Terminal Station

This train is leaving the station

2010-06-28T17:59:00.001-04:00

I have not been posting lately for a few reasons. I graduated, so some of the time I've been taking it easy. Another factor is that since I am not in school, I am frankly less driven to write. Part of my writing here is a result of the intellectual stimulation of graduate school, as well as a bit of a stress release.

The other big reason that I have not been writing is that I have spent a decent amount of time looking for a job. Now, I've found a job that I think is a pretty good fit. The position is at a real estate/development consulting firm, doing primarily New Market Tax Credit work. I'll be doing financial and market analysis, some asset management/project compliance stuff, funding applications, etc. I'm very excited about the folks I'll be working with - they all seem quite intelligent, hard working, and amenable.

The only catch is that the job is in Chicago. As readers of this little blog, you are probably quite aware how much I love Atlanta. It would take a very good opportunity for me to leave - and I think this job is a great opportunity. So I'm moving. I'll be in Chicago looking for a place to live next week, and moving the week after that.

Terminal Station retrospective and reminiscing after the jump:

Terminal Station has been up for a little over two years - the first post was May 20, 2008. The blog was never more than a side project, although I've had a lot of fun writing it. I've enjoyed having a forum to post my gripes, thoughts, and stories relating to the city, even if it sometimes feels like I'm just shouting out into the void.

I think blogging is an inherently narcissistic act, that you can't really do for any reason other than you like to hear yourself talk. In that respect I guess it has been incredibly satisfying, but it is much more rewarding when I get emails and comments from readers who appreciate whatever perspective I'm able to bring to an issue.

I was never the kind of blogger who was going to write every day, multiple times per day. I would sometimes get on a roll and I'd see traffic spike, but was always unable to keep up the pace. My most ambitious project was analyzing the APD crime data, which resulting in the highest traffic day right after posting the GIS maps my fantastic friend Cassie created for me. Like so many things with this site, I never finished all the slicing and dicing of the data that I wanted to do. However, I was quite pleased by the work we did get done (with much help from Cassie and El Hermano).

I'm not really sure why, but my post about the change in DOT leadership is the most-read post by a far - 5 times more read than the next most popular post, in fact. My complaints about Mary Norwood were also popular. FTR, I did gain a begrudging respect for Norwood's campaigning ability, although I'm still not a fan of her legislative abilities.

My favorite posts include:

My analysis of the Medical Arts Building as an example of why so much of Downtown remains underutilized.
My rants about Rob Pitts proposed new Central Library
The APD crime data topic/series
All the development/architecture stuff like the CCHR plans

Topics that I wish I did not have to write about include:

The Central Library stuff
Zombie toll road tunnels and anything having to do with John Oxendine (seriously people, do not elect this man)
APD crime issues (duh)
The City of Buckhead movement

I will be back in Atlanta to visit quite regularly, but otherwise I'll be up north. I will be in Chicago for the indefinite future. I'm excited for many, many reason. One friend reminded me that I'll only be three hours from my beloved Blimpy Burger and Michigan football. I'm also super psyched to live in a city where I won't need a car.

I am leaving the blog up on blogspot, although I won't be renewing the www.Terminal-Station.com domain name. TerminalStation @ gmail.com will still get forwarded to me if you need to get in touch for some insane reason.

Thank you all for reading! Goodbye for now.

Paddling week recap

2010-06-12T13:29:00.000-04:00

I am back in Atlanta, getting ready for the US-England World Cup game. Overall, the trip was great. Shook off the rust, got a lot of time in the boat, disconnected from things a little bit.

Kayaking is very spiritual for me - I had forgotten what a great metaphor the river is for how to live one's life. I'll spare you the philosophical musings, but suffice to say that kayaking is an important part of my mental and spiritual health. I felt good to get back in the water again.

Day five on the river was very good. I had a few combat rolls, no wet exits, surfed a little bit, and just overall felt much more comfortable on basic maneuvers.

I also wanted to go ahead and post this photo before I left town again. It is a picture from a 1990 parade in Downtown as part of the 1990 International Raft Rally/ Project RAFT event. The event was apparently organized by Russian and American rafters to promote peace between the nations. There was a raft event at the Nantahala Outdoor Center, and a parade in Atlanta. I love that you can see the construction of the 191 tower in the back. Sorry for the picture quality - I had to take a picture of the framed picture.

Day four on the river: Section III

2010-06-10T20:42:00.001-04:00

So we spent today running part of the Chatooga. As much as I hate to admit it, I am basically a beginner again. Some stuff has come back to me, but for the most part I am very sloppy on the river. No spills or anything since the first day, but more narrow recoveries than I'd prefer.

Still, a good vacation so far. I'll be back in Atlanta tomorrow night and am having a few folks over for the World Cup game. Then I'm flying out Sunday morning for a few days in Chicago. After that maybe I'll have a chance to research that NOC parade picture and get to a few other things, like the MARTA project.

Beginning to feel it

2010-06-08T22:19:00.001-04:00

Today was an improvement on yesterday. I'm shaking off the rust a bit and remembering how the river feels.

One great thing about paddling is that it really puts everything into perspective and forces you to focus on being in the moment. It is very hard to worry about the job market when you are trying not to drown.

The pic above is the Nantahala around sunset. The main restaurant here has a picture of a parade down Peachtree street from 1990 that I'm going to have to research. You can see 191 being built in the background. I snapped a pic and will post later.

Day one on the river

2010-06-07T17:30:00.001-04:00

The first day on the river is done. I am beat up a bit, but had a blast. The day's data: three or four nice rolls on the lake in the morning, one combat roll on the river in the afternoon, and two swims in the cold, cold, Nantahala. After two years out of the boat, I am rusty.

It felt great though, and I have high hopes for tomorrow. Hopefully the bloody shin above is the extent of my injuries.

Graduation present

2010-06-06T19:19:00.001-04:00

I am spending the next week at the Nantahala Outdoor Center for a week of kayak instruction. This is my graduation present to myself.

I do not have direct internet access, but my phone is working and I can send emails with it. Hopefully I will have some pictures from each day and Terminal Station may turn into a travel blog for a week. Hey, it's not like I've been writing about real estate anyway, right?

Above you can see the lovely cabin I'm staying in. It smell like wet dog inside. La Novia asked me if this was summer camp for adults - it probably is, down to the smells.

Downtown scenes

2010-06-03T23:07:00.001-04:00

I love this piece of the Federal Court of Appeals in Downtown. It always makes me think of foggy London streets or some such romantic thing.

I took La Novia on a brief walking tour of Downtown this evening, something I never seem to tire of. Unlike many of my friends, she is willing to tolerate my constant history ramblings.

Test mobile phone post

2010-05-30T15:09:00.001-04:00

I'm testing out my new Google Nexus One - a graduation gift from El Hermano and La Novia. I'm watching the Braves play, and they have finally started to play like I thought they would at the beginning of the year. Troy Glaus has really started to come around and Jason Heyward is as advertised.

I didn't expect much from Melky, so I haven't been very disappointed. I'm not as concerned about Yunel as some folks - injuries take a while to come back. from in baseball and he is 3 for 3 today as I write this.

Hopefully I'll get back into writing again. I stopped around finals, and just got lazy about it. I'll try and have some posts up his week before I go on vacation next week.

Peachtree-Pine foreclosed, finally

2010-05-05T23:53:00.000-04:00

It appears that the Peachtree and Pine shelter has finally gone through foreclosure. I think this is really just the end of round 1 - the shelter is suing the city and downtown booster organization CAP for conspiring against the shelter. On top of that, the Task Force for the Homeless is suggesting that they aren't moving, despite having lost ownership and control of the building. Now, the new owners haven't told the shelter they have to leave, or put a timeline of it if that is the plan, but it appears the Task Force is anticipating more conflict:

Beaty says she hasn’t yet heard from Fialkow, but would resist any effort to oust the shelter and its residents — which she says averages 700 men a night — from the building.

