Invest Atlanta board members okayed an intergovernmental agreement with the city to manage a Special Services District on June 18 that will tax nearby commercial and residential properties to help pay for “The Stitch,” an ambitious project that aims to cap the downtown highway connector with 16 acres of parks and green space.
The board authorized an agreement to govern and manage the use of Special Services District funds on the massive downtown project. It follows the Atlanta City Council’s unanimous approval of The Stitch Master Plan and creation of the special district just weeks earlier.
The city’s downtown connector cap is a pricey project and the Special Services District will help pay for it. Essentially, for every $100,000 in a property’s assessed value, the owners will pay an additional $200 in property taxes. The district won’t include certain owner-occupied buildings and tax-exempt properties like churches.
The Stitch representatives explain the district as a way to “capture some of the value” the Stitch will create by increasing property value within 0.5 miles of the park. The cash flow will fund administration, operations, maintenance and programs.
It’s only a fraction of the funding for the massive park project. Once completed, the Stitch will create almost 17 acres of greenspace atop a quarter-mile platform on the Downtown Connector. It aims to knit together communities long divided by the highway. Previously, project leaders have described it as a path toward social and economic change.
“It can be a place for all ages, and all the people who live around it and visitors who come to Atlanta, it can also be a catalyst for change,” Landscape Architect Mary Margaret Jones said at the first community meeting in 2023.
Now that the Stitch project leaders have gained public input, Phase One is gearing up to break ground in late 2026. It includes five acres of park with a tree canopy, event pavilion, playground and interactive wave feature. Project leaders have already secured about $200 million in funding to pay for the first phase through tax allocation district dollars and grants. It’s set for 2030 completion.
But its future funding is unclear. A massive $157.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation is on the chopping block after the Trump administration threatened to cut the non-obligated grant dollars in an effort to cut down government spending, especially around equity-based projects like the Stitch.
It’s one of several projects in limbo, according to other Atlanta-based leaders like Jill Johnson with Atlanta Beltline, Inc. The government affairs vice president said a necessary Beltline trail expansion grant is in purgatory alongside the Stitch until U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy executes grant agreements.
The grants fall under unobligated funds because they have been provided but not formally and legally allocated and spent. The $157.6 million Stitch grant falls under the Neighborhood Access and Equity Grants, a key target for the current administration’s work against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
The Stitch has a daunting multimillion-dollar price tag when federal funding remains unclear. But Development Manager Jack Cebe has previously said he is “optimistic” about the funds. The project could still happen – albeit with some major delays.
“The Stitch has a daunting multimillion-dollar price tag when federal funding remains unclear.”
This price tag would not be too “daunting” if we had a more honest past elected officials; from Kassim Reed to KLB, why isn’t ire focused on their self-munificence at the expense and, regressive-detriment to the taxpayer? Why do we even tolerate the notion of Keisha Lance Bottoms taking her grift from city-level to state-level?
Why are we allowing city council members like; Matt Westmoreland to be seduced by the siren of debt and issue wanton credit for the construction of housing for some of the most unproductive, recidivist and free-riding members of society? Have we lost our way?
Building apartments for drug addicts is taking funding precedence over a project which will connect neighborhoods, unlocking hidden synergies that haven’t been conceived of yet, kind of like having a GT-to-Emory transit track, but also imagine what can be done with the captured CO2 and warmth created by the traffic passing underneath, and by redirecting the captured internal combustion engine by-products ( Carbon Dioxide and warmth) to a small plot of vegetables growing on the North and South ends of the area stitched by The Stitch. We can grow Tomatoes for The Varsity, call it The ATgLorified burger!
We can do this lets! Lets produce the tax receipts to pay down the debt taken out by un-forsightful elected officials!
In fact the varsity should offer a special “ATgLorified” burger featuring Onions an Tomatoes grown on the small plots of land at either end of The Stitch.
Actions like his are diminishing, dimming the obviously value-additive attributes of The Stitch. Jack Cebe and Nancy Zintak are working incredibly diligently to realize the activation of the hemi-spheric
Again, the excessive and specious issuance of debt to fund projects for the sole purpose of gaining more votes from the most unproductive in society is harming the chances of the obviously positive for Atlanta Stitch project.
I declare that there should be small plots of urban Gardens at the north and south end of The Stitch, these plots of land should contain community gardens, there needs to be a method of collecting rain water gatheren on structures flanking the Stitch. This rain water can water the small plots of urban agriculture.
🥂
✌ (peace sign)
We’re talking about a quarter mile of freeway, to be buried like the Gulch and Undergrond Atlanta so developers on either side can build a little higher. We shouldn’t be complaining about sheltering the homeless while going into this boondoggle.
I just wish the “reconnecting communities” money was being spent on the neighborhoods that were destroyed by the 1956 Highways Act rather than on the communities that thrived during those times of change.
Is there really nothing that can be done to right the wrongs of the I-75/85 construction?