He says he’s not interested in playing the role of a real estate developer. But Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed has clear ideas about how the city should be shaped and how city-owned property might play a role.
Reed wants to sell to developers about 100 acres of public property — Turner Field, the Civic Center and Underground Atlanta – that he hopes will further propel a burgeoning downtown revitalization.
And May 1 the city confirmed it has a joint $12.6 million bid with Friendship Baptist Church to buy out of bankruptcy proceedings the 37-acre Morris Brown College campus just west of the planned $1.3 billion Falcon’s new stadium.
Many past Atlanta mayors have preached the gospel of urban renewal. But this time, Reed says, things are different. A recession-scarred real estate industry appears eager to turn Reed’s vision into reality. With the new stadium, the roughly $100 million Atlanta Streetcar and other multi-million dollar projects in the works, there’s more investment in downtown than at any time since the Olympics.
Add to that the soon-to-open Center for Civil and Human Rights, the College Football Hall of Fame, growth at Georgia State University and plans for more than 500 apartment units downtown, and Reed sees an opportunity to shape Atlanta for decades to come.
“When I finish,” Reed said, “the city is going to have the strongest spine it’s ever had before.”
Selling Turner Field, the Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center and Underground also could free up cash to allow the city to address about a quarter of the city's more than $1 billion infrastructure backlog, he said.
Developers and downtown boosters have roundly applauded the land sale plans, but some in the business community privately have expressed concerns about whether Reed’s team and its economic development arm, Invest Atlanta, have too much on their plate. Invest Atlanta will oversee the sale of the projects to private firms while having key roles in projects such as the Falcons stadium and Beltline.
Reed is “going to have to rely on the private sector to get all this done – the real heavy hitters,” said A.D. Frazier, the business insider who helped stage the 1996 Summer Olympics. “I don’t think he can command access to capital — but he can be an enabler, make it easier for the private sector to do.”
All in the timing
Reed took office amid a development standstill. By many measures, the Great Recession hit metro Atlanta harder than most of the nation’s big cities in both foreclosures and job loss.
The region is still 25,000 jobs shy of its peak seven years ago, and its unemployment rate has been above the national average for much of the past six years.
But if Reed’s first term was spent keeping the city afloat, his second coincides with what appears to be a rebounding market.
Houses are for sale. Others are under construction. The massive Buckhead Atlanta redevelopment is humming along. The city’s population is climbing back from a sluggish 1 percent growth between 2000 to 2010 to about 6 percent from 2010-2012.
Much of the city’s growth has flocked to Buckhead and Midtown, but Reed hopes a reinvigorated downtown will become a magnet for young professionals. Millennials want the thump and grit of an authentic city.
Atlanta officials likely will turn over authority of Turner Field, Civic Center and Underground to Invest Atlanta, which will set general guidelines for development and design and oversee a bid process. The private developers that win the bids will own the sites and develop them.
During an interview in his executive library, Reed sketches a map on a cocktail napkin showing how he’ll use these city properties and other intown landmarks to re-imagine downtown Atlanta.
On his map, Reed ticks off pockets where he’d like to clean up blight. With pen strokes he directs university energy from Georgia Tech, Georgia State and the Atlanta University Center toward the verve of the Beltline and Ponce City Market, once owned by the city but sold to private developers. The $200 million-plus Ponce City Market redevelopment, the former City Hall East, will open this year.
It’s a vision that could shape not only the city, but Reed’s still nascent legacy.
Developer Tim Holdroyd thinks the time is right to sell the aging assets.
“All of this is about market timing, and the market right now is insatiable for that type of dirt,” Holdroyd said of the Civic Center’s 16 acres.
Timing may appear to be right for the market, but there are doubts the city can successfully manage so many projects. Atlanta officials have stayed on track with the Falcons stadium, but is far behind on projects like the Atlanta Streetcar. The four-car system was once planned to open in fall 2013, a date now pushed to late summer.
Meanwhile, the city recently lost two key executives: chief operating officer Duriya Farooqui and Invest Atlanta CEO Brian McGowan.
