Category: David Pendered

Atlanta intends to use a fledgling state-authorized financing program to help property owners pay for upgrades to energy and water systems in commercial buildings in downtown Atlanta.

A partner in Atlanta’s new energy effort is Ben Taube, formerly the executive director of Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance. Taube now serves as president of BLT Sustainable Energy Inc., which on June 28 helped organize the company that on Oct. 18 got the city’s green light for a deal – Ygrene Energy Fund, which is affiliated with a California-based company of the same name.

Program advocates have their work cut out. For starters, the Atlanta City Council has yet to create the special tax district in which the financing program will function. Also, little guidance is available from other programs because few, if any, other governments in Georgia have enacted the system since its creation in 2010.

Atlanta and DeKalb County are passing some significant milestones in their efforts to promote sustainable, green practices when it comes to energy and water.

Both Mayor Kasim Reed and DeKalb CEO Burrell Ellis have joined in ribbon-cutting events in recent days to open fueling stations for CNG vehicles, which are fueled by compressed natural gas.

The city’s development arm, Invest Atlanta, today approved amendments to its operating agreement with the Atlanta BeltLine that detail the duties of each of the two partners in the public effort to build the BeltLine.

Invest Atlanta has been working this year to clarify the line between duties it retains and those it delegates to the BeltLine’s board and its day-to-day management team.

The new rules are being enacted two months after Brian Leary, the BeltLine’s former president/CEO, was released as criticism of his oversight escalated. Leary has contended that he was operating within his authority.

Fulton County is hiring a company to crack down on homeowners who get tax breaks through homestead exemptions that they’re not legally entitled to receive.

Fulton commissioners intend to hire an auditor on Wednesday whose job is to comb a wide array of records in order to identify and bring to justice all homeowners who receive an undue exemption. The auditor’s final report is due by June 30, 2013.

A basic homestead exemption saves about $1,200 for a home located in Atlanta, and about $600 for a home in unincorporated Fulton County, according to the county’s Board of Assessors. The county provides homestead exemptions to 180,543 parcels, according to bid documents.

Atlanta may as well have been the site of a futurist convention last week. The question now is what local leaders will do with the information.

An expanse of talk included the future of MARTA’s union contract and the fate of other transit providers; questions of regional unity at a time of diminishing federal participation in urban affairs; and the increasing role that some city governments outside Georgia hope to play in helping to revive commercial real estate.

Just about the only topic missing was the old saw about alligators and swamps. One matter still to be resolved is how – and if – the region will frame its response to questions about its future role in the globalizing economy of the 21st century.

After considerable deliberation about the heritage the Porsche car company shares with Nazi Germany, the Atlanta City Council today is poised to rename Henry Ford II Avenue to Porsche Avenue.

Councilmembers leveled a line of questions at Porsche’s corporate lawyer during a public hearing last week that went to the heart of the company’s social conscience today. In the end, a majority on the council’s City Utilities Committee endorsed the proposed name change.

“I saw some pictures that were initially disturbing,” Councilmember C.T. Martin said, possibly referring to the myriad of photos available on the Internet that show the father of the company’s founder standing with Adolph Hitler and other Nazi leaders.

Even during a downturn in real estate development, Atlanta can find developments to celebrate.

The Atlanta Regional Commission honored six Developments of Excellence during its annual State of the Region breakfast. All were the result of partnerships, which was a theme explored by the keynote speaker, Bruce Katz, of the Brookings Institute.

“The new mantra in this country, and around the world, is to collaborate,” Katz told an audience estimated to number about 1,000.

MARTA could be the next local government to try to reform pension packages of staff and retired employees in order to remain a going concern.

Transit CEO Beverly Scott told a panel of lawmakers Thursday that MARTA’s salaries should be raised and benefits reduced to prevent long-term fiscal shortfalls: “The cash side needs to come up. However, on the benefit side – as well as medical, as well as some portion of legacy pension – there has to be change.”

Atlanta already has undergone a dramatic pension reform that Mayor Kasim Reed touted Thursday to the commercial real estate industry. The reform shows that Atlanta will do what’s necessary to keep property taxes in check, which is a reason to invest in developments in Atlanta, Reed said at the Global Diversity Summit meeting in Buckhead.

MARTA has delayed a deal with a branch of Atlanta’s development authority for a planned mixed-use development at a transit station near Little Five Points.

MARTA’s board voted Tuesday to hold off on the deal in order to allow its incoming GM/CEO, Keith Parker, time to provide his thoughts on the long-term agreement. Parker’s expected to begin work before the year’s end, following the exit of current CEO Beverly Scott.

The proposed development intends to accomplish many goals – produce extra income for MARTA from ground leases; provide more lower cost homes for senior citizens; and promote denser development around a transit station in hopes of improving air quality.

A renowned policy advisor who specializes on a topic central to Atlanta’s self-identity – urban competitiveness – will be in Atlanta Friday at to present a program that could be a game-changer for the region’s economy.

“Look, I have engaged Atlanta in the past, and Atlanta has enormous advantages: It is a city that has shown it can reinvent itself for the next thing,” said Bruce Katz, of the Brookings Institute. “But this moment is different from other inflection points. This one of those moments in time that really is different.”

The new report on water resource management from Chattahoochee Riverkeeper presses the point that the state could get a bigger bang for its buck with conservation than it will from its plan to build reservoirs.

As Riverkeeper promised in July, the report provides specific recommendations to reduce the region’s water footprint through a combination of approaches. The report presents three suggestions for the state to implement – none of them involving the construction of water reservoirs, which is a mainstay of the state’s approach to meeting the state’s reported needs for future water resources.

