and Macon – is not now earmarked in the draft list of projects for the proposed 1 cent transportation sales tax voters will consider next year. The Atlanta Regional Roundtable is to approve a final list by Oct. 15.

The state’s idea for the Gulch is to have the private sector lead the redevelopment of 119 acres that have defied renewal efforts for decades. A contract with a development team is to be signed as early as the end of this week, said David Spear, a spokesman of the state Department of Transportation.

By David Pendered

Metro Atlanta, and the remainder of Georgia, appears to be on schedule with the first phase of the state’s historic transportation sales tax referendum.

Lots of final details have to be worked out, not the least of which is whether the date of the vote should be changed from next year’s primary to the general election. The state Legislature is likely to consider that shift at its session that begins in January.

But the tough first step of the transportation effort looks like it will end without any train wrecks by Oct. 15. Local political leaders have been able to come together well enough to create lists of projects. Networks of campaign consultants and fundraisers to lobby voters to approve the sales tax have been created.

By David Pendered

The meeting Tuesday evening in Marietta had been so benign, with no incendiary comments about the proposed sales tax for transportation, that Brett Bittner said he felt compelled to speak at the end.

“There had been so many ‘pro’ comments that I had to make sure I got to say something,” said Bittner, who’s vice president of the Cobb Taxpayers Association and executive director of the Libertarian Party of Georgia. “My concern is the cost of the projects … and what we are committing ourselves to maintaining.”

Never once over the course of the two-hour event was there a public mention of transit causing an increase in crime, as was the case at a similar event in Smyrna earlier this month.

By David Pendered

Atlanta’s historic Oakland Cemetery embarks this week on a tricky next step in its comprehensive effort to preserve decaying mausoleums.

Expert preservationists will examine two mausoleums that are in dire straits. One structure is held together with metal bands, and the other is shedding sheets and chunks of its stone skin.

“The materials in these are limestone and sandstone, and they have been melting over time,” said David Moore, Oakland’s executive director.

By David Pendered

The first step was to create a $6.14 billion project list.

The next challenge facing the Atlanta Regional Roundtable is figuring out how to manage a road and transit construction program that would span 10 years and 10 counties. Presuming, of course, that voters approve next year a proposed 1 percent transportation sales tax.

“What has to be sorted out is how we have administration across the board,” Gwinnett County Chairman Charlotte Nash said Friday at a roundtable meeting. “We have to have an adequate oversight system in place.”

The cost of that oversight could be close to $250 million, or about the amount earmarked for the proposed MARTA route from Atlanta east along I-20. The management question has to be answered, at least in part, by Oct. 15 in order to devise the construction schedule that must be submitted to the state Legislature.

By David Pendered

As the Mall at Stonecrest prepares to celebrate its 10th anniversary in Lithonia in October, a new business association is taking shape to bolster the area surrounding the mall.

The group intends to champion a power center that’s a bit unusual: It doesn’t have a Community Improvement District to oversee its broader concerns, as do at least 12 other major commercial centers in metro Atlanta, according to a list maintained by the Atlanta Regional Commission.

In the absence of a CID, Stonecrest area business leaders plan to model a new group along the lines of the Tucker Business Association. That north DeKalb County group represents about 130 businesses and has existed 56 years, said Honey Van de Kreke, TBA’s vice president.

By David Pendered

The gates at Fort McPherson are to swing shut for the last time near midnight Wednesday, and the future use of the 488 acre site seems absolutely unclear.

Blame the economy.

The private sector is hording cash. Governments at all levels slashing programs and staff to balance their budgets.

In this economic environment, it’s tough to imagine the formation of a proposed public-private venture named the Georgia Science & Technology Park. The reuse plan for the fort calls for the state to lead the way in fostering a 127-acre campus of enterprises engaged in research and development.

By David Pendered

A federal department has approved a redevelopment plan for Fort McPherson, providing an opportunity for Gov. Nathan Deal and Mayor Kasim Reed to predict success for the fort’s conversion to civilian use.

“While the purposes of this unique property will change from military to civilian, one thing won’t: Its value as a tremendous asset for economic development in the state,” Deal said in a statement released Thursday. “We believe the size of the site and its proximity to transportation – a major airport, interstates and MARTA – lends itself to a wide variety of uses and makes it very attractive to potential investors.”