Frazier believes while Reed has improved Atlanta’s reputation for being a difficult local government when it comes to business deals, suburbs like Cobb County, where the Braves are moving, have capitalized on being nimbler.
Skeptics also wonder if there’s a realistic centralized vision to draw wide support.
After all, the city’s last economic development plan was created in 2004, projecting five year goals for then-mayor Shirley Franklin. A spokeswoman for Reed said the administration is finalizing a new roadmap.
“You really do need a master plan and a strategy on where you’re going,” Cathy Woolard, former president of the Atlanta City Council. “If you don’t have the capacity to pull it all together, you run the risk of stalling out.”
Still, Cousins Properties CEO Larry Gellerstedt expressed confidence.
“There’s a lot of real estate there, and it’s going to require that the mayor and the city have the resources on it to process it in a way that gets the intended result,” Gellerstedt said. “I’m giving this city and this mayor the benefit of the doubt. He’s delivered what he’s promised.”
Reed is confident, as well. Where his team lacks, he said, he can engage the Atlanta Committee for Progress, a round-table of top Atlanta executives, for guidance.
He believes his chief role is to “create an environment for investment.” He points to his work in the Atlanta Police Department — achieving a long-sought goal of 2,000 police officers, a factor that could have contributed to crime rates falling to their lowest levels in decades — as key reasons for renewed downtown interest.
Not all of the coming changes were of his choosing, of course. Reed was blindsided by the Braves’ announcement that the team is leaving for Cobb, but has since quickly acted to find a replacement buyer.
At least four development teams have shown interest, said Reed, eager to show how quickly The Ted, and city, will rebound.
Still, these redevelopment visions aren’t without controversy.
Since even before Reed took office, the city has been locked in years-long litigation with the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless over a variety of issues, including one filed in 2009 in which the force says the city and business community conspired to run the shelter out of the area of Peachtree and Pine streets. Reed has said cleaning up that corridor is key to achieving a more prosperous area.
On the other side of downtown, residents near the future Falcons stadium worry about the impact of gentrification as the project takes shape.
Talk to Julian Bene, often the lone naysayer on the Invest Atlanta board, and there’s another thing to consider: how to balance affordable housing with economic development.
Bene applauds projects like Ponce City Market as transformative for communities and says it’s already spurred job growth with companies including Athenahealth relocating to Atlanta.
Still, that success has translated into higher rents, with rates skyrocketing in parts of town. Some have criticized the housing prices at Ponce City Market, with projected monthly rents as high as $3,000 and some “affordable” units listed at $1,000.
“There is concern about affordable housing as a strategy,” Bene said. “Ultimately someone is subsidizing it.”
But while Bene says affordable housing in the hottest neighborhoods could be a challenge to development, he believes Atlanta has a plethora of land that could be developed to off-set those high rates.
“I would hope the market takes care of this and provides apartments at sensible levels of rent,” he said. “Not (in the most popular neighborhoods), but parts of town that remain accessible to jobs.”
A legacy yet told
Every mayor steps away from office with a legacy, be it airport expansions, the Olympics or infrastructure.
Sam Massell was the mayor that ushered in rapid rail. Ivan Allen helped integrate the city and keep the peace during the Civil Rights era. Maynard Jackson was the airport mayor, not to mention the first African-American to hold the city’s highest office. Andrew Young, among other things, brought in international investment.
Shirley Franklin started the Beltline, rebuilt relations with business and citizens following Bill Campbell’s scandal-filled reign and then was forced to confront federally-ordered improvements to the city’s water and sewer system.
With Reed starting his second term, potential narratives of Reed as the stadium or real estate mayor have emerged. But if allowed a say, he hopes to be remembered as the mayor who kept the city’s financial wheels on during the worst of the recession.
One thing is certain, former city council president Woolard says: Reed is keenly mindful of his moves.
“I think the mayor’s legacy is yet to be told,” she said. “But I think he’s somebody who is very interested in picking the right choices.”
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