By Guest Columnist DEBRA EDELSON, executive director of Grove Park Foundation
If our Atlanta region continues to grow as predicted, we will have tens of thousands of new residents move in town over the next 10 years. How will they decide what neighborhood to live in? Like many of us, they will look for a community that feels safe, is proximate to good schools, and is accessible to retail and community services. Sadly, across Atlanta, many neighborhoods don’t have these critical characteristics.
By David Pendered
Think of ARC’s long-range, regional planning blueprint done with 3-D animation. It would feel more alive, more real-time representational of the region it aims to serve. And the conversation has already started about the future the blueprint aims to inform.
Atlanta and Fulton may be winning valuable jobs and investments via property tax discounts to developers; or they may be giving away something they don’t have to.
The Atlanta City Council is set to impose greater control over Invest Atlanta, the city’s economic development arm that acts as Atlanta’s agent to promote housing, economic development and redevelopment – all of it under control of a board chaired by the mayor, whose top advisor argued against the council’s exercise of authority.
Demand for affordable housing comprises a fair amount of the housing sales in Georgia and the Southeast, even as employers offer incentives other than money to attract and retain labor in what remains a tight labor market, according to Wednesday’s edition of the Atlanta Federal Reserve’s Beige Book.
Taggers as a focus group. That’s a new twist in Atlanta’s uneasy accord with graffiti and is one being taken by the developers of PATH400, who think good graffiti can keep amateur and vulgar taggers from leaving their mark.
Transportation planners overlooked one aspect of Atlanta’s convention industry – the people who attend – and that evidently contributed to Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms’ decision to halt the first step in a plan aimed at making Downtown more pleasant for pedestrians. In addition, the mayor ordered a review of the entire Downtown mobility plan by the city’s newly approved Transportation Department, which is to be functional by late 2020.
By Guest Columnist JACKSON FAW, a writer, actor and activist based in Atlanta
On July 1, against promises made to downtown Atlanta hotels and businesses that oppose the plan, the Atlanta City Council rushed a vote to begin eliminating the city’s only downtown streets designed to move large volumes of traffic quickly.
Something funky is going on at Fort McPherson – again.
This time it involves the 145 acres under the control of the McPherson Implementating Local Redevelopment Authority.
A significant vote on part of the sweeping proposal to “revolutionize the way we move through Downtown Atlanta” into 2030 is on the agenda Monday, and the Atlanta City Council is slated to approve this step in a plan fostered by the group of influential business leaders, Central Atlanta Progress.
More improvements are planned near the southern tip of the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area, including a proposed trail and elevated overlook with views of the river. The deadline for public comment is July 7.
MARTA intends to sell nearly a half-acre of vacant land that looked like a prime candidate for a development of affordably priced homes near Carey Park, in Northwest Atlanta. The minimum bid was $6,200, low enough to take land costs almost out of the equation. Then a buyer asked about that sewer line.
Back in the 1980s, I had the pleasure of getting to know one of the most flamboyant developers who had entered the Atlanta market – A.C. Toh.
Toh made headlines in the 1980s by proposing to build a high-density international village on a 19-block area on the south part of downtown. Then Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young had taken Toh on a tour of the area, and together they envisioned what the place could be – a bustling new downtown with high-rise residential and office towers.
A tight labor market continues to headline the Southeast’s economic conditions, though the transportation industry is bracing for job cuts related to trade tariffs, according to a federal report – and that was before President Trump announced potential tariffs on Mexico.
Atlanta’s potential tree ordinance is nearing completion, as next week the city is to convene the second and final round of city-wide public forums before a final draft ordinance is to be presented to the public in July or August.
Apartment rental prices have spiked by 25 percent in the past year in a neighborhood near Lenox Square and by 16 percent in and near Atlantic Station, according to a new report by rent.com. These figures provide context for this summer’s continuing conversation about affordable housing.
By Guest Columnist NICOLE KENNARD, a Georgia Tech graduate and doctoral researcher at Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures, University of Sheffield
“I got out!” An overwhelming feeling of relief and achievement washed over me as I went up to the stage to receive the piece of paper I’d paid for in my own sweat and sanity over the previous four years….
Although I had a few job offers in engineering before graduation – from companies including Michelin and Boeing – I turned them down in the hopes of pursuing a career in sustainable community development.
Metro Atlanta’s signature initiative to retool the way people live, work and play is being reinvented this year to promote evolutions in smart technology, green infrastructure and housing affordability.
The ongoing effort to retool Atlanta’s Little Five Points neighborhood into a more pleasant place to spend time got a lift Thursday when the Atlanta Regional Commission included the neighborhood on a list of 10 recipients who will share a total of $1.6 million in study grants awarded through the LCI program.
A few more of the grittier edges of Little Five Points’ central gathering spot are to be smoothed over in the coming year as Findley Plaza is renovated. The plan calls for removing the mosaic of the fabled blues musician Blind Willie McTell, and is so detailed it specifies the distance between granite curbstones.
