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Ga. Tech students may shape another metro Atlanta community: Three Falcons stadium neighborhoods

by David Pendered

Another game-changing proposal to renew a portion of metro Atlanta is coming out of Georgia Tech and it is to be presented to the public Wednesday.

A dozen students studying for their masters degree in Tech’s School of City & Regional Planning have proposed a 12-page set of recommendations intended to improve neighborhoods within a mile radius of the future Falcons stadium. Officials with Invest Atlanta are reviewing the report and may use some of it to write the first draft of a community benefits deal.

Students at Tech already have produced ideas that have remade the face of Atlanta. Atlantic Station and the Atlanta BeltLine are two that may be the most dramatic, and therefore the most widely known.

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Proposal that could expand hog farming, waste lagoons in Georgia draws fire from environmentalists

by David Pendered

A proposal that could increase the number of hogs farmed in Georgia is drawing criticism from environmentalists concerned about hog excrement.

Hogs produce a lot of waste – about four times that of a human. The current practice for handling hog waste on industrial-scale farms is to store it in earthen basins, called lagoons, until it can be sprayed on surrounding lands.

The concerns raised by the Georgia Water Coalition involve the handling of this amount of waste in this manner. They point to the experience in North Carolina, where heavy rains from a hurricane in 1999 caused lagoons to flood and fail, spreading millions of gallons of hog waste that found its way into rivers and private water wells.

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ARC chairman’s race attracts citizen member, mayor, two county chairmen

by David Pendered

The top elected position at the Atlanta Regional Commission is now open and four candidates are vying for the job – three elected officials and one citizen member.

ARC Chairman Tad Leithead announced Wednesday that he will not seek reelection as chairman. Leithead said he does hope the ARC board will reelect him as a citizen member, a role in which he said he’s served for 14 years. The election is Dec. 4.

The candidates include a citizen member, a mayor, and two county commission chairs: Kerry Armstrong, a citizen member from Gwinnett County who’s a senior vice president with the development firm Pope & Land Enterprise; Norcross Mayor Bucky Johnson; Rockdale County Chairman Richard Oden; and Douglas County Chairman Tom Worthan.

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Stadium financiers: Donate some of your profits from bond deals to poor communities, councilman says

by David Pendered

Atlanta City Councilman Ivory Lee Young Jr. said Wednesday the financiers who profit from the sale of bonds for the new Falcons stadium should donate some of their profits to the nearby communities.

The proposal indicates the escalation of expectations that the future stadium should transform one of the poorest sections of Atlanta. A $30 million urban renewal fund is proving to be far from adequate to address reported community needs.

Young said it’s only fair that bond counsel and underwriters return to the communities some of the significant profits they stand to reap when they handle more than $1 billion in construction funding for the stadium. Young faces two challengers in the Nov. 5 city election.

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Little things could improve life for neighbors of Falcons stadium

by David Pendered

No public urination. No open containers of alcoholic beverage. No loud noises. No open grilling and no tailgating.

These requests are on the wish list for the Castleberry Hill neighborhood, a list its residents hope will be included in a pending community benefits deal for the future Falcons stadium. Quality-of-life matters are joined by bigger items, such as a community center with a museum and repairs to bridges and sidewalks.

The list is to be presented Wednesday at Atlanta City Hall, where city officials and civic leaders are to continue discussing how to allocate $30 million through a community benefits deal. Two other stadium neighborhoods can’t agree on a project list and don’t have one to present for Vine City and English Avenue.

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Stadium benefits deal nearing conclusion, but likely to continue after meeting Wednesday at City Hall

by David Pendered

Discussions over a community benefits deal for neighborhoods near the new Falcons stadium are heading toward a conclusion but aren’t expected to be finalized at a meeting Wednesday evening.

One of three neighborhoods has voted on its wish list from the benefits deal, which includes a total of $30 million in public and private money. Castleberry Hill residents are ready to advance their final proposal, but plans for English Avenue and Vine City still are up in the air because of disagreements among civic leaders in those two communities – where millions of dollars were distributed to various groups as the Georgia Dome was established.

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed has indicated he’d like a final deal to be signed Wednesday night. But the amount of work still to be done indicates additional negotiations will be necessary, which seems to push a final deal after the Nov. 5 city elections.

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Atlanta to pay security firm same amount for five months work as for two years of guarding city venues

by David Pendered

The Atlanta City Council is slated to approve Monday a $3.3 million, five-month contract for a security firm to provide guards at city venues, an amount that’s close what it paid the same company for two years of service, city records show.

The pending proposal is to pay $3.295 million for a five-month contract. In May 2011, the council approved a contract for $3.262 million for two years of security guard services provided by Atlanta-based Norred & Associates, Inc.

In addition to the new contract, the council also is slated to approve legislation to pay Norred $109,357 for the work it had done between the expiration of its contract, this past May, and the Aug. 28 date noted as the start of the five-month period outlined in the new contract. The legislation authorizes guards to be armed while patrolling city property.

