Halfway between downtown and Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, served by two MARTA stations, amid southwest Atlanta and East Point neighborhoods, lies Fort McPherson, 488 acres of beautiful grounds, housing and high-quality office and other buildings with fantastic development potential.
Public safety jurisdiction shifted from the U.S. Army to the city Thursday and the state-chartered McPherson Implementing Local Redevelopment Authority, or MILRA, is responsible for its redevelopment. MILRA’s redevelopment plan hopes to persuade the Army to convey the base at little or no cost with a plan to transform it to an economically productive asset as it comes on to the city’s tax rolls. The plan envsions a mega mixed-use and open space development, driven by a biomedical research and treatment complex.
But the plan has serious flaws. First developed in 2007, before the economic crash, and with only minor tweaks since, it considers the property as if it exists in a vacuum, focusing its development inward to the base. It fails to take advantage of the mixed-use, private-public transit-oriented development potential of the two MARTA stations for accommodating its programs.
Instead, it projects an enclave that does not connect itself to the community, either functionally or physically. It views the surrounding neighborhoods as a detriment to realizing its grand vision, not the opportunity for a “win-win” partnership. The premise of research universities and treatment facilities wanting to locate here, bringing major public capital to match with major private investment, may come to pass in 10, 15, 20 years, but the Army is leaving now.
Without a detailed interim plan to cover the months and years between now and the wished-for future, the property risks deterioration and decline, a prospect that land speculators may cheer, but terrible for the surrounding neighborhoods, the city and the existing resources themselves.
The communities around the base, with the support of Georgia Stand-Up, the Ford Foundation and Georgia Tech planning students, have developed a community action plan that addresses Fort McPherson’s near and long-term potential. For two years, they have called upon the MILRA to include them in the planning process, to address the immediate and certain realities of closure, to look for creative ways to save and maintain existing base facilities, and to manage the base to the mutual benefit of the communities and the city, as well as for its own future.
Co-managed by MILRA, the city and a community-based nonprofit group, the McPherson Action Community Coalition, or MACC, the plan can be implemented incrementally, using existing base assets in positive, community-serving ways. The city’s stepped-up role becomes crucial as it takes on public safety responsibilities, open-space management, and the redevelopment actions of comprehensive planning, zoning, and tax allocation district, or TAD, funding.
Early actions that could build trust and confidence in a shared approach include training and hiring local residents to maintain, rehab and operate the base’s rich array of assets; opening up the Campbellton Road gate to give veterans easy access to the expanding VA health facilities and on-base credit unions; and, to promote healthy living, connecting the neighborhoods to the on-base walking trails, ball fields, golf course and open space for community gardening.
Perhaps least expensively and accepting the need to keep the security fence as the Army completes its divestiture, MILRA could at least take down the concertina topped opaque barriers, replacing visual blight with a picture of hope and jobs beyond. Community support is important for the long haul of redevelopment approvals, and assuring community involvement and benefit from the get-go will smooth that process.
Michael Dobbins, a professor, is a former commissioner of Planning, Development and Neighborhood Conservation for Atlanta.
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