Editor’s note: Today’s column is the second in a series.
As the economy rises, so is an industry Atlantans love until it stops loving them back: construction.
It looks different this time. Instead of a new subdivision and shopping center 10 miles farther OTP than the last one, we’re seeing a boom of “mixed use” infill ITP. It’s still driven mostly by housing and retail, but of the walkable rather than drivable variety.
Nothing’s wrong with private firms making these private investments. Through such public projects as the Beltline and the downtown streetcar, government is turbocharging the market.
But now such high-profile parcels as Turner Field, Underground Atlanta and the Atlanta Civic Center are expected to hit the market as sites for still more homebuilding. If so, the city would be doubling down on the private sector’s bet Atlanta proper will sustain much more population growth than in the past few decades.
Is that the best use of these public assets?
Take the Civic Center. Housing and retail are already speculated as potential uses for the 16-acre tract. City officials, their eyes fixed on a bond referendum in 2015, say they could dump the property by summer.
But with so much redevelopment already underway in Atlanta, and with so many needs for the city to become competitive in emerging industries, now is a time to raise our sights. Even if that means slowing down.
Consider that, in the latest state report card for public schools, the elementary and high schools serving the area around the Civic Center scored below 70 out of 100. Those scores may not bother empty nesters moving back intown. But what about the many millennials who one day will have school-age children?
What if, instead of selling Civic Center to a developer, the city turned it over to a non-profit foundation to encourage innovation in public schools? I’m not dreaming up some kind of unicorn: Just such an entity exists in New Orleans, which since shaking up its schools after Hurricane Katrina has notched dramatic increases in academic achievement.
That foundation, 4.0 Schools, runs an “incubator” for educational entrepreneurs aiming to reinvent the dated public-schools model. It mixes them with startups from tech and other non-education sectors, the better to spur creativity.
Recently, 4.0 expanded to New York City. Atlanta should aim to be next. In our favor: 4.0 founder Matt Candler, a former teacher and administrator who helped lead the turnaround in New Orleans’ schools, is an Atlanta native.
It doesn’t have to be 4.0. It doesn’t even have to be education: The Civic Center is located within 2 miles of hospitals including Grady, Atlanta Medical Center, Children’s Healthcare at Hughes Spalding, and Emory Midtown. It’s within 2 miles of Georgia State’s nursing school, 3 miles of Morehouse’s medical school and 5 miles of Emory’s. Why not launch an incubator for the biotech and health IT industries Atlanta aspires to build?
The point is Atlanta should think about these big parcels in terms of the tools we need for economic development. It might take more time, and it might not maximize the immediate financial return. Admittedly, those are significant drawbacks.
But it might also spark the kind of development that would make Atlanta an even better place to relocate. And stay. And grow.
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