Editor’s note: This story has been updated with the scheduled completion date of the study.
By David Pendered
A coalition of organizations around Turner Field intend to ask Mayor Kasim Reed on Tuesday to defer any deal to redevelop the ballpark and its parking lots until after a $275,000 visioning plan is complete.
In February, the Atlanta Regional Commission announced it will help fund a study of about 1,340 acres around the stadium. The $275,000 review is specifically intended to provide a roadmap for revitalization efforts after the Atlanta Braves depart following the 2016 baseball season. The plan is to be complete in mid 2016.
However, an emerging notion has it that Reed won’t give the process time to work. The scenario is unsettling to some area residents and organizations.
“We don’t want a quick-fix solution,” Summerhill resident John Colabelli said in a statement. “This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to restore the surrounding neighborhoods and reconnect downtown to the entire south side of Atlanta.”
Colabelli was referring to some of the redevelopment plans for Turner Field that have circulated during the past year. Reed’s been generally supportive of a proposal from Georgia State University to buy the ballpark and its parking lots. GSU has proposed building ball fields, student housing, non-student housing and retail.
The notion has it that now that Reed has prevailed in his effort to have most of Fort McPherson sold to filmmaker Tyler Perry, the mayor is likely to turn his redevelopment eye to the historic opportunity to reshape an area that’s been home to a ballpark since 1966.
The Perry/McPherson deal took a year to consummate. Reed’s term of office expires in about 2 ½ years.
In April, Reed was able to help install a political ally as executive director of the body that will oversee the sales of Turner Field. Atlanta City Councilmember Keisha Lance Bottoms took over leadership of the Atlanta Fulton County Recreation Authority, despite protests from Fulton County Chairman John Eaves.
Colabelli serves on the Turner Field Benefits Coaliton, which is comprised of about 30 organizations, most of them in the Turner Field area and several that have other interests:
- American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group;
- Rights2Life, a non-profit that serves underprivileged folks;
- South River Watershed Alliance, which seeks to protect the waterway.
The coalition intends to stage a media event on the steps of old City Hall, the side facing Mitchell Street, Tuesday at 10 a.m. Following the comments, a group of about 50 civic leaders intends to hand deliver a letter to Reed that asks him to defer any deal until after the ARC-funded study is complete.
The ARC in February announced that it would provide Atlanta with a planning grant in the amount of $212,000 to study the Turner Field area. Atlanta had applied for the grant. The additional $63,000 for the study is to include an undisclosed sum from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which has worked in the area since 2001, and Invest Atlanta, the city’s development arm.
In applying for the ARC Livable Centers Initiative Grant, the city provided the following description as its leading justification of the visioning project:
- “The City of Atlanta and Invest Atlanta are requesting LCI funding for the Turner Field Stadium Neighborhoods LCI study, an area of approximately 1,340 acres encompassing the Summerhill, Peoplestown, Mechanicsville, Pittsburgh, and Grant Park neighborhoods.
- “Turner Field and associated parking areas owned by the Atlanta Fulton County Recreation Authority (AFCRA), nearby underutilized parcels and major corridors including Hank Aaron Drive, Georgia Avenue, Ralph David Abernathy Road, and Pryor Street will be the main focus of this study.
- “The relocation of the Braves Baseball team out of Turner Field provides an opportunity to develop, through extensive community engagement, a shared vision and plan for the Turner Field Stadium Neighborhoods that will promote growth and development/redevelopment.
- “LCI funding will be used to conduct a market study, detailed transportation plan, strategies to repurpose the $200-plus million stadium, analyze and make recommendations on housing, non-residential uses, urban design, land use, zoning and economic development. Funds will also be used to conduct community engagement and project management.
- “The study area includes all of the Stadium Tax Allocation District (TAD). This plan will meet the requirement of the Stadium TAD legislation to develop a transportation plan and implementation strategy prior to expenditures of TAD Funding.”
There was no process when it came to Fort McPherson. The community’s master plan, seven years in the making, was junked by the mayor and his Board, and the citizens who owned that property were shut out. Now we have to suffer Fort Perry.
So disappointing and yet, it’s what I expect from him.
Kasim Rees seems to be on a timed event collision course to liquidate all the City of Atlanta assets into an evaporation slush fund prior to his exit from city hall. For an individual seemingly plotting a track to higher political aspirations, he may wind up on the path unchosen by higher appointment as envisioned by his predecessor Ms. Franklin. Less than transparent dealings seems to become crystal clear when campaigning for higher office plus the company one keeps often hinders political aspirations.
When is the ARC study scheduled to be completed?
@KingJayk The study is to be complete in mid 2016. Thanks for the good question; I’ll add this to the story now.
The committee’s master plan, 7 years in the making, was junked because it had no chance of panning out. The development that the Fort Mac activists wanted would have required hundreds of millions of dollars to get it to the point where a developer or employer would have even begun to be interested in it. And where was that money going to come from? It is easy to make plans with other people’s money. Or to talk about plans that are never going to come true.
Translation: I despise the fact that the Voting Rights Act passed, which allows for majority black cities to elect black politicians. Therefore, every black politician that gets elected is always going to suffer unjustified and unprovable vague allegations of corruption from people like me.
The only people who want Fort Mac, the Underground, Turner Field etc. to remain money-losing undeveloped ghettoes worse than the local progressive activists who prefer keeping their voting base in areas like that are the neo-segregationists who are sorely disappointed when economic development occurs in any area that blacks control politically (because said development undermines their rationale for being segregationists in the first place).
“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to restore the surrounding neighborhoods and reconnect downtown to the entire south side of Atlanta.”
Sure! I am all for it! Once you identify the people who have to PAY for this once-in-a-generation restoration opportunity, the people who would have to put up the half billion dollars that it would take to give you what you want, then go ahead and sign the contracts for it!
When the Obama administration commits the half-billion dollars then full-steam ahead! Oh wait … they aren’t going to.
When the state of Georgia commits the half-billion dollars then push right on! Oh wait … the GOP-run Atlanta-hating state government won’t do it.
When the city of Atlanta puts up the money then let it happen! Oh, wait, thanks to the neo-seggers running state government, Atlanta doesn’t have the money to do this either.
When corporate America is willing to step up to the plate with the money to do this area right, then git ‘er done! Oh wait … corporate America isn’t in the habit of just giving money away. They want to generate a profit, and sparsely populated, economically depressed, higher-than-average crime areas don’t generate that sort of revenue.
I am sorry, but the ARC is not going to come up with anything that is going to validate these activists’ pie-in-the-sky socialism. The real goal is to try to delay the process as long as possible, hoping that Reed will be replaced with another left-liberal mayor who will tell them what they want to hear while the property sits vacant and gets taken over by homeless squatters and “graffiti artists.” But hey, to this crowd, even that would be better than “gentrification” with Georgia State students and condo dwellers.