“We’re here and we’re going to be here,” she says. “These men have nowhere else to go.”

That is a threat, right? Is the Task Force hoping that the new owners will try to force them to leave, and we'll all have to watch the performance theater of police officers kicking homeless people out of the shelter? Is there another way to interpret this statement?

I'd feel a lot more sympathy for the Task Force if they, like, paid their bills. I understand that the city and the federal government stopped funding the Task Force a few years ago. It is their prerogative not to fund the organization. I suggest you read this 2008 Creative Loafing article that helps put the situation in some perspective. The Task Force has not evolved over the years, and has slowly alienated everyone that should be on their side.

Also, the article notes that the Task Force got the Peachtree-Pine building as a donation originally - when did they take out a mortgage on it, and how exactly did they intend to pay that mortgage down? How else did they see this ending?

Selling Underground a great idea in theory

2010-05-05T09:00:00.000-04:00

Stephanie Ramage reports that the idea of selling Underground Atlanta was floated at the city's budget hearings. Councilwoman Yolanda Adrean suggested it, which prompted an interesting reaction from Councilman Ivory Young:

Councilman Ivory Lee Young Jr. expressed concern about what would be at the site if Underground wasn’t there. He said he was puzzled as to why so many people—Georgia State students, state employees, tourists—go through near by Five Points MARTA station each day, but fail to leave spend any money at Undergound, which has lost money for years.

Really? How can this confuse you? Presumably Councilman Young has been to Five Points recently, but every time I've been one of those 'many people' going through Five Points, it has been for the sole purpose of, well, going through Five Points. When you are commuting you don't just decide to stop and see Underground - you are trying to get to work on time, etc. It also isn't like Underground catches your eye from Five Points, either, assuming you even leave the station. The number of commuters at Five Points doesn't really translate into traffic counts like on a main arterial road. As one of the many GSU students who works a block from Five Points many days, I rarely cross the street even to Five Points Plaza, much less Underground. Why would I? There is nothing there to do. It fails as a destination in its own right.

I agree with Councilwoman Adrean that selling Underground makes a lot of sense. The city should not be in the real estate development/property management business. Municipal government is a services business, and their role is to provide basic services that allow everyone else in the city to live their lives. There is no reason that Councilman Young should be trying to figure out why Underground is dead. It isn't fair to expect him to. He's not a real estate professional. The city should not be in this business.

This gets me to why I say selling Underground is a great idea in theory. In practice, who would buy Underground? At what price? I wouldn't expect anyone to buy Underground on a speculative basis, which means you are selling a piece of property that has historically lost money. It'd be great if someone who really knew what they were doing wanted Underground - an experienced retail developer like Jacoby or Simon might know enough about these sorts of spaces to turn Underground around. Thing is, the underlying fundamentals for the Five Points area are not good, so there is only so much you can do.

I am still of the opinion that the only thing which can revive Underground and Five Points is a new dormitory by GSU. There is no demand for anything else, really. I guess you could try locating more government offices in the area - y'know, since that has worked so well thus far. Other than GSU students, who would choose to live at Five Points? Sure, you have a few folks at Kessler Lofts, William Oliver, and the Metropolitan condos. I'd wager that existing buildings pretty much take up all existing demand for Five Points living that is not GSU-related. I don't think anyone in their right mind would suggest Underground as a location for a hotel or new office building. We've all seen that the existing retail space isn't in huge demand.

So I'm left with a dormitory. Perhaps the best-case scenario is for GSU to buy Underground from the city in a JV with an experienced retail operator, build a ton of dorms, and hope that will provide enough demand to lease-up the space in Underground with quality tenants. Maybe there are other institutional users who could be attracted to the space, or perhaps a private student housing developer would take a gamble.

Viewing city government as a services firm

2010-05-03T12:42:00.000-04:00

Via Marginal Revolution comes this interesting news item on improving municipal customer service:

Potholes, stray garbage, broken street lamps? Citizens of Eindhoven can now report local issues by iPhone, using the BuitenBeter app that was launched today. After spotting something that needs to be fixed, residents can use the app to take a picture, select an appropriate category and send their complaint directly through to the city council. A combination of GPS and maps lets users pinpoint the exact location of the problem, providing city workers with all the information they need to identify and resolve the problem.

...Developed by mobile solutions provider Yucat, the BuitenBeter app will soon be available for Android and Windows Mobile phones, too. Eindhoven has signed on for a twelve-month trial, and Yucat hopes to roll out the system to other cities in the near future.

San Francisco has allowed folks to send in complaints via Twitter for almost a year now. Looks like they are still active.

This seems like the sort of thing that Kwanza Hall would get on board with.

New urbanism and public health

2010-04-29T08:28:00.000-04:00

I'm quite positive that Decatur Metro gets more traffic than I do and doesn't need the help, but you should all check out the recent post by Andisheh (subbing) about public health, new urbanism, and Decatur. The funny thing about the post is that I was reading it in my RSS reader, and thought I was reading Creative Loafing until I clicked over to DM.

Transportation funding: I continue to see the glass as half empty

2010-04-26T09:05:00.000-04:00

So the legislature finally passed a transportation funding bill. You can get the details here, here, or here. A map of the various regions is here (PDF). Overall, I'm just glad that something passed, and I'm glad all the money stays in the region instead of going to build a highway to some rural politician's alpaca farm or something.

While probably not the most important aspect of the bill, the fact that MARTA got a three year reprieve on its 50% sales tax/capex spending limit is important. Unless there is some reason that MARTA cannot use its reserves (or I am blatantly misreading their financial documents), the system should be able to fund services for the next year. MARTA has enough weird rules and legislative stipulations that it is very possible there is some reason its reserves can't be dipped into, but I haven't heard of any reason why not. MARTA still has a long way to go before it is out of the woods, but this is good news.

I also want to make the point that a regional 1% sales tax is really only enough for metro Atlanta to just keep up. We are so far behind many of our competitors that this bill only brings us up to par.

Consider also that the sales tax only lasts for 10 year before it has to be renewed - will this qualify us for dedicated funding for federal transit grants? Forget transit grants - could a region feel confident in establishing a transit service if funding has to go for a vote ever 10 years, not to mention pass a regional political gauntlet to make it on the list? How many transit projects will we get passed when our region include Cobb, Gwinnett, Cherokee, and Rockdale? We might be surprised, of course.

One big plus is that 15% of the sales tax will go to local governments instead of regional projects (this is actually more for non-metro Atlanta regions). For a bill that is supposed to generate $750 to $790 million a year in the Atlanta region alone, thats no chump change - $112.5 to $118.5 million. If Atlanta gets 1/10 of that, it'd be $11-12 million/year - on top of whatever Atlanta-related projects the region elects to perform.

As long as this thing doesn't end up funding a zombie underground toll road, I'll be pleased.

The environmental cost/benefit of green building

2010-04-21T10:28:00.000-04:00

I've said before that I'm not really an environmentalist. I don't really go out of my way to be very 'green'. I care a lot about 'sustainable' development, but in my mind that embodies a lot more than just environmentalism and energy consumption. Still, I know that a lot of my readers care a lot about green buildings and so I thought I'd pass along this little video about green home building:

h/t: Andrew Sullivan

More MARTA funding b.s. ... I am Jack's complete lack of surprise

2010-04-17T23:54:00.000-04:00

I missed this a few days ago, but check out this exchange from House Speaker David Ralston being interviewed by Denis O'Hayer:

Ralston: I’m not sure MARTA has ever had very much support from the state. It was never designed to be state-supported. It’s an important part of a large transportation infrastructure in Georgia. But I think before we have any kind of serious discussion about how we right the ship, we need to find out how we got into the storm.

O’Hayer: Is there time for that?

Ralston: Probably not this session. I mean, that’s going to have to be an extended discussion looking at all the things I’ve mentioned. And I think that would be a discussion that would take a lot of time. More than 40 days.

More time? You mean more than the two years we've been talking about a regional transportation funding mechanism? More than the year and a half it has been since MARTA almost went broke and had to be bailed out by the ARC and the stimulus?

