While Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens has confirmed his intent to extend the city’s redevelopment ban on the former Atlanta Medical Center site, an Atlanta City Council member said he believes that the moratorium has run its course and should be lifted.
Council member Amir Farokhi, whose District 2 is home to parts of the former AMC site in the Old Fourth Ward, said there are concerns around the property becoming a blight on the community.
“It does no one any good to leave the land sitting vacant with a housing shortage ongoing and prices constantly rising. The Civic Center site has shown us how damaging a large, idle property is to surrounding neighborhoods,” Farokhi wrote Friday in a community newsletter for District 2. “The AMC parcels are ripe for mixed-use development, including affordable housing. I hope that we allow for that soon.”
The area where AMC was located has been home to a hospital for a century, initially called Georgia Baptist Hospital before it was acquired by a private company in 1997 and renamed, and then in 2016 sold to Wellstar Health System.
Fulton County’s website lists the total assessed tax value for the former AMC properties at about $118.86 million, however as a not-for-profit health system, Wellstar pays no property taxes on the land.
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
The former hospital site occupies about 25 acres and includes several zoning designations, including community business district, commercial service district, commercial residential district, the Beltline overlay district and Beltline affordable workforce housing districts.
Mayor Andre Dickens has said if the site is redeveloped or sold, he wants to see health care services returned to serve the surrounding community. Dickens shared his decision to extend the moratorium earlier this month when asked by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, but the issue was not discussed or submitted for a vote at Monday’s Atlanta City Council meeting.
When Dickens issues his new executive order, it will stay in effect until the City Council votes on the measure. Their next meeting is Nov. 6.
If the extended moratorium is approved by the Atlanta City Council, it will be April 2024 — a full 18 months since the hospital was closed — before Wellstar Health System can do anything new with the property.
A spokesman for Wellstar said on Monday, “We are committed to a thoughtful process to determine the best use for the future of these sites. We continue to talk with members of the community and evaluate potential solutions. We do not currently have plans for the sites and we are hopeful for a solution that benefits the community.”
Due to the ban, the city must refuse any applications for rezoning, building permits, land disturbances, special administrative permits, subdivisions, or other land changes for 15 parcels of land that were part of AMC’s campus. City leaders have said that the moratorium gives leaders and the community more time to address AMC’s sudden closure.
“I share the Mayor’s desire to see healthcare return to the AMC campus and I believe that we will see healthcare access at the site,” Farokhi said. “However, given the poor state of the facilities and the multiple parcels at issue, I believe we should lift the moratorium.”
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