Atlanta’s mayor said: “Our plans call for the Fort McPherson site to become a national model for sustainable urbanism. All developers interested in participating in this opportunity must commit to design principles that bring long-term environmental, economic and social sustainability to the development and surrounding communities.”

By David Pendered

Atlanta’s eight-month effort to sign concessions contracts at the airport evidently collapsed over paperwork problems in just a few significant portions of the process.

The troubled areas appear to involve three packages of concessions space: 25 food and beverage spaces in Concourse A, dominated by Delta Air Lines; 28 retail spaces in the future international concourse; and 12 food and beverage spaces reserved for small-scale, Mom and Pop establishments such as Manuel’s Tavern.

The city took from five to six weeks to determine that it would exercise its most extreme response possible to proposals that Atlanta COO Peter Aman said were non-responsive. The city could have rejected just portions of some or all proposals, according to the city’s Request for Proposals.

By David Pendered

Atlanta’s announcement that it has decided to cancel the procurement process for all food and beverage concessions at the airport, and start over, left a host of questions and dearth of answers over the Labor Day weekend.

Atlanta’s COO, Peter Aman, said the eight corporations competing for contracts were notified of the cancellation Friday, Sept. 2, at 3 p.m.

The city’s decision upended the corporations’ proposals for 125 food and beverage locations, and 23 for retail, that are to extend up to 13 years. Concessions revenues are said to exceed $336 million a year.

A few questions include:

This story has been updated.

By David Pendered

Atlanta has cancelled the procurement process for all of the 152 food and beverage concessions pending at the airport and will issue new requests for proposals next week, the city’s COO said Friday.

The city took the drastic action because 36 percent of the 95 proposals vendors had presented to the city were fatally flawed, said COO Peter Aman.

The flaw was a failure to submit a properly completed form – one required by state law – confirming that all workers have legal permission to work in the United States, Aman said.

The delay in the contracting process will not mar the opening of the new international concourse, Aman said. All means necessary will be undertaken to ensure that the concourse will open in Spring 2012 with all the planned places for passengers to eat and drink.

By David Pendered

The proposal to build roads and transit in metro Atlanta with a 1 percent sales tax got a boost Wednesday from four unlikely parties.

The four – President Obama, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, AFL-CIO, and chairman of the House Transportation Committee – indicated that each wants Congress and the White House to reach a deal over the continuation of the federal highway bill. It expires Sept. 30.

Metro Atlanta desperately needs some of that federal road and transit money. It’s programmed into some projects that will be promised if voters in 2012 approve a proposed 1 percent sales tax for transportation. The sales tax referendum now is scheduled for the July ballot.

By David Pendered

It was only a matter of time until the competition for food and beverage concessions at Atlanta’s airport heated up with an Internet marketing campaign aimed directly at airline passengers.

A prime vendor has launched a multi-media website that – for the first time in Atlanta – seems intended to bring passengers into the battle. The website’s goal appears to be for informed consumers to urge city officials to bring the chefs and restaurant concepts in OTG’s bid to the airport, said Ken Bernhardt, a marketing professor in the Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University.

By David Pendered

The Atlanta Beltline is adding a half-acre of land to the city’s first BeltLine park, just as Atlanta prepares for the grand opening in September of two ball fields at the future green space.

The additional land at the Boulevard Crossing Park, located south of Grant Park, will improve access to a site that now covers about 21.2 acres purchased by the city in 2007.

The current acquisition is occurring as the city has secured an earmark for $600 million for the Beltline in the event that voters next year approve a 1 percent sales tax to raise $6.14 billion for transportation improvements.

By David Pendered

Life is returning to normal at the Uncle Remus Museum in Eatonton, where the theft of a statue of Brer Rabbit stunned the community and where the restored statue has been replaced.

“We have some people waiting to come in,” museum hostess Millie Lane said Saturday morning. “Let me go help them and then I can talk.”

The Brer Rabbit statue is back on its pedestal in front of the museum in the town where Joel Chandler Harris was born and reared before moving to Atlanta to become a writer after the American Civil War. Harris lived in the Wren’s Nest home, in West End.