How can you not know?? Surely at least you have an opinion. Jill Chambers has an opinion. It is one I don't share, but she has an opinion. I have an opinion, as a lay-person and not as someone charged with setting public policy for the state, like Ralston. I believe that MARTA is funded primarily by a sales tax, and so during a major recession it is TO BE EXPECTED that funding would decline.

This is freaking ridiculous. At this point, it should not take any time to diagnose what is wrong with MARTA, at least if you aren't a state leader. Someone, anyone, in a position to make things happen, tell me what MARTA needs to do in order to please the GOP enough to get some help. A list of 10 things.

Hopefully I'll be able to take a look at MARTA's financials when I am finally done with this semester, so maybe I can help Mr. Ralston out.

Are large development projects set up to fail?

2010-04-16T08:23:00.000-04:00

I was reading this article about the Allen Plaza development, and I wondered if projects like Allen Plaza or Atlantic Station can EVER truly succeed. Now, I think both of these projects have succeeded in many ways, but they are both roughly half-built. For all the early success of Atlantic Station, the Atlantic condos are sitting empty and there are a lot of unbuilt development pads along 17th Street. Barry did great with the Southern Company building and the Ernst and Young building. The W almost went into foreclosure, though, and Barry is barely hanging on to the land for the rest of the project.

These are two projects that started off very hot at the right time - Barry was leasing up the office space in 2004 and 2005, and the Atlantic Station offices started opening in 2004. Now, who knows when they'll get finished. Despite how hot things were, there is only so much that you can build and absorb before things begin to cool down.

Frankly, I wonder if you could have EVER expected these not to falter. The development cycle is simply too short to build as much space as folks were planning.

I actually do agree with Barry that long-term, the pictures still looks good for Allen Plaza. I admit that I am biased, because I want to see Downtown succeed. I think one lesson here is that if you want to do something of this magnitude, you have to plan for the long-term and riding out at least one downturn.

What do you do about Turner Field?

2010-04-07T08:32:00.000-04:00

James and I were discussing this on our way to opening day. Everyone who goes to a Braves game says, "man, there could be so much more here." And there could be:

There's about 20,000 square feet of retail space within one half-mile of Atlanta's Turner Field, according to researchers from Georgia Tech. By comparison, Tech researchers found an average of 1.5 million square feet of retail space within the same distance of recently built baseball stadiums in Cincinnati, Denver, Pittsburgh, San Diego, St. Louis and Washington, D.C.

The comparison is pretty stark. There is simply nothing around the stadium. Part of this has to be the fact that 47 acres is owned by the Atlanta Fulton Recreation Authority, which has built ridiculous stuff like the Fanplex - which has been closed since 2004. Hey, it costs the city 35,000 a year to hold on to the property, but they aren't selling.

I have no idea if anyone has tried to buy land from the city before. As far as I know, there is no history of folks with big ideas for this area. For one thing, it has always been pretty rough - Summerhill rioted in 1966, in part because the area felt neglected by the city. The stadium was built in the area in the first place to try and revitalize it. That worked out well...

As a resident, I desperately want to see something happen here. As someone who wants to be in development, I don't know if I'd take the risk on a project there. There is a ton on potential - Capitol Ave is flanked by those huge parking lots that are just begging for some mixed use development. Georgia Ave has some great historical buildings and is a straight shot to Grant Park - I would actually walk home from the stadium when I lived over there. It wasn't so bad after games because there were a decent number of folks around, and it is surprisingly well lit.

It is easy to see the potential during baseball season - but what is going to happen to your retail and street life in the off season? I don't see the area supporting a lot of office space, and I think it'd be a hard sell at first for residential offerings. Even if you get into the idea of living near the stadium, what about traffic and noise all the time? It isn't like you can just walk somewhere from that area - you'd have to take a car anywhere, and who wants to fight game-day traffic half the year? Oh, and the crime. Who wants to live near a bunch of burnt out houses?

So there are definitely some challenges.

Some things I think need to happen for that area to get developed:

Better transportation - I'd love to see a streetcar going down Capitol Ave. How much would it cost to run a line from the stadium to Five Points, or up Capitol to GSU and then cut over on Decatur St to Five Points? My first reaction is that it isn't feasible, but I wonder if stadium attendees would essentially pay for service for the rest of the year.
Police Mini-Precinct. Do I really need to say more?
Get the Fulton County Recreation Authority out of the land owning business - there is no reason that folks like Nancy Boxill should be making decisions about what various markets for development are like. Let the ADA and the city approve a master plan, and then sell the property. Sell it outright if you can, or into a JV deal with the ADA as the public side if you absolutely have to retain some level of control.

On some level, the city has a damned if you do, damned if you don't choice here. If you hold on to the property instead of selling it, folks will write articles about what a boondoggle it all is when things stall or don't work out. If you sell it, and nothing happens, then you'll get a bunch of articles with city folks saying things like, "well, we have no control over what the developers do now" and they'll paint you like idiots who got fleeced for a low price, etc.

I think the best thing is to let the market take over a little bit - come up with a master plan, sell it to the bidder with the best plan and best history of success, and make sure the neighborhood involved with the decision. The last thing you need is to build something that pisses of the neighborhood - this should be a win-win situation. Tax the hell out of surface parking (but not deck parking) to make sure they can't just sit on it. Then get out of the way.

Happiness is a short commute

2010-03-31T09:59:00.000-04:00

Via Matt Yglesias, I note this piece from a recent David Brooks column.

If the relationship between money and well-being is complicated, the correspondence between personal relationships and happiness is not. The daily activities most associated with happiness are sex, socializing after work and having dinner with others. The daily activity most injurious to happiness is commuting. According to one study, joining a group that meets even just once a month produces the same happiness gain as doubling your income. According to another, being married produces a psychic gain equivalent to more than $100,000 a year.

One reason I fell in love with real estate was that I quickly realized that it tied together so many other disciplines. I was first exposed to these ideas as a 20-year old History undergrad, when I took a class called History of Suburbia. We talked about how living in far-flung developments and driving an hour to work every day inevitably leads to isolation. We talked about the costs of commuting and the effect on our physical health. We talked about the effect on youth, and how being chaperoned around for 16 years inevitably stunts development. Big surprise that everyone goes off to college and goes nuts - it's the first time in their life they've ever had any autonomy. We talked about the decline of communities, and the loss of public life. We also talked about red-lining and the racial history of suburbia.

The connection between our social, psychological lives and the physical way we live simply made sense to me. So I'm not surprised to see some quantitative analysis on how much we value the interactions that in-town living makes much easier. The fact that commuting is negatively correlated with happiness doesn't surprise me - not only does the actual commute suck, but it prohibits all manner of other meaningful activities. It is a lot harder to find time to socialize after work or have dinner with friends when you spend two or three hours a day commuting.

So you're telling me there's a chance

2010-03-30T16:25:00.000-04:00

In further sports blogging, Michigan and Notre Dame will take a two-year hiatus from their football rivalry in 2018 and 2019. Perhaps the long-rumored Michigan-UGA game can finally take place. Michigan beat writer Angelique Chengelis has her own list up. Her preferred teams:

LSU
Tennessee
Florida
Texas
Oklahoma
Nebraska
Virginia Tech

On a purely selfish note, I would love to see UGA and Michigan play. For starters, the two tradition and stadiums at the two universities should make any true football fan salivate - who wouldn't love to see Michigan between the hedges, or UGA in the Big House? Mostly though, I'd get to see Michigan play without having to go to Ann Arbor. Hopefully by then Michigan will be back in business and we'll put a hurtin' on the Dawgs.

At least I can do some sports blogging....

2010-03-26T17:46:00.000-04:00

I don't mention the alma mater too much - mostly in passing. I'm a big sports fan, but there hasn't been much to crow about lately. The Wall Street Journal even has an article about just how crummy it has been as a Michigan fan lately:

Let's not even bother trying to sugarcoat this. The University of Michigan's recent performance in sports has been as pathetic as any in the school's history.

The football team tanked, the basketball team collapsed and NCAA investigators turned their focus on Ann Arbor.

The school's typically brilliant hockey team was hardly a beacon of light in the darkness. It had such a lousy regular season that it was on the verge of missing the NCAA tournament for the first time in 20 years.

Yup, that's about right. However, the hockey team managed to win the conference tournament and get an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. What does the WSJ have to say about that?

And with two more wins, the Wolverines would reach the tournament's Frozen Four, which is being held this year in nearby Detroit. It's not the Final Four or the Rose Bowl, for sure, but for a suffering sports school, it would be something.

And who knows? If they win, they might be able to transform Michigan into a hockey school, if only until football season rolls around in September.

Wait a sec. That's just not right. (What is a blog for if not the kvetch?) In my experience, Michigan was ALWAYS a hockey school. Partly this was because in my tenure the basketball team was atrocious (smack in the middle of a 10-year NCAA tourney drought), but partly this is because everyone in Michigan seems to grow up playing hockey. Especially the yoopers. I remember Michigan hockey games being in many ways more fun than football games. I personally never went to a basketball game in my four years up north, but I went to my share of hockey games. As far as I'm concerned, Michigan is about as big of a hockey school as a major D-I school can be.

My apologies

2010-03-26T00:38:00.000-04:00

I didn't realize it had been so long since I last posted. I've been very busy finishing up my degree and with some extra-curricular activities. I should return to regular posting soon. There have been a number of recent articles I've flagged to talk about, but just haven't had the time to get my brain around.

Thanks for hanging in there with me, I'll get back up to snuff eventually. I graduate in May, which means after that I'll have more time than I want to spend blogging. Have I mentioned I'm super excited about graduating with a degree in real estate and finance in the middle of a recession? I'm just stoked.

Fallout of urban decline

2010-03-18T10:57:00.000-04:00

Economix has an interesting post about what happens when cities shrink. It dovetails nicely with the discussion we had last night in my Real Estate Finance class about the current dislocation between supply and demand nationally. My professor mentioned the idea of simply bulldozing houses to help reduce supply.

The third, and most extreme, approach is to bulldoze buildings and turn them over to some alternative use, like parks or agriculture. Razing empty, dilapidated, hazardous structures is fairly uncontroversial, but more questions must be raised if the mayor is going to forcibly move significant amounts of people in order to physically reshape large land areas.

If the residents of largely empty areas aren’t willing to sell and move, then we are back in the same quandary that always faces large public changes in urban land use, like the construction of G.M.’s Poletown plant. To what extent should a city put perceived citywide interests ahead of the wishes of individual property-owners?

If removing a largely vacant neighborhood really generates significant gains, then some sizable fraction of those gains can be given to the citizens who will have to give up their homes. If generous payments, rather than eminent domain, are used to move the remaining residents, then right-sizing can be win-win.

In Atlanta, the areas that have been in decline still have people - they are just extremely poor and neglected. Think English Avenue. In Detroit, these areas are just empty. This is a fairly random Google Streetview image of Detroit - I went to Google Maps and zoomed in on residential neighborhood sort of near Downtown. This is what you get:

There has been a ton written on the decline of Detroit, but I'm not sure we in Atlanta can appreciate what is going on there. Go on Google Maps and just scroll around the satellite images - you'll see areas with half the lots just empty. This is what happens when the economic base of a region collapses in slow motion for thirty years.

So, as negative as I've been about the economic prospects for Atlanta - hey, at least we aren't Detroit!

ULI boards and feedback

2010-03-16T10:48:00.002-04:00

We have finally received the feedback for the ULI competition that I mentioned previously. This means the main part of the competition is over and I can finally post our team's boards. See high res version here.

You can also view the pro forma here.

Our group made it to the short list (the top 29 out of 117 submissions), and many of my financial assumptions got high marks. Among the concerns were proposing too much new office space for a submarket with historically low levels of new office construction, as well as an over-valuation of the present land value. My market research seemed spot-on, but I think the proposed level of office space limited the financial portion to being slightly above average. I would have preferred more commentary, but I presume that our proposed uses of public funds, equity sources, etc., were all realistic or they would have had a problem with them.

The design scorecard was decent, as well - apparently many of the judges were skewed to 1's and 2's for what was considered average, but not terribly interesting, work. So our 3's and 4 were better than they look. The judges seemed to like many of our big-picture decisions such as relocating the city's proposed new central library. We also were painstaking about our parking plans, which paid dividends.

I should also congratulate the other local team, composed of Tech planners/designers and Emory b-school students, that got an honorable mention for "demonstrating excellent sensitivity to current market conditions."

While obviously we would have liked to have done better, landing in the top 25% isn't embarrassing, either.

Entrepreneurial cities

2010-03-15T10:24:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the lack of posting... real life has been very busy. I've been meaning to post something about City Hall East getting a new buyer, but can't seem to find the words. Jamestown has been involved with the White Provisions project, among the other major projects mentioned in the AJC. Hopefully they'll be able to get something done with the building. I'm not sure what else there is to say about the decline of Emory Morsberger's dream, other than I'm a bit surprised it took this long.

In other news, I'm much more interested in this post on CEOs for Cities and the accompanying PDF about entrepreneurial cities. The policy brief is from the same Edward Glaeser I linked in my last post, and makes some interesting points:

(1) Investing too much in attracting large, mature firms may not be good policy.

(2) There is little reason to have much faith in the ability of local governments to play venture capitalist. The best role for government is simply to encourage competition among local banks and financiers.

(3) There is much to be said for the strategy of focusing on the quality of life policies that can attract smart, entrepreneurial people. The best economic development strategy may be to attract smart people and get out of their way.

(4) Good universities have faculty members who are involved in local start-ups and train students who may become entrepreneurs and the employees of entrepreneurs. Imposing costs that restrict the growth of such institutions can be cost

My opinion generally is that cities and metro regions should focus on providing quality core services. I'm not ideologically opposed to government doing other things, but the fundamental job of city government is to keep people safe and to ensure that the city's physical infrastructure meets its population's needs. I would include education in the "infrastructure" category along with the traditional sewers, water supply, streets, etc.

So I'm basically reiterating my skepticism of pursuing tourist attractions and big businesses. Atlanta is already good at attracting young, educated folks. If we can focus on quality of life, basic services, and education. Create real communities that can attract and encourage entrepreneurs.

How will Atlanta recover?

2010-03-10T10:48:00.000-05:00

Via Rusty comes a NYT blog post about Atlanta and the potential for future growth. I've written before about the stagnant state of our economy, and complained about the lack of vision from our political and business leaders. What does Harvard economist Edward Glaesar have to say?

Yet there are three key reasons to think that Atlanta will weather this storm and continue to thrive.

First, Atlanta benefits from the fact that it is the dominant agglomeration in the region. The continuing vitality of large cities is a remarkable feature of our age and Atlanta benefits from that fact.

Atlanta also benefits from its business-friendly politics, which will continue to attract plenty of companies.

Finally, Atlanta also benefits from being highly skilled — something that outsiders too often forget.

Nearly 43 percent of adults in the city of Atlanta have college degrees, as opposed to 27 percent in the nation as a whole, and 41 percent in Boston. The figure is even higher in surrounding Fulton County.

Skills have long led to urban success, especially when mixed with large urban size.

Smart money never bets against the ability of a huge concentration of smart people to weather an economic storm. Don’t count Atlanta out.

Fairly encouraging, I'd say. It also relates to some stuff I've read recently about the relationship between an area's college population and economic prosperity.

Nearly 60% of a city's success, as measured by per capita income, is explained by the percentage of college graduates in a city's population. An increase in college attainment rates by one percentage point in the largest 51 metro areas yields $124 billion in additional personal income each year for the nation.

Scary ole Downtown

2010-03-04T11:39:00.000-05:00

This is pretty much a residential property's worst nightmare - a resident gets shot on the property, followed by the media talking about how scary and dangerous the place is. A lot of the quotes in the article are actually very positive about the property, which is the Pencil Factory Lofts just east of GSU on Decatur St. Residents call it "fairly quiet," say they never felt unsafe before, and that the incident is shocking. Still, one guy has to pull the "hey, this is downtown" card, which is annoying, like you just sign up for this stuff, y'know?

My problem is that the article indicates the victim was a GSU student who was apparently shot by someone he knew. The police think it might have involved selling drugs. It isn't like this is some random drive by in the sketchy part of town, and "you better watch out, because you never know what could happen in this scary part of town." The lesson is more, "don't hang out with drug dealers."

Maybe the AJC can focus less on what a scary place Downtown can be, and more on wtf a GSU student is doing selling drugs and hanging out with dudes that want to shoot him? I'm not naive - this stuff goes on all the time at every college campus in the nation. It went on at Michigan, and I'm sure it goes on at UGA. I don't remember anyone getting shot, but there were plenty of drugs in Ann Arbor and plenty of drug dealers who were crazy enough to carry guns around. But if the media is going to cover the story, maybe that's a better angle?

I suspect that GSU's location in a major metropolitan area (rather than simply in scary ole Downtown) means the professionalism of campus drug dealers is higher than at Michigan or UGA, and so guys with guns are more likely. Either way, I'm not sure the emphasis on the perceived danger of the location is fair.

Handel surpsingly sane on zombie toll road

2010-03-04T00:33:00.000-05:00

I don't really care about the Northern Arc. I personally don't care about traffic on 316, or in Sandy Springs, or any of that other stuff. What I do care about is the economic viability of the metro Atlanta region, because it affects the economic viability of Atlanta itself. So unfortunately this means I probably should pay more attention or give two figs about suburban traffic issues.

In my dream world, the city itself would have the resources to build a world class transit system within the city limits, clean up many parts of the city, and attract business Downtown on its own. That ain't gonna happen, so the best thing to hope for is some sort of regional transit solution and some refocusing on economic development for the region to try and catch up once the recession ends.

All of that is a long way to introduce this article about Karen Handel doing some posturing about the Northern Arc and some GDOT proposals for new highways up that way. It strikes me all as a bunch of B.S. campaign rhetoric, but one piece did catch my eye:

Handel said “we need to look at” some sort of connection between I-75 and I-85. As to another possible major toll project under debate, a north-south tunnel through east Atlanta linking Ga. 400 to the southern Perimeter, Handel said, “It’s absurd.”

At least one GOP candidate isn't completely insane. If I were handicapping the 2010 Governor's race, I'd have to give Handel pretty good odds.

She's politically savvy, and I can't think that she's ever lost a race she's been involved with (Perdue 2002, Fulton County Commission, Secretary of State).
She somehow navigated the insanity of the Fulton County Commission and came out looking relatively mature - no small feat!
She's managed to avoid all the mess at the Capitol, and has a much higher profile than someone like Eric Johnson who has been down there in the muck for years.
She doesn't have the ethical issues that Nathan Deal has.
Finally, she has an advantage over the Ox simply because she isn't a raving moron.

FWIW, this was my early take on the Atlanta mayor's race (about a year and a half out):

My thoughts on the race at present, subject to change: right now I think Lisa Borders has the inside position, and Kasim Reed will have the best machine. Mary Norwood could do surprisingly well - she is particularly attentive to the white middle class in-town demographic. If white females go for Norwood instead of Borders, Kasim wins.

A lot changed between then and the election, but I think I was in the ball park. So in that vein, my fearless take on the Gubernatorial election:

Handel is the GOP nominee. Eric Johnson does very well, but not well enough. Deal and Ox falter at the end. Handel beats one of those three in a runoff.
DuBose tanks. Barnes gets the Dem nomination, but Baker might make a strong run for it.
Barnes can't beat Handel - there simply isn't enough juice left in the old Democratic brand he represents. Dems are totally depressed about everything right now, turnout will suck. Handel wins 55-45.

Peachtree-Pine still alive

2010-03-03T11:18:00.000-05:00

Last month I wondered if the Peachtree and Pine shelter would manage to avoid foreclosure once again.

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.

To no one's surprise, the foreclosure has been delayed. Among the items I find I found interesting from Maria Saporta's article:

“We have an existing offer on the property for $4.2 million,” Hall said. “We have paid down principal and we’re current on all the interest that’s due.”

I'm skeptical about that, of course, but the $4.2 million is about half the $10.5 million they were asking for originally. At the time (a year ago), I noted that the $10.5 million seemed to indicate the shelter was serious about selling the building - although I said I wasn't sure if the price was "good," I thought it indicated a real intention to sell.

Finance and Football

2010-02-24T16:26:00.000-05:00

It has been a busy week - I've started another student competition, and I've had some mid-terms. Blogging has suffered.

I'll have to make do with a link to an interesting post from Smart Football about the financial elements of sports teams. The post deals with leveraged buyouts and how its relation to sports teams. I'm not sure how many of my readers share my love of sports and finance, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading about both at once.

The gang that couldn't shoot straight

2010-02-17T15:17:00.000-05:00

Can we do anything right? Atlanta has lost out on federal stimulus funding for the Peachtree streetcar line. This despite Kasim Reed going to Washington to personally lobby for funds. Oh, not to mention our massively influential senior Congressman who was surely doing everything in his power to further the cause of alternative transportation. Right? He must have helped out, right?

I mean, this is the guy who said of commuter rail funding, "I have done my part and will continue to bring federal money home to the people of Atlanta." That guy surely did everything possible to get the administration to fund this ready-to-go project, right? Anyway, I'm really glad we keep sending him back to Washington to fight for the things that are important to Atlanta, since that is working out so well for us.

Requisite sad panda at right. There really isn't a whole lot to say. Who did get funding? Cities who could contribute their own funds to the projects. From regional transportation sales taxes.

A transportation official in Atlanta noted that one of the likely winners that leaked out early, Tucson, Ariz., was paying more local money for its project's capital costs than Atlanta. Where Atlanta's application would put no local money toward the streetcar's construction, Tucson planned to pay a large portion of the building costs of its streetcar project itself, from a half-cent regional transportation tax.

Last weekend I ran into an old friend who lobbies the state for transportation and infrastructure issues - he told me I was to young to feel like it was too late for Atlanta to catch up with other metro areas when it comes to infrastructure and transportation. I'd LOVE to feel hopeful about things, but lately it is really, really hard.

Can anybody disabuse me of this notion?

Bueller? Bueller?

The difficult economics of urban revitalization

2010-02-12T13:10:00.004-05:00

A week or so ago, I got an email about the banners wrapping the Medical Arts Building, where Peachtree Street crosses the interstate Downtown. Thomas Wheatley and Maria Saporta tackled the issue, but I thought it would be more illuminative for my readers if I tackled the underlying problem. Namely, why the heck is this building still sitting empty downtown?

So I've been playing with some spreadsheets in my spare time over the last week. The basic question I'm trying to answer is, "What could you afford to pay for the building in order to renovate it as office space and make an acceptable profit?" The owners have suggested this is one option they are looking at, so it is what I've focused on since it is the most straight-forward option.

The building is for sale at an asking price of $11 million - it was bought in 2004 for about $5 million. For a starting place, consider that the already renovated and income producing Imperial Hotel nearby is valued by Fulton County presently at $5 million, and the Medical Arts Building is valued by the County at $3 million. So we have quite a discrepancy already.

You can see the details after the jump, but I've used a residual analysis to come up with an idea for the value of the building. Basically, you say, "It costs me X to renovate, I can sell it for Y, and I need to make Z profit. So I can afford to pay up to the amount that my profit drops to Z." (Feel free to download the spreadsheet and follow along. See below for important notes.)

The main findings are that a reasonable price that could be paid in order to redevelop the building for office use would be about $2 million. A reasonable top-line, in my estimate, would be about $3 million with a number of favorable assumptions.
Under absolutely optimum (read: completely insane and impossible) conditions, you could justify paying up to $7 million dollars for building, but this assumes minimal construction costs, maximum rent levels, very low cap rates, minimal T.I. allowances, adding the building to the National Register to qualify for maximum historic tax credits... a perfect storm of events no one in their right mind would bet on, which is what you'd be doing if you paid $7 million for this building.
It is much easier to see a scenario where construction costs are at their highest, rent levels stay very low, tenants continue to demand high T.I. allowances, it takes forever to lease things up, and cap rates move up. In that case, you wouldn't pay anything at all for the building because you'd never actually develop it. In case you were interested, this is basically where the market is now, although I think construction costs might have come down a bit from a few years ago. It isn't that the building is worth nothing, it is just that you can't do anything with it given present conditions.

The point of the analysis is to make this basic point - many, many property owners in Atlanta have completely unrealistic conceptions about what their property is worth. This fact makes is very, very difficult for areas like Downtown to have the type of turn-around we all want to see. Here, you have owners asking $11 million for a building, and the absolute maximum amount possibly justified that someone could pay for the building is $4 million less than that.

Now, it is possible that you can do some other analyses with a different use than commercial office space - you could run a boutique hotel scenario, or convert it to condos, etc. Perhaps a different scenario would be more profitable and push the value of the building higher, but I don't see any reasonable way you could justify paying more than about $4 million for that building, and even then I'd suggest you overpaid. It is probably worth analyzing the value of the property if you just tore the building down, as sad as that would be. [Ed. update: Some back-of-the-envelope calculations suggests that tearing it down would be more profitable. Assuming it costs around $900,000 to demolish it and the associated parking decks, you'd only have to get about $100/sf to exceed the $3 million mark.]

Realistically, the owners of this building overpaid when they bought it six years ago. They haven't done anything with it since then. Somehow they have held on to the property and not given it up in foreclosure, despite the fact that it doesn't produce any income [correction: it does produce some income in parking and with these billboards]. If they can keep holding on, I would be very surprised if anything happened to the Medical Arts Building any time soon.

If you want to see this building redeveloped any time soon, you are hoping it goes into foreclosure and a bank sells it for a realistic value to get it off their books.

If that wasn't a long enough post, you can see the details of my analysis after the jump. Be warned: full-on geek mode follows. I'm not sure how much will make sense if you don't know some level of real estate finance.

I was going to put my spreadsheet on Google Docs, but unfortunately it does not circular reference and iterations. So feel free to download the file here and play with it yourself. Make sure that you are allowing circular references by limiting the number of iterations to about 100. Try Preferences > Calculation > Limit iterations.

Hopefully I've built the spreadsheet to be robust enough that you can tweak the timing or inputs a bit and it won't break. If you do play with the timing, note that I've used a quarterly cash flow. Feel free to email me if doesn't seem to work, although I'd suggest you stay within the range of inputs I've used in the sensitivity analyses. I haven't tested it much beyond those parameters, and I've locked the non-input cells. It isn't password protected, however, so feel free to mess with it all you want.

Obviously, input values are rather important with this sort of analysis. Some assorted notes on my inputs and on the model in general:

I talked to a construction engineer at a larger company locally about some very generic cost estimates for a building of that size. He suggests that hard costs for this sort of building would run between $60 and $80 per sf.
I had a broker friend pull some current asking rents for comparable buildings, like the Candler Building, Hurt Plaza, and the Biltmore, and it looks like gross annual rent levels run from $15 up to $30 per sf. I also see some asking rents at Allen Plaza for $30 per sf, but also at the Candler Building. My starting assumption is $27, given the building's prominence, historic character, proximity to MARTA, and that you are spending enough on the renovation to be fairly competitive with places like the Biltmore and the Candler.
The building is eligible for a local property tax freeze, and qualifies for a partial Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit since it is old, but not on the national register. I've taken these into account, and also run some sensitivity analysis to see how important they are to the building's value (short answer: a lot). If I were aiming to rehabilitate the building using historic tax credits, I'd seriously consider trying to get it on the national register.
The historic tax credit is really an after-tax cash flow item, but I'm looking at before tax returns and so I've basically just wedged it into the cash flows. From that perspective it is probably undervaluing the tax credit, although I'm honestly not really capturing the full cost of the tax credit in terms of consultants and extra construction costs, either.
Additionally, the historic tax credit requires that you hold the building for 5 years, so I've included that as well. This model isn't quite robust enough to factor out a non-historic tax credit scenario, however. My instinct is that it might be slightly more profitable to do the deal without a tax credit and sell it early, but that it wouldn't dramatically alter the underlying conclusion, namely the discrepancy between the owners asking price and a realistic value of the property.
I've used some other assumptions that are certainly unrealistic in today's market, such as assuming the building could lease up in about half a year. The arguments there are a) the scenario takes place after the market recovers; b) you don't start construction until you've pre-leased some portion of the building. I'm also showing a traditional 20% equity requirement for the development. In today's market, that isn't realistic, either. In this model, I'm valuing the building off its unlevered cash flow, however, so it doesn't affect the valuation of the property - just the equity returns. Using a more realistic leverage ratio would bring the equity return below traditionally acceptable levels, but I see that as something that all projects are dealing with and not something specific to this building.
I haven't tried to break out all the soft cost items in much detail(architectural fees, leasing commissions, insurance, legal fees, marketing costs, etc.), but there is a small break-out of these costs on a different sheet if you are interested.
You can see some sensitivity analysis at the top right of the spreadsheet. Depending on how you tweak your inputs, you can arrive at a value that ranges from literally nothing to about $4.7 million. I've tried to use middle-of-the-road inputs as the base line, so if you want to get to the $7 million I mentioned above you'd need to tweak ALL the inputs in the model, not just the one or two that the sensitivity scenarios take into account.

UPDATE 2/22/2010: I tweaked the spreadsheet a bit, adding in a CapEx reserve and parking income. They essentially cancel each other out and don't change my valuation assumption.

Thanks for nothing, Sonny

2010-02-10T20:13:00.001-05:00

So MARTA met with Governor Perdue recently, and the word on the street is that Perdue is receptive to helping MARTA out with its finances.

Sometime next week, Perdue is expected to release the details of his first stab at a statewide plan to increase transportation funding. We’re told that the governor will recommend that MARTA be allowed to use a greater share of the Fulton-DeKalb sales tax to prop up its operations.

Perhaps as much as 60 percent, word around the Capitol says — with a sunset clause and other restrictions.

Based on 2009 sales tax collections of $327 million, the new leeway would permit MARTA to shift an extra $33 million toward payroll and other expenses.

Not enough to close what the transit agency says is a $120 million gap this year. But it’s something.

Are you kidding me?! Wow, how very generous! Apparently MARTA is going to get held hostage in regional transportation funding talks, as well. If Fulton and Dekalb legislators balk about adding an extra penny tax for regional transit funding, well, no help for MARTA.

First, I think Fulton and Dekalb legislators would be stupid if they opposed the regional sales tax. Yes, we already pay an extra penny that other counties don't because of MARTA - but sinking the regional transportation funding because of this would be cutting off our nose to spit our face.

(In make-believe world, I'd love to see MARTA get wrapped into a regional transit system that gets funding from all the metro counties and/or the state. I have no illusion that will happen, of course.)

So let me get this right..... the best we can get out of the state is letting MARTA use an extra 10% of the sales tax revenue, which will cover all of a 27.5% of the budget deficit. We could cover the entire budget deficit if they let us use about 87% of the sales tax, instead of the current 50%. Thats great. So MARTA is still screwed. I really don't see how this helps, and its fairly insulting to think that this is what it means when the Governor and the Legislature decide to "make nice" with MARTA.

With friends like these, right?

UPDATE: Political Insider's latest suggests that Perdue's MARTA plan may be to simply lift the 50/50 capex limit. It is a bit unclear, but they've posted a document outlining Perdue's "Transportation Resource Legislation" that simply calls for lifting the cap for three years. I'd still rather not see MARTA funding get tied up with something as messy as the regional transportation sales tax, but it is better than nothing. Hopefully state legislators (ahem, Jill Chambers) aren't feeling vindictive or petty, and the 50/50 cap is simply suspended instead of adjusted as first reported. So credit is due to Sonny Perdue if I'm reading the document correctly.

BeltLine picks lead design team

2010-02-10T19:32:00.000-05:00

The BeltLine has picked a great lead design team. Perkins + Will has some fantastic folks, and James Corner Field Operations was in charge of NYC's High Line (right), a model urban adaptive reuse parkspace. I know a few folks over at P+W, both personally and by reputation, and I hear nothing but great things.

Most importantly, for those of us frustrated with the pace of the project:

Project officials say the firms’ work will help make the endeavor more competitive for federal funding — which many say is vital should the Beltline become a reality much sooner than 2032, as Reed has said he’d like to see.

Fan-fucking-tastic. Now if we can only speed up the transit component...

Is it worth keeping the Falcons Downtown?

2010-02-04T08:16:00.051-05:00

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.

Downtown San Diego has had a pretty positive effect from subsidizing Petco Park - it has spurred a lot of new private development near where the ULI site was recently. Pittsburgh has an interesting relationship with the Steelers and the Pirates to leverage investment in new stadiums into new private development. Cincinnati has a similar situation where new stadiums have been part of large urban revitalization projects. Atlanta developers Carter and Dawson Co. are involved in that latest deal, btw.

Obviously the value of subsidizing a project depends on everything involved. The Georgia Dome area doesn't do very much in terms of helping out the rest of the city - it doesn't attract any other establishments near by, it doesn't draw residents, it never really drove any new private investment. It is important for the hospitality industry, and losing the Falcons would hurt Downtown in many ways. You would also have to assume that the ~~Chick-Fil-A~~ Peach Bowl and other events would follow the Falcons.

There are still a ton of unanswered questions - where would a new stadium be built? Can it be leveraged into new private development and the ever sought after urban revitalization, or would it simply be surrounded by parking lots? How might it fit into the City's Stadium Area TAD and the city's efforts over there? Could a new Stadium near the Ted drive the investment in a MARTA spur line or a streetcar line to the stadium area?

This is something I'll try and dig into more, but anyone who has done work on these sorts of issues is welcome to point me in the direction of resources.

Is Peachtree-Pine foreclosure for real this time?

2010-02-03T20:34:00.000-05:00

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

2010-02-03T15:57:00.001-05:00

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?
Well, obviously I think Perdue has not been much a leader on transportation issues. I give him some credit for going after GDOT and the culture there, but he hasn't had much success with it. Further, if he were actually committed to rail and alternative transportation, we'd have state MARTA funding, a commuter line running to Lovejoy (and probably Athens), and already be on our way to high speed lines to Chattanooga, Charlotte, or Savannah. All these ideas have been kicked around for years, yet none have gotten as much traction in the state as that tunnel under the east side.

However, you can't let John Lewis off the hook. Its nice that he can say he's been saying for years about this or that, but I can't say I've ever seen him as a leader on the issue of rail or transit. Let's take the BeltLine - this is a $2.8 billion project. So far the BeltLine has gotten about $20 million through the ARC, or less than 1% of the project costs. There is a fair amount of funding "anticipated," or "planned" down the line, but I know from speaking to folks who have been involved that funding is always an issue with the BeltLine. Where have you been, John?

All the commuter rail funding has been through David Scott, since it is mostly in his district. Not entirely fair to blame John Lewis for this, but still, not an issue he can claim leadership on. Lewis did apparently secure funding for the commuter rail hub downtown, so I'll give him that.

Overall, though, it isn't like Lewis has been an outspoken voice for rail and transit funding. To be honest, I don't hear him speaking about much, ever. I think it's pretty disingenuous for him to simply say, "I have done my part."

No. You are one of the most respected voices in Congress, and you are the House Majority Senior Chief Deputy Whip, one step below the Whip position. You are supposedly a powerful, senior legislator, who represents Atlanta. You represent a city where the number 1 issue, year after year, is transportation. Any time you want to raise attention on an issue, the papers will cover it.

It is not acceptable for you to simply blame Perdue, and then say, "hey, I did my part." Your job is to beat the drum, regularly, and say, "listen, let's build this rail to Charlotte," or, "Let's expand MARTA's service structure," and follow it up with, "I can guarantee X amount of federal funding, because I'm very important up here and this is a very important issue for me."

Then, when Perdue and the GOP dither some more, you scream, "Hey, do y'all want to move this region and state forward? What the hell are you doing down there?" Plenty of other people do this on a regular basis, but absolutely none of them have the power and influence you do. Consider all the legislative pressure you could put on issues important to the Georgia GOP.

I don't think John Lewis has remotely done enough to simply play the blame game.

ULI Madness, 2010 version

2010-02-01T21:42:00.004-05:00

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

2010-01-27T19:55:00.000-05:00

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

2010-01-25T17:56:00.000-05:00

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

2010-01-25T17:15:00.000-05:00

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.

Linkage - A is for Atlanta

2010-01-20T16:44:00.000-05:00

Local blog A is for Atlanta has moved - check out the new digs. Don't forget their ground-breaking work interviewing yours truly. The new site also has lots of new content if you are looking for a home and whatnot.

I may be detained

2010-01-19T10:59:00.000-05:00

Posting might be sporadic this week and next - I've entered the ULI Urban Design Competition this year, which started yesterday. I'm working with some great folks over at Georgia Tech, and hopefully we'll do well.

You can see excerpts from my entry from last year if you want. This year's site is an area in the East Village in downtown San Diego. The general issue at hand is what the recession and new realities about development will mean for cities - especially cities that had been using the condo/real estate boom as a revitalization plan. So I'm sure I'll have some commentary about how this all applies to Atlanta when it is all over.

This is getting a little ridiculous

2010-01-17T13:06:00.000-05:00

So Perdue has finally stepped into the transportation funding issue. I'm unimpressed:

The governor announced $300 million in bonded spending for road and rail projects selected by the Legislature. More importantly, he endorsed a statewide referendum that would allow regions of the state to levy a 1-cent sales tax on themselves for road and rail projects...

Perdue and Republican lawmakers now want the issue on a 2012 ballot – well after the governor leaves office. Perdue said the two-year delay was necessary to allow voters time to regain a sense of economic security, and to permit transportation authorities to draw up the lists of projects for voter inspection.

Galloway at the AJC attributes the delay to the rise of local tea party activists, which is quite possible. Any way you look at it though, it reeks of political cowardice.

I'm not really sure what else there is to say about it. If Perdue and the rest of the GOP fully realized how important a functional transportation system was to metro Atlanta (and thus the state's) economic future, we'd have had a solution several years ago. So it's really not surprising that Perdue, of all people, would want to push something into the future. God forbid he ever actually accomplish something as Governor.

Actual reporting from the GSU breakfast

2010-01-14T00:23:00.000-05:00

If you wanted to know more about what Ethan Penner had to say at the GSU breakfast earlier this week, there were apparently actual reporters at the event.

On requiring loan originators keep some of their investment instead of selling it all off:

“If I make a 10-year loan and there is no profit upfront, I had better make a good loan,” says Penner. “And I better hang out for most of the next 10 years, so that I can get paid for doing my job well. Then you will see discipline in lending.”

On unrealistic returns for real estate:

“The desire to get a real estate return in the high teens or 20% is piggish. It’s unrealistic,” insists Penner. “For investment managers to reach that kind of yield, they have to take undue risks, mostly in the form of extraordinarily high leverage, or development with crazy pro forma numbers.”

The whole article is good, I suggest you read it if you are into that sort of stuff (economics, capital markets, devastating financial collapses). A lot of it is stuff that was in the news more a year or two, but that doesn't make it uninteresting or mean the issue aren't still in need of attention.

Update on transportation funding

2010-01-13T11:41:00.000-05:00

Some sort of good news from Jim Galloway this morning - statewide transportation sales tax is dead, and folks are trying to get a local funding mechanism through:

House Majority Leader Jerry Keen said that, while road and rail projects in Georgia remain in desperate need of additional and permanent funding, a statewide sales tax isn’t the answer. Nor did Keen think the measure would pass his chamber – as it did last year, when pushed by Speaker Glenn Richardson...

As an alternative, Republican lawmakers think they may be able to find a way – through statute – to permit counties (read “metro Atlanta”) to band together to create tax districts and hold separate referendums to levy taxes.

This tax district idea may not turn out to be feasible/constitutional, of course, and as I've always maintained, the devil is in the details (especially with legislation). But at least the statewide idea is dead. Yet another reason I'm glad Glenn Richardson is gone.

Transportation funding: Are there any adults in the room?

2010-01-12T14:00:00.052-05:00

Check out Maria Saporta's latest on the transportation funding stuff working its way though the capitol:

We probably have only one opportunity to pass a new transportation funding tool for our region. So it is critically important that we make the right choices for our future transportation needs.

Here is the problem. A possible bill to allow the region to vote on a one-cent sales tax is in the works, but an integral element of that bill is a project list of what transportation improvements the region could fund.

And it’s the project list that worries me. Will it include the kind of transportation improvements that metro Atlanta will need for decades to come?

Given the agencies and people involved in putting together the project list, my fear is that it will include the same-old, same-old — roads and more roads with some limited transit projects thrown in.

I don't want to comment just yet on whether it is a good idea to support a bill with a list in it - the devil is in the details, and we don't yet know what will get through the legislature. However, I can't help but feel like this is indicative of a fundamental problem with how the state and region is governed.

There simply don't seem to be any adults in the room willing to make the tough decisions. The political leaders have not realized that the rest of the Southeast has passed us by, and the private leaders haven't done much to help. This isn't just all about politics - there aren't private leaders like there were in the 60's with Mills Lane and Robert Woodruff.

Listen to Hal Berry (again, from Saporta) talk about the competition:

“Nashville has become a great market for us,” Barry said. “Atlanta is sitting on its hands and feet on our problems. We are not getting it done on traffic.”

The economic development division in Tennessee also is “running circles” around Atlanta partly because it doesn’t have to deal the problems of a major city.

“Thy have a can-do attitude,” Barry said. Nashville also has a strong music industry, universities, the medical industry, and it is still small enough to get things done. “It reminds me of Atlanta several years ago.”

The region and state have been doing nothing for the last decade. Sometimes I wonder if Atlanta will ever become the world-class city it aspires to be... certainly not if things keep going like they are right now. We need leaders who can see beyond polls and tea parties, beyond identity politics, beyond short-term tactical calculations and ego games. We need civic leaders who care about Atlanta.

But we are too parochial - Gwinnett won't work with Fulton, the House can't work with the Senate, and no one will work with Atlanta. Georgia can't even work with Alabama and Florida to solve the water issue, which will put the kibosh on population growth anyway.

Sorry to be such a wet blanket. You guys know I'm about as big a home-town booster as you can be... but at what point do you just throw up your hands and go somewhere else? We are talking about a region with a stagnating job market, ineffective leadership, crippling infrastructure problems...

I don't think we are ever going to get to a point where I don't need a car to get around town easily. And I want to live somewhere where that is a possibility.

Depressing economic forecasting news

2010-01-12T11:04:00.002-05:00

I went to the GSU Real Estate Alumni Group's View From the Top breakfast this morning, where Dr. Rajeev Dhawan talked about his economic forecast. Short version: bad. No jobs until the end of the year. No new construction until 2012. Zombie banks, illiquid financial markets dominated by GSE. Requisite sad panda at right.

Some of his other points:

Personal saving is up, borrowing is down. The increase in savings isn't going into investments, it is going into bank reserves. Because there is no incentive for zombie banks to sell assets, the institutions with reserves aren't buying.
The Dow may be up, but the companies still aren't making profit. So they aren't investing. Companies are still in a "get lean" mode.
Dhawan thinks the population estimates for Atlanta are off. Based on the drop in sales tax revenue during this recession (higher than it should be), he thinks the next census will show a big difference in population from what is expected. We won't know until 2011, though.

Dr. Dhawan was followed by Ethan Penner, who if anything was MORE pessimistic about the state of things. I believe he said we were on the "precipice of complete disaster," citing increasing state and federal deficits among other reasons. Hooray! He also talked at length about the securitization of real estate financial markets since the early 90's. Some highlights:

Expectations for real estate performances are unreasonably high. While junk bonds are getting 9.5% yields, real estate investments are expected to throw off 15%-20% yields. The only way to get these returns is extraordinarily high leverage or essentially "cooked" pro formas with ridiculous assumptions. Real estate investors need to start expecting realistic yields in line with similarly risky assets - probably in the 9% range. (Obviously it depends on the product type, etc.)
The MBS and CMBS system was flawed because the originators had no incentive to originate high performing loans - they could sell them to investors, make a big bonus, and if the loan went into default it was someone else's problem. He suggested a "skin in the game" requirement/regulation. Penner is very much a free-market guy, and suggested we needed "smart regulation" instead of "more regulation".

Both speakers talked a bit about the RTC from the S&L days, and how we could probably use one. They also mentioned reasons it wasn't going to happen. Dhawan said that basically, if we had an RTC that bought up all the bad loans there wouldn't be any banks left. Also, the FDIC is broke.

Also - wtf, networking events at 7 AM? I had class until 9:45 last night, and got home at 10:15. All the breakfast stuff was nothing but processed carbs, something I avoid after dropping 40 pounds a year ago. So I had like ten cups of coffee on an empty stomach, after getting about five and a half hours of sleep.

All told, it was a thoroughly depressing morning. On the plus side, the event was on the 35th floor of 12th and Midtown, and I got to watch the sun rise over Midtown (Jeopardy answer: "What are signs you have scheduled your event too early?"). I got to have a little moment of zen before all the depressing news started.

Not-so-serious GIS maps!

2010-01-11T19:06:00.000-05:00

Via Decatur Metro, check out the NY Times Netflix GIS map of Atlanta. It is a great visual representation of Atlanta's different demographics. You can see the the racial boundaries in the Tyler Perry maps - The Family That Preys:

as well as the ITP/OTP division in Vicky Christina Barcelona:

Surprising, to me at least, is that the Dunwoody/Sandy Springs areas seem more culturally similar to intown Atlanta than I would have expected. Although, I do remember folks at the DPG joking about when it incorporated how Sandy Springs would have a Democratic mayor within ten years...

Required reading on Atlanta History

2010-01-11T09:22:00.000-05:00

Go over to Pecanne Log and read the excerpts from the American Life Histories project. Christa T routinely finds the best historical Atlanta stuff online, and this is no exception. Required reading. Go now.

When you are done, check out her hilarious preview of 2010. This line might be my fave:

His jet-black hair, babyfat cheeks, and youthful energy will only make the unavoidable aging of being Atlanta’s chief executive right now that more dramatic.

Commercial fallout ramping up

2010-01-08T11:35:00.003-05:00

In this week's Atlanta Business Chronicle, there are articles about potential foreclosure on an Allen Plaza land parcel, the Campanile building in Midtown, and a loan renegotiation effort by Dewberry for One Peachtree Pointe. (As usual, some of the ABC's articles are un-linkable and/or need subscriptions to read). While this sort of news was pretty much expected among the real estate community, it doesn't mean it isn't still bad news.

UPDATE: Via Atlanta Unsheltered, I also see that the Flatiron Building is for sale. Again. I had noticed recently that it was being offered as office condos per floor, or something like that - it had signs saying "buy this floor" or something. It was ~~bought~~ under contract recently and was going to be converted into a boutique hotel. Guess that didn't work