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Willis to Franklin, Woolard, Dickens: Mind your ethics before attacking mine; Franklin fires back

by David Pendered

Atlanta City Councilmember H. Lamar Willis said Friday that former Mayor Shirley Franklin, former council President Cathy Woolard and candidate Andre Dickens are hypocrites for saying that Willis is ethically unfit for public office.

Willis made his remarks on the steps of Atlanta City Hall. Willis, who is seeking his fourth term, said he is a human being who has sought to atone for missteps in his personal life, wants the campaign to focus on governance issues, and is pushing back against the two former elected officials.

Willis raised these ethical issues about his accusers: Franklin provided haven in her home to her daughter and her then-son-in-law, who’s now serving a life sentence for his role in smuggling more than a ton of cocaine in a transcontinental operation; Woolard stopped working for Atlanta half way through her term in order to focus on her (unsuccessful) campaign for Congress; Dickens was a resident of Rex, not Atlanta, when he filed for bankruptcy in 2011 and evidently moved there in order to avoid tapping his wife’s assets to pay his creditors.

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Fulton County, its cities face fiscal cliff of their own creation; Thursday deadline set by state attorney general

by David Pendered

Fulton County and all the cities in it could fall off their own fiscal cliff on Thursday. Atlanta could lose tax revenues that pay for 19 percent of its current year budget.

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed told the Atlanta City Council in a special session Wednesday evening that the future is uncertain for a major source of sales tax revenues shared by Fulton County and all its cities. Unless Atlanta signs an existing distribution agreement for the 1 percent local option sales tax, Fulton may not be able to continue to levy the tax, Reed said.

The urgency is arising because Atlanta’s lawyers evidently were unprepared for a ruling last week from the Georgia Supreme Court. In a case out of Turner County, in south Georgia, justices tossed out an arbitration process concerning LOST distribution formulas that Atlanta intended to use to seek a bigger bite of LOST revenues.

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Willis unfit for office, say Franklin, Woolard; Attack ads possible against Franklin for role in council campaign

by David Pendered

Former Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin and former Atlanta City Council President Cathy Woolard said Tuesday that Councilmember H. Lamar Willis is unfit for public office because of his ethical misconduct and should be replaced by challenger Andre Dickens.

Franklin and Woolard, who passed strict ethics legislation in 2002, made their comments at an endorsement event for Dickens, a first-time candidate who seeks to unseat Willis from a citywide post in the Nov. 5 election.

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed remains a major backer of Willis, who on Oct. 7 was disbarred from the practice of law by the Georgia Supreme Court for ethical breaches. Recent telephone polls reportedly have tested Franklin’s popularity, an indication that the sitting mayor who backed candidate Reed in the heated three-way 2009 mayoral campaign may come under attack for her involvement in this 2013 citywide council race.

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As Wall Street buys houses as investments, local leaders plan response to protect affordability

by David Pendered

Now that it’s no secret that Wall Street investors are buying distressed houses in metro Atlanta for the emerging homes-for-lease industry, the question is what that means for the surrounding neighborhoods and the future of homeownership.

John O’Callaghan, who heads ANDP, the region’s major non-profit focused on the foreclosure response, suggests that local leaders try to leverage the private sector’s investments to benefit the rest of the community.

There’s a lot to leverage. Just one firm, the Blackstone Group, has purchased more than 1,400 homes in metro Atlanta as part of more than $4 billion the firm has invested in 24,000 houses nationwide since 2012, according to a story in April in businessweek.com.

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Lead partner in Gulch project to sell 70 percent of its Brooklyn deal to state-owned Chinese developer

by David Pendered

A subsidiary of the lead developer of the Gulch in downtown Atlanta has a tentative deal to sell 70 percent of its stake in a Brooklyn project to a Chinese firm in order to raise cash to continue the work on the $5 billion Atlantic Yards.

If the deal goes through, it will be the largest commercial real estate deal in the U.S. ever to involve direct backing from a state-owned Chinese development company, according to a story posted Friday on wsj.com.

Forest City Ratner Cos., a subsidiary of Gulch-developer Forest City Enterprises, has been unable to arrange financing for housing promised for low- and middle-income families at its Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, according to wsj.com. Although Forest City opened Barclays Center in 2012, home of the Brooklyn Nets, the developer has been criticized for failing to meet obligations related to its winning approval for the center, the report said.

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Proud day for future pipefitter: She was graduated and hugged her son

by David Pendered

Jacquelyn Treadville-Samuels is on her way to becoming a pipefitter. After commencement Thursday, the single mom hugged her 8-year-old son and said she’s considering a career in underwater welding.

“The pay’s good, and it would allow me the time to do other things, to give back,” Treadville-Samuels said in an auditorium bustling with beaming graduates and their families.

In all, eight women were graduated from the first all-female pre-apprenticeship program offered by Georgia Trade-Up. All now have the documented job-readiness skills needed to gain admission to construction trades apprenticeship programs or the construction industry. They are to enter the job market as $2 billion in construction is supposed to begin in downtown Atlanta.

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MARTA to unveil new buses in festive event reminiscent of its glory days

by David Pendered

As part of its new effort to promote the positive, MARTA on Thursday will display one of its new CNG buses at the Five Points Station.

MARTA, not wanting to spoil the surprise, is not releasing photos of the new buses until after the event, which is slated from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The buses feature an updated logo and eye-catching elements, according to a MARTA statement.

The festivity of displaying the bus harkens to an era when the region celebrated the opening of transit stations and the arrival of new vehicles. Top MARTA officials are slated to convene an official welcoming ceremony from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m.

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Atlanta’s business, civic leaders content with performance of mayor, most city council members

by David Pendered

Atlanta’s business and civic leaders are generally satisfied with the performance of the mayor and most councilmembers, according to a score sheet of incumbents and challengers released in advance of the Nov. 5 municipal election.

Mayor Kasim Reed received a score of 99 out of 100, for a rating of “excellent.” Council President Ceasar Mitchell received a score of 92, “excellent.”

In the campaigns for three citywide council posts, Councilmember Aaron Watson received a score of 95 and challenger Mary Norwood, a former councilmember and mayoral candidate, received a score of 86; Councilmember H. Lamar Willis received a score 92 and challenger Andre Dickens received a score of 83; Councilperson Michael Julian Bond, who is unopposed, received a score of 91.

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Piece by Piece conference focuses on stabilizing neighborhoods in era of great change in housing market

by David Pendered

The great recession has fundamentally altered some neighborhoods in metro Atlanta, and their future is unclear as homes have moved and continue to move through the foreclosure process.

More than 40 percent of the 7,789 homes now in the sales pipeline, or heading to the pipeline, are in the pre-foreclosure, auction, or bank-owned stages of the foreclosure process, according to a recent report of sales tracked by trulia.com, a real estate marketplace. Wall Street investors are purchasing a significant number of homes in metro Atlanta, according to published reports.

At a conference Thursday, a variety of local and national housing leaders will discuss the issue of how to ensure the long-term health and vitality of metro Atlanta neighbors in this time of great change. The program is sponsored by Piece by Piece, a regional foreclosure effort; Atlanta Regional Commission; and Enterprise Community Partners.

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Leinberger’s latest on metro Atlanta: Era of sprawl ending, WalkUPs are next cycle of development

by David Pendered

Chris Leinberger’s new report on metro Atlanta recharges his thesis that walkable communities will characterize the region’s next wave of development.

“Metro Atlanta, the ‘poster child of sprawl,’ is now experiencing the end of spawl,” Leinberger contends in the report released Thursday, “The WalkUP Wake-Up Call: Atlanta.”

Atlanta is the second city Leinberger examined in what may well become a series of “WalkUP Wake-Up” studies. Washington, D.C. was the subject of a 2012 report, and other cities being contemplated for future analysis include Boston and Detroit.

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Atlanta street vending: No action on new program, but help for city’s legal defense against mounting lawsuits

by David Pendered

Atlanta continues to struggle to create a street vending program and on Tuesday again deferred action.

Meanwhile, lawsuits continue to mount over the vending issue, a city attorney on Tuesday told the Public Safety Committee of the Atlanta City Council. The committee did approve a measure intended to help the city defend itself from these lawsuits.

Five months have passed since the committee passed a motion calling on Mayor Kasim Reed’s administration to present by May 14 a solid recommendation for a vending ordinance. Reed’s deputy COO, Hans Utz, wants to address the committee before it passes an ordinance introduced by committee Chairperson Michael Julian Bond, Bond said Tuesday.

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Award-winning architecture from around world vastly different from Atlanta’s iconic structures

by David Pendered

Georgia Tech has opened an exhibit that offers an alternative perspective to the spectacular architecture that’s so popular among metro Atlanta’s civic leaders.

The structures shown in the exhibit whisper, “less is more.” In Atlanta, it sometimes seems that “’more’ is not enough,” as the word “iconic” is attached to future projects ranging from retrofitted bridges over the Downtown Connector to the Falcons stadium.

The concepts on display in the Aga Khan Award for Architecture Exhibit include sustainable design and vernacular architecture, which are honored in the Muslim culture. One previous winner is Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel laureate who hopes to start a bank in Atlanta to provide micro-loans to help poor people open businesses.

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Higher local match for state road funding appears in counties that rejected transportation sales tax

by David Pendered

The financial consequences of last year’s transportation sales tax referendum are starting to appear in the coffers of local governments throughout Georgia.

Counties that passed the sales tax have to match 10 percent to receive money from the state to maintain roads. Counties that rejected the tax – including metro Atlanta and most of Georgia – have to match 30 percent of the grant to receive any allocations from this pot of money.

The first round of checks has been released in the first time this formula has been used. In addition, this is the first use of a new state program the state Legislature created in 2009 in an attempt to streamline the state’s previous method of providing money to local governments to repair and maintain roads.

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