It’s been talked about for decades, so there’s much precedent for skepticism, but a MultiModal Passenger Terminal in the downtown “Gulch” between CNN and Underground Atlanta is closer to happening than ever before.
The Georgia Department of Transportation has contracted with a trifecta of developers to incubate a master plan, and the main players have begun taking their mission public.
“We are known for doing a lot of highway projects and we do those very well, but the department is totally committed to getting this project to the end,” Derrick Cameron of the GDOT said at a recent public information meeting. “This is one of the most important projects in the history of the Georgia Department of Transportation that we’ve started.”
John McColl, executive vice president of Cousins Properties Inc., said, “This decision by the state is very much like other transformational decisions that we’ve made — like the airport, like the decision to go after and win the Olympics.” Cousins is one of the developers selected for the project, along with Integral Group and Forest City Enterprises, a Cleveland-based real estate company.
“We’re still chasing that dream of being a world-class city,” McColl said. “Every other world-class city has a transit hub. We don’t.”
Of course, there’s much work to be done, including negotiating with the freight train companies — CSX and Norfolk Southern — that own and use the rails running through the Gulch: They are going nowhere.
In fact, there’s a chance they will add tracks in the future, increasing freight traffic through an already-congested downtown corridor.
Wisely, the terminal developers have embraced CSX and Norfolk Southern early in the process.
“They have brought us in on the front end,” said Joel E. Harrell III, regional vice president for Norfolk Southern in Atlanta. “They seem to grasp the concept that if our freight service is not taken care of in whatever they’re looking to do, then the project is not going to be successful. We have to protect the freight franchise that both us and CSX have back through that corridor.”
Is the MMPT something that will earn the rail companies’ support in the end?
“It depends on what they put on the table,” Harrell said. “We’re trying to lay groundwork now so that what they propose would be something we could live with. We won’t know that until they come back with something that’s more than a broad Magic Marker line on a photograph.”
Steve Potter, a vice president with CSX, based in Jacksonville, said, “It is hard to handicap something like this. There are so many moving parts, all the environmental analysis. There could be any number of stumbling blocks. Real estate is going to be a big challenge.”
Funding is another mountain to scale. These developers were chosen, in part, because they have public-private experience in big projects — commercial, housing and transit — where business helps pay the costs and attracts federal funding.
“We know people who said they want to be [around the project],” McColl said. “This is a project that will attract attention nationally.”
A mega-terminal downtown may still feel like a longshot.
Then again, unheard-of things are happening: The Beltline is circling the city. The Atlanta streetcar is on track. A regional transportation sales tax is on the ballot July 31.
The last item is key.
“We all have a vote at the end of July,” McColl said. “And if we don’t vote ‘yes,’ then the political will in Washington, D.C., will go away for us. It’s been made perfectly clear that our decision as a state and region on that question, about funding transportation improvements, is extremely important to the future of our being able to attract federal funds.”
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