Eight months after getting rid of its last leader amid allegations of wasteful spending, the ambitious Atlanta Beltline project is close to getting back on track.
Late Thursday, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and the Atlanta Beltline’s board of directors, following a national search, named five finalists for the position of president and chief executive officer.
At least three of the finalists have Atlanta ties, including Roger "Tad" Leithead, the chairman of the Atlanta Regional Commission; Tom Weyandt, a senior policy adviser for transportation for the city of Atlanta; and Lisa Gordon, who has been running Beltline as the chief operating officer since last fall, when former president Brian Leary was forced out.
The other two finalists are Paul Morris, the former deputy secretary of transit for the North Carolina Department of Transportation, and Aundra Wallace, executive director for the Detroit Land Bank Authority.
“We were pleased with the tremendous interest of candidates from across the country in leading this organization,” said Beltline board chairman John Somerhalder. “The caliber of the finalists and others interested in the position is a testament to the opportunity it represents for Atlanta and the region.”
While no timetable has been announced on when the new president will be named, the movement comes at a crucial time in the Beltline’s development. The organization’s new director will help craft the Beltline’s long-term plan as it develops the next phase of trails, parks and what organizers hope will eventually include transit as well.
“The Beltline may be one of the most important projects in the history of the city,” said developer Mark Toro, who is in the midst of building BOHO4W, a 276-unit luxury apartment building on Glen Iris Drive and Rankin Street in the Old Fourth Ward. “I am happy that they have short-listed the finalists and anxious for someone to come in. While I don’t think it has been at a standstill, the real estate community is eager to see new leadership and advance the overall blueprint.”
The Beltline is an ambitious project designed to convert 22 miles of rail circling Atlanta into trails and transit. It is the most comprehensive economic development effort the city has ever seen and one of the most wide-ranging urban redevelopment and mobility projects under way in the United States.
The project has received more than $337 million in funding since 2006 and has attracted more than $1 billion of new development. It is scheduled to be completed in 2031, but last fall’s defeat of the transportation special purpose local option sales tax, or T-SPLOST, likely means that it will focus on developing parks and trails — not transit — for the next decade.
“The Atlanta Beltline continues to transform Atlanta and serves as a national model for the revitalization of urban areas,” Reed said. “The recent opening and extraordinary success of the Eastside Trail has demonstrated how excited Atlantans are for us to keep moving this project forward. We have already made great strides with the opening of four parks, nearly six miles of trails, advancing the environmental process for transit, new affordable housing, public art, and more than $1 billion in new private real estate development.”
But the project has not been without its share of bumps. In August, the Beltline’s board voted unanimously to oust Brian Leary, the project’s president and CEO, after an Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation revealed that Beltline staffers paid for, among other things, wedding gifts, a parking ticket and a dry cleaning bill with taxpayer money. A month later, Richard Lutch, the Beltline’s chief financial officer, resigned.
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