As business, government and church leaders negotiate where the new Atlanta Falcons stadium will be built, another set of heated talks also continue in the communities that will be affected by the $1 billion arena.
Tensions have run high from the beginning over how much say the residents of English Avenue, Vine City and Castleberry Hill will have on how to spend community benefits funds — money meant to smooth the feathers that inevitably will be ruffled when a 1.8 million square foot building is plopped in their area.
At stake is some $30 million that is meant to bolster the poverty-stricken area of downtown Atlanta. Fifteen million dollars comes from the Westside tax allocation district and $15 million from the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation. Some residents say they were surprised this week when they learned more about how Invest Atlanta, which oversees the Westside TAD, will dole out their portion of the funds.
At a Wednesday community benefits meeting, an Invest Atlanta official explained that the agency will consider not just community feedback, but also a study developed by a local firm, APD Urban Planning and Management, in awarding grants to applicants. That was the plan from the beginning as outlined in an agreement between the Blank Foundation and Invest Atlanta.
The Westside TAD Neighborhoods Strategic Implementation Plan by APD was commissioned last fall — months before the stadium deal was announced in March — to help set out a vision for the Westside neighborhoods to guide future development, officials said.
At Wednesday’s meeting, the head of APD Urban Planning, Jesse Wiles, outlined a number of strategies that could spur economic development in the English Avenue and Vine City areas. Among them, promote homeowner and rental repair programs and create a uniform look for business corridors. He also proposed five areas within those communities, such as Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and the Northside Drive “entertainment district,” that could be the core of future development.
Castleberry residents were dismayed to learn that his report did not include their neighborhood, which only partially sits inside the Westside TAD boundaries. Atlanta officials say they will meet with Castleberry residents to develop similar plans.
While few took issue with the proposals in his report, many were surprised the document would play such a large role in how grants from the $15 million in TAD funds would be awarded.
Howard Beckham, a member of the English Avenue-Vine City Ministerial Alliance who sits on the community benefits committee, said residents would have taken the meetings APD held months ago more seriously had they known.
“During public meetings in English Avenue and Vine City, great effort was put forth to convince us that there was no connection between this implementation plan and the new stadium,” said Beckham, one of eight community members seated on the 16-member committee. “And now here we are, in a community benefits committee that relates to the stadium, and this is a centerpiece of one of those meetings.”
Yvonne Jones, vice-chairwoman of the committee, expressed concern over the lack of clarity.
“I’m not trying to be antagonistic, but I’m saying it seems like this (money) was already allocated (for the APD plan) and it was just being renamed for us,” she said.
Ernestine Garey, COO of Invest Atlanta, acknowledged there was confusion in how the agency would award grants from the $15 million promised from the Westside TAD, saying “that was the clarification that we failed to make early on in the process.”
But she and Invest Atlanta CEO Brian McGowan said the APD study and community benefits meetings are complementary and help guide the other. The APD report — which combined 18 studies of the area from the past 15 years — was commissioned to give “big picture” ideas, McGowan said.
The community benefits meetings are geared toward developing project-specific goals to address environmental impacts, traffic congestion, public safety concerns and potential gentrification of these neighborhoods from the stadium.
“Community organizations can use that document to apply for funds,” McGowan said Thursday of the APD plan. “It’s to be used as a guide.”
Invest Atlanta is now reviewing the APD report and said it will release the full document to the public within a few weeks.
A community benefits package must be signed by the Atlanta City Council and Mayor Kasim Reed before any bonds will be issued for stadium construction. Progress has been made, however, in one of the earlier conflicts over wording in legislation that referred to the community benefits package as a plan — not agreement.
To outsiders, it’s just semantics. But for residents living in communities that will be impacted by the stadium, many who carry suspicions of whether money promised to their neighborhoods will be delivered, the wording carries tremendous weight. Agreement, they say, makes such commitments legally binding. After months of protest, city officials changed the legislation to “plan/agreement.”
The committee will meet again Sept. 18.
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