Is it worth keeping the Falcons Downtown?

My knee-jerk reaction to articles about building a new Falcons stadium Downtown are that, heck yeah, the Atlanta Falcons should be in Atlanta, for crying out loud.  How would the Doraville Falcons sound?  Maybe we can call it the Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta MSA Falcons?

Then I remember that there is a reason I'm a finance major.  Making decisions like whether to spend gobs of public money on a new stadium should be made on stronger rationale than civic pride.  Rather, there are tools we can use to make rational decision.  One is calculating the net present value of the investment.  I found a frustratingly opaque report on the new Yankees Stadium, suggesting the stadium has a positive NPV.  One must assume the cost of bond financing is the discount rate?

There is also a ton of work out there suggesting that stadiums aren't really worth the investment, but in my brief research yesterday I couldn't find anything with actual analysis.  Sure, these stadiums cost a lot, but if they generate comparably large returns to the city, they can be worth it.

Is Peachtree-Pine foreclosure for real this time?

The original loan for the Peachtree and Pine shelter has been sold to Ichthus Community Trust, who has issued a notice of foreclosure.  The shelter has a month to pay off the $500,000 loan.  The shelter has been on the brink so many times in the past though, it is hard to believe they won't have some way to pull this out of the fire.

Playing the blame game with GA rail woes

I'm now done with the ULI competition, but have been hit with some sort of sinus infections/cold.  I'm fairly useless right now to be honest.  I woke up around 8, ate some breakfast, and fell back asleep until 1.

I flagged some articles that came out during the competition, and so right now I'm getting a chance to address them.  First up is the dust-up between John Lewis and Sonny Perdue.  John Lewis said the reason Georgia didn't get any rail money is because of failure from the state leadership, i.e. Perdue.  Perdue responded by saying, basically, "hey, you guys sure got a lot done with all your seniority and influence.  way to go guys.  I'm totally committed to rail, btw."  Lewis responded by basically saying, "yo, I've brought home the bacon plenty, stfu."

“I have said for years that Georgia needs a comprehensive, regional transportation plan to solve our problems. That is not the responsibility of any federal authority, but it rests squarely on the shoulders of the governor.... 

“I have done my part and will continue to bring federal money home to the people of Atlanta. Now it is time for other responsible officials to do theirs.”

So.  Who to blame?

ULI Madness, 2010 version

So we have shipped our submission for the 2010 ULI Urban Design Competition.  The architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design folks have pulled an all-nighter.  We've tweaked and fixed and gone over everything a million times, and finally had to just stop and mail the damn thing.  Like last year, I had the opportunity to work with some fantastic folks at Georgia Tech and I had a great time on the project.  The team this year was Luke Wilkinson, Claire Thompson, Louis Johnson, Jason Combs, and myself.

Last year I just posted the pretty pictures from the submission, but this year I'm putting up the entire submission and my pro forma summary board.  This year's site was in the East Village in San Diego.  You can see photos of the site here.  The challenge was to come up with a new catalyst for a distressed urban area given current market conditions.  The site seemed to have every active fault line in San Diego, as well.

As far as our submission goes, I'll just let the boards speak for themselves.  Click the pic below for a full-scale version of our submission.

[UPDATE:  The submissions that go to the ULI are judged blind.  While we are all very proud of the work we did, we decided it'd be best to take down the images in the rare case that someone at ULI is on the interwebs reading this little blog.  I'll put the images up later on in the year after judging is done.]

A few notes on the pro forma board - the ULI competition tries to use current market conditions, but it is very difficult to be realistic about things like rental rates, absorption rates, and constructions costs and still be able to present anything to actually develop.  It is fundamentally and Urban Design competition, not a real estate development competition.  The plans need to be relatively feasible, but the financial analysis portion is used to support the design/planning component.

Additionally, the ULI competition uses a heavily simplified pro forma that does not include most of the details and costs that I would normally include in a development pro forma.  Past winners have used what I considered unrealistic assumptions. So, the pro forma below is designed for what I refer to as "ULI world," and is not representative of types of assumptions or the level of detail I would typically go into for an analysis.

[UPDATE: Like with the design boards, the pro forma has been taken down for the time being.]

Ho hum, more bad news for rail advocates

Via reader AM, I see that Georgia will keep falling behind when it comes to transit.  This time it is high speed commuter rail.

Georgia appears to have won as little as $750,000 from the $8 billion pool of high-speed rail grants that President Obama was scheduled to announce this week...

The money to be announced Thursday would pay for three feasibility studies, at $250,000 each...

Last fall, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told a number of states, including Georgia and Florida, that they had better get their act together on rail transit or risk losing out on the high-speed rail grants.  In a special session weeks later, Florida voted additional annual funding for one rail transit line and expedited buying track for another.

Folks, just because Atlanta is a transportation hub doesn't mean that we automatically qualify for stuff.  We simply aren't doing the hard work required to move the state forwards.  This shouldn't surprise anyone - certain I'm not surprised.  

Requisit streetcar linkage

Related to streetcars, Maria Saporta has an article up that takes the Siemens event and uses it as a jumping off point to slam Atlanta's inaction on transit.  I personally am exhausted thinking about all that stuff, and I'm amazed she has the fortitude to keep on following this stuff and writing about it.  If we ever get a viable transportation system in this city, Maria Saporta will be a huge reason why. 

All things streetcar

I know posting has been light.  I'm busy playing with spreadsheets and what have you for the ULI project.  I did manage to squeeze in an interview last Friday for the Metblog, though.  Some folks at Siemens were having an event Downtown promoting a streetcar they were shipping from California to Charlotte, and asked the Metblog folks if we wanted to do an interview. 

I jumped at the chance, since the local streetcar initiative is something I've been following for about the last six years.  I even worked on some legislation in 2004/2005 when I worked at the Capitol.  The interview was a lot of fun, and I think you guys will really enjoy it.  The first thing I asked was about the technology behind overhead lines vs. the alternatives. 

My favorite line was a bit later from Ken Cornelius, the CEO of Siemens One.  He was talking about all the things we use to pitch Atlanta - the climate, the universities, the culture, etc.  He wrapped it up with a case for transit: "This would be paradise if it weren't for the traffic."

Anyway, go check out the interview at the Metblog.  I broke the audio up into 2 to 3 minute sections so they are easy to digest.  You'll also get to hear yours truly saying, "uh... um," a lot.  Let's just say there is a reason I only did one semester as a college radio dj, and a reason I chose to do a blog and not a regular podcast or something.