Athletics and athletic competition are wonderful and exciting. But a poor city subsidizing a private sports business by $500 million-plus is morally repugnant — as is Atlanta businesses using state government to circumvent local political control.
This is the latest stadium to be sited just outside, or on the periphery of, the central business district in a poor, black neighborhood. The fact that none ever prospectively appeared in a comprehensive plan mocks Atlanta’s public planning process. Poor neighborhoods are instructed that to affect their zoning, land use and redevelopment, a city-sanctioned plan is required. State law stipulates the same. There is no separate legal path for athletic teams; their political power evidently exempts them.
Ignoring established standards and procedures is egregious. There is no publicly discussed and adopted plan, no independent analysis of imminent impacts, and no commitment to ameliorate or compensate damaged interests, and the final site is not determined. Mass transportation, pedestrian and vehicular access, parking, noise, resident disruption, secondary development, historic and cultural impact, and the public costs of restructuring infrastructure are integral to planning approval.
Two examples: At 151 years old, Friendship Baptist Church, threatened with demolition, is Atlanta’s oldest independent African-American Baptist congregation. Mt. Vernon Baptist Church, also threatened, was forced to move in 1955. While each congregation will determine its response to threatened displacement, the larger African-American community and Atlantans have interests at stake.
The city and the team have exported civic responsibilities to provide sufficient parking onto nearby black neighborhoods. Too little on-site parking and inadequate traffic and parking regulations have led to illegal, informal parking lots. Neighborhoods pockmarked with infrequently used parking lots will not be developed.
As the Dome’s negotiations concluded, there was an ostensible commitment of no event parking west of Northside Drive. The city subsequently approved parking lots for multiple properties west of Northside Drive. Original promises were further abrogated by the Arthur Blank-owned Benjamin Enterprise’s purchase and operation of parking lots west of and on Northside Drive opposite the Dome.
A publicly obscure element is the Falcon’s capture of all commercial activity. The team will receive stadium revenues from their games and other activities. The Falcons corporatized revenue streams from a public building.
Typical versions of stadium finances cited a $200 million public commitment. State law requires the stadium to receive 39.3 percent of the $43 million hotel-motel tax annually, rising with inflation and over time amounting to $500 million-plus in public funding.
The promise of Community Benefit Agreements requiring neighborhoods’ signatures before money flows to the Falcons when the City Council endorsed the stadium has been unilaterally appended with a $45 million budget. The Blank Foundation’s $15 million seems genuine. The $15 million in Westside Tax Allocation funds is likely money previously committed. The final $15 million in private contributions would be welcome.
Invest Atlanta as administrator of these funds is worrisome. The types of economic development it touts refers to capturing dollars from fans and central business district development, not contending with impoverishment. Many problems affecting poor neighborhoods would be exacerbated by “market” solutions, so turning to a private-sector oriented organization instead of a central role for neighborhood-based development corporations — which the neighborhoods sought — could mean trouble.
Larry Keating is professor emeritus of the City and Regional Planning Program at Georgia Tech.
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