Inside City Hall: Midtown fire station could become rental housing

Atlanta wants to transform the fire rescue station on 170 10th Street into a mixed-income residential tower that could offer 100 affordable rental units in Midtown. The proposal was first unveiled during Wednesday’s Atlanta Regional Housing Forum.

The fire station project falls under the auspice of the city’s newest nonprofit, the Urban Development Corporation, which aspires to build 4,300 affordable units on city-owned land. Joshua Humphries, the mayor’s senior housing policy advisor, said the city wants to build 30 to 40 stories of housing above the station on the nearly .8-acre site.

Atlanta Housing Innovation Lab Director Matthew Bedsole said the developers who ultimately partner with the city for this project will have to redevelop the fire station as well.

Credit: Wilborn Nobles

Credit: Wilborn Nobles

“This is some of the most valuable land in the southeast,” Bedsole said. “An appraisal on the site came in $15 million, so you know right off the bat, it gives us a lot of equity to play around with.”

An affordable housing development in Midtown Atlanta would be very rare, but it highlights how Mayor Andre Dickens wants to creatively build or preserve 20,000 affordable units during his administration, which he clearly hopes will last for eight years should he get reelected.

That said, Atlanta still has to perform tons of community engagement before it could move forward with its four newly proposed city-owned housing redevelopments.

“I’m all for vertical build out, but if they got to go three miles to a grocery store, that seems counterintuitive,” said Joel Alvarado, an Atlanta Housing Authority board member who also serves on the new nonprofit’s board.

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Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com

Atlanta City Council members are considering creating more committees that are charged with reviewing legislation before the council takes its final votes. City Council has seven standing committees that are split into policy areas from city utilities and public safety to finance and zoning.

Members met last week to discuss the possibility of dividing the Community Development and Human Services committee, currently chaired by Council member Jason Dozier, into two separate entities because of the wide range of constituent services it oversees.

What may seem like a small change from the outside, creating a new committee can have a substantial impact on charting the city’s policy priorities for years to come.

Credit: Natrice Miller / Natrice.Miller@ajc.com

Dickens has declared youth-related initiatives a top focus of his administration. So, council members are debating if there’s a committee that can take on youth development ideas. A handful of council members are also trying to ramp up clean energy efforts and add a heightened focus to environmental sustainability.

But Council member Marci Collier Overstreet cautioned her colleagues about making big policy changes in areas like public health and youth when other local government bodies — specifically Fulton County and Atlanta Public Schools — are responsible for using taxpayer money to enhance those services.

“I just want to make sure we are focusing on our tax-base purview,” she said. “Just to make sure we aren’t adding more than what the city should take on and that other entities are actually taking care of their base.”

She also raised the question of making long-term changes to committees based on the priorities of whoever sits behind the mayor’s desk because those priorities, more often than not, change from administration to administration.

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Credit: Courtesy of the Atlanta Police Department

Faulty security features in Hyundai and Kia vehicles are still creating headaches for the Atlanta Police Department. According to the department, thefts are up 700% from this time last year because of a security error that went viral on social media.

So far this year, nearly 1,800 cars from those manufacturers have been stolen in the city.

“Had we not had all of these Hyundai’s and Kia’s stolen we would probably be looking somewhere from a 5-6% reduction in overall crime from last year, so that’s our driving number right now,” Deputy Chief Timothy Peak told council members last week.

The police department has been working with the companies and city officials to hand out manual steering locks and get software updates installed free of charge for vulnerable car owners. Council members have wondered if joining other local governments in legal action against Hyundai and Kia is a good step to take.

“I certainly appreciate the attempts at a partnership but as someone who knows many people who have Kia’s and Hyundai’s it’s nowhere near enough,” said Council member Dustin Hillis who said he knows people who have had software fixes but have still gotten their cars broken into.

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