Reducing the speed limit on Memorial Drive from 35 mph to 25 mph could improve safety, cut tailpipe emissions, boost the roadway’s capacity, and even reduce trip times because traffic would flow more smoothly.
Another startling discovery associated with the analysis of Memorial Drive, being conducted this autumn by Georgia Tech graduate students, is the high degree of buy-in from Atlanta city councilmembers who represent the area.
The city of Atlanta is “showing signs” that it is rebounding from the recession, according to a new report from Moody’s Investors Service.
Among the signs Moody’s identifies: The tax base is inching up; foreclosures are down to pre-recession levels; the unemployment rate is still stuck above 10 percent, but city officials attributed it to people moving here to look for work rather than to locals unable to find a job.
The report could be a guide in gauging the economy in other parts of the region, though Moody’s did examine only the city of Atlanta in order to rate the credit of a $60 million bond package Atlanta plans to sell Oct. 28.
The issue of whether the ARC board should seat citizen members who are developers who lead self-taxing-and-spending entities called CIDs gained some clarity Wednesday.
The ARC again released at its monthly meeting a response that cites two legal opinions and a ruling from a former state revenue commissioner. The opinions say, essentially, developers are not precluded from serving on the board of the Atlanta Regional Commission even if they serve on a board overseeing a community improvement district.
West End may be an ideal candidate for redevelopment in this unusual era of the economy.
The newly released study of West End by Georgia Tech students sees opportunities in situations that would have been clear threats to redevelopment before the great recession. The report suggests that West End is ripe for new investments in retail and residential.
These ventures could both stabilize and benefit from the redevelopment of a stretch of Northside Drive, an historic industrial corridor that begins at the tip of Buckhead, passes Atlantic Station and the future Falcons stadium, and ends in the vicinity of West End and Fort McPherson.
The final piece is in place of a framework plan by Georgia Tech students that could guide development along the frontier of an historic Atlanta industrial corridor.
Just like Buckhead, the West End neigbhorhood that’s at the heart of the newly released plan developed around a tavern – Charner Humphrie’s two-story White Hall Tavern. West End’s beginnings as a travelers’ rest stop date to 1835, three years before Buckhead was established.
The latest plan provides a method to link the shops, homes, parks and places of worship of West End with the Atlanta University Center – the nation’s largest concentration of historically black colleges and universities.
MARTA wants to engage a developer to build a live-work-play community in the 2-year-old city of Brookhaven, where a proposed 30-year plan appears to embrace dense urban development.
MARTA is seeking developers for its Brookhaven Station. MARTA intends to develop homes, offices and shops on almost half the station’s sparsely used lot, and replace those parking spaces in structured parking.
The project may not be easy, according to a MARTA report that states: “The positive involvement of [Brookhaven and DeKalb County] could be a challenge to bring about. It will take careful negotiation and cooperation, of which ARC [Atlanta Regional Commission] could help facilitate. The largest hurdle, however, could be the participation of private money lenders.”
The city of Atlanta added more residents in the past year than it did during the entire first decade of the 2000s, according to an unofficial report from the Atlanta Regional Commission.
Atlanta’s gain of 4,100 residents was part of a 10-county population increase of 52,700, calculated from 2013 to 2014. ARC planners said in a statement the increase is a, “sure sign that the economic recovery is continuing.”
ARC’s latest report does not examine the housing supply or construction industry. The city of Atlanta had a glut of housing after the last decade, with more than 37,000 units added to serve a city population that rose by 3,500 residents, according to an ARC report from April 2011.
The implications on the races for Georgia’s governor and U.S. senator of the Tyler Perry proposal to buy most of Fort McPherson may be starting to take shape.
The election is less than three weeks after Perry’s tentatively scheduled closing, on Oct. 15, for 330 acres of the fort. If Gov. Nathan Deal loses to Sen. Jason Carter, or if Michelle Nunn wins a Senate seat, there’s a chance that either victor may intervene to slow Perry’s deal.
At least, that’s the thought among some involved with the growing community protest that’s taking shape with an eye to slowing Perry’s project. And that’s why the size of the crowd that attended a forum last week is relevant.
Juanita Crater knows what she doesn’t want to happen at Fort McPherson – for redevelopment to dawdle so long the federal government decides to use the post to house large numbers of the homeless, or undocumented immigrants.
History both recent and distant underscores the relevance of concerns raised by Crater, a senior citizen of East Point who lives near the fort and is viewed as a local historian. The fort and its surroundings are not thriving; federal law requires the site to house the homeless; the fort has served as a stockade.
The state authority overseeing the conversion of the shuttered Fort McPherson military base into a civilian use met behind closed doors for two hours Thursday before emerging to say a final deal could be secured in two to three weeks.
“We are in the process of negotiating, at this time, a possible sale,” said authority Chairman Felker Ward. “We hope to be able to conclude those negotiations in the next two to three weeks.”
One issue yet to be discussed in public is how the proposal brought by Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed to sell most of the fort to filmmaker Tyler Perry will affect the existing approval by HUD of a plan to retool the fort into a science center.
More money is soon to be available for developers who need loans for projects in metro Atlanta neighborhoods still reeling from the housing crisis and, in some cases, woes that preceded the crisis.
The additional capital is to flow from a new partnership between Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership, Inc. and The Reinvestment Fund.
“Some metro Atlanta submarkets are slowly rebounding from the great recession, while others are experiencing considerable growth,” ANDP President/CEO John O’Callaghan said.
An urban renewal program that Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed proposes to close has achieved less than half the goals that were outlined in 2005, and it has a long way to go toward fulfilling its mission as stated when it was created in 2003, city records show.
When the Eastside TAD was created, the vision was for it to spark $1.51 billion in private and public/private investments. The result has been an additional $300 million in increased property value through 2010, the latest reporting year readily available in city records.
Reed proposes to close the Eastside Tax Allocation District in order to free about $5 million a year for use in the citywide budget. Currently, this amount of property taxes can be spent only to promote development within the borders of the Eastside TAD.
The home construction industry in the city of Atlanta remains erratic, and other market sectors are still shaking themselves out after the recession, according to a review of figures provided in Mayor Kasim Reed’s budget proposal.
The value of homes built in the city of Atlanta fell by 48 percent in 2013 compared to 2012. However, once all construction categories are included, the budget shows revenues from building permits are increasing steadily in the city.
The value of lumber sold in the city plummeted during the recession. And lumber isn’t the only market sector that sank – and hasn’t recovered – in Atlanta during the economic reorganization that started before and continued after the recession.
Visitors to the sacred grounds in the Chickamauga Battlefield in northwest Georgia will enter the park along an enhanced gateway in Fort Oglethorpe once the state completes a project that’s just received a $3 million federal grant
Casualties numbered 34,000 in the three-day Battle of Chickamauga in September 1863. The losses were second during the Civil War only to the 51,000 recorded the previous July at the Battle of Gettysburg.
Today, the main road leading to the battlefield is flanked by towering power lines and disjointed commercial developments. The federal grant will pay for a retooling of 0.8 mile of LaFayette Road to improve its appearance and use by pedestrians and bicyclists.
A new report by Atlanta on the city's housing stock confirms a view of the city documented in March by urban demographer Richard Florida – Atlanta is split in half, with strong neighborhoods to the north and vulnerable ones to the south of a dividing line that passes near the Georgia Tech campus.
One interesting finding in the city’s report is that Buckhead isn’t listed as an exceptional investment area. Instead, that designation is reserved for an area that stretches south from I-85 through Morningside and Poncy-Highland toward Druid Hills. The Buckhead area is ranked as strong or trending.
Atlanta says this report on the city’s housing is the first-of-its-kind study of 285 neighborhoods. It’s intended to enable policymakers to promote equitable residential development throughout the city. The city has scheduled two community meetings to discuss the study’s results – on Monday and Thursday evenings.
If metro Atlanta voters aren’t willing to pay higher taxes to ease traffic congestion and promote schools and development, that’s not the message they sent in Tuesday’s elections.
Voters approved more than $1.1 billion worth of spending in five jurisdictions – $852 million for projects including roads and urban renewal, and $280 million for the Clayton County school district.
Voters in Peachtree City approved a tax incentive program that favors development. Fairburn voters rejected an identical proposal. Two cities approved Sunday alcohol sales – Dacula and Palmetto. All votes results are unofficial pending certification.
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.
The I-75 corridor in Cobb and Cherokee counties is so densely developed that the 30-mile, two-lane toll road to be built in the corridor will have few negative environmental or social impacts.
This is the conclusion of the environmental impact study of the project completed by the Georgia Department of Transportation. While there’s no surprise in the result, the lack of impact on critters and land emphasizes the magnitude of the existing highway and development in Atlanta’s northwestern suburbs.
“This project is defined as the marginal addition of concrete to a 15-lane road,” said Brian Gist, a lawyer with the Southern Environmental Law Center. “When defined that way, it’s easy to come to the conclusion that it will have no effect.”
Monday marked nine straight days in Atlanta of extremely high (over 1500) pollen counts. You can’t avoid the blanket of yellow green dust covering the city.
For Stuart Brady, the plague of pollen on our cars is almost a biblical call to atone through what his business serves: lots of water and your own elbow grease. At his Kirkwood Car Wash, three words preach from the shingled roof: “Honor Thy Auto.”
These days, the ka-ching of tokens in the self-serve machines is the reason Brady calls pollen “gold dust.” It also gives him hope that his slice of Americana might survive the relentless redevelopment that Atlanta is known for.
Proposed developments at three MARTA stations are so hot that they could start in a matter of months, according to MARTA records.
The proposals involve the stations of Avondale, Chamblee and King Memorial. Each proposal has “advanced to the point of the board’s decision/action and could be put into action this summer or early fall,” records show.
MARTA can’t wait for a consultant to be hired in May to handle the proposals. Instead, MARTA seeks to hire a consultant to work on these projects over the next 60 to 90 days. Bids for the consulting position close March 25.