The report also contends that the region’s water needs have been vastly overstated by the Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District. For example, the report suggests the region won’t add 1.9 million jobs and 2.7 million residents by 2035, as forecast by planners in 2009.

While Florida Gov. Rick Scott is grabbing the latest headlines about water woes and oysters, some solutions to the problem of reckless consumption of water were celebrated Thursday at the TOTO USA toilet manufacturing plant in Morrow.

TOTO hosted an awards ceremony at which Chattahoochee Riverkeeper presented its 2012 Best in Class awards to three winners: Atlanta; Atlanta’s airport; and TOTO USA.

The awards recognized successful efforts to reduce water consumption. The conservation steps go to the heart of the oyster problem in Florida, where some Floridians contend the oysters are dwindling in size and number partly because of a shortage of fresh water flowing into Apalachicola Bay from the combined Chattahoochee and Flint rivers.

In a city that struggles to strike a balance in honoring its leaders, past and present, a new installation of public art in southwest Atlanta promises to hit the right notes.

The bronze and stainless steel sculpture is the creation of nationally renowned artist Ayokunle Odeleye, of Stone Mountain. The sculpture, “Chi Wara Sundial Lantern,” is designed to function as a sundial by day and a lantern by night. The names of community leaders from Cascade Heights, in southwest Atlanta, are inscribed in markers at each point of the dial.

The dedication ceremony set for Saturday at 10 a.m. has flown under the radar, especially when compared to recent commemorations that have stirred controversy – the naming of John Portman Boulevard and the installation of a statue honoring Andy Young, to name just two.

There’s no reason to think the proposed Walmart in Buckhead will disappear just because the Atlanta City Council slowed the project by refusing to amend the city’s long-range development plan to allow it to be built as planned.

For starters, Walmart has a long history of winning its way. The site’s too valuable for its current use as low-rent apartments, given its proximity to two highways and a MARTA station. And the development team, with lots of experience navigating urban projects, has invested two years in assembling a $90 million development.

Doug Dillard on Tuesday expressed an interesting outlook on the future of the site where the Walmart would have been built. The veteran development attorney suggested the time has arrived to double down on residential development in this section of Piedmont Road.

At least one significant point is lacking from the general conversation about “privatizing MARTA” as a way to maintain transit service while reducing its cost.

The point is a labor agreement between MARTA and the Amalgamated Transit Union, Local No. 732. The union represents 64 percent of MARTA’s staff, which is larger than 4,500 workers, according to the recent management audit by KPMG.

Even if some or all of these jobs were privatized, federal law requires that existing rights and benefits of union jobs continue into jobs created by any private companies hired by MARTA. The notion that labor negotiations – and the higher personnel costs that the audit suggests stem from collective bargaining – would dissipate in a scenario of out-sourced jobs simply isn’t accurate.

Georgia is selling the old Atlanta Farmer’s Market, a 15.4-acre tract with 11 scenic old buildings that’s located in the heart of the Atlanta BeltLine in southwest Atlanta.

The deal promises to showcase the real estate market’s attitude toward redeveloping in a gritty BeltLine neighborhood in this soft real estate climate.

Before the recession, the old market would have been perfectly poised for redevelopment. It’s in Murphy Triangle, a faded industrial area that was just beginning to see an influx of art studios and restaurants as entrepreneurs got in before big-money BeltLine developers arrived.

The pending creation of a 1-acre park off Loridans Drive in Buckhead is the latest step in the effort to build the Georgia 400 Trail, the linear park that’s to connect North Buckhead with the Peachtree Creek spur of the Atlanta BeltLine.

The Atlanta City Council is finalizing the paperwork to acquire the land from the Fulton County/Atlanta Land Bank Authority, Inc. The cost to the city will be about $25,000, to cover the legal fees associated with the transaction, according to legislation pending before the council.

A portion of the Lowery and Stevens Family Cemetery may be on the property and, if it is, the future park will contain one of the oldest cemeteries in the city, according to research by the Buckhead Heritage Society.

It may not seem like much, just a group of elementary school kids doing a science project on a bright morning in early autumn.

But someday, the event will take on greater meaning than it may have had for the pupils today. Someday, these youngsters at Atlanta’s Mary McLeod Bethune Elementary will recall the time when adults wearing uniforms helped them paint rain barrels, and how those barrels became the focus of a year-long project for each of them and their classmates.

The rain barrels will be used to teach about managing water resources. Given that their generation will hear a lot about water management, Thursday’s event was a pleasant way for these youngsters to get started.

An internal city audit of rates charged for Atlanta’s water and sewer services presents findings that show Mayor Kasim Reed should be able to fulfill his vow to not seek a rate hike before 2016.

The audit also confirms the widely held opinion that Atlanta has the highest water and sewer rates in the country.

The findings comprised the first of two pieces of good news for consumers. A federal court last week approved a 13-year extension of the city’s timeline to complete required upgrades to the sewer system. The approval of the extension, to 2027, was forecast in a May 31 press release from the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

MARTA is seeking to hire lobbyists to help it win federal transportation funding from Congress.

Terms of the contract estimate the cost at $750,000 for a two-year base, with options for three one-year renewals. The board that oversees MARTA voted to issue a request for proposals from companies interested in the work.

MARTA hasn’t been in hot water over its lobbying contracts in two years, not since the former head of the Legislature’s MARTA oversight committee, former state Rep. Jill Chambers, lost her bid for reelection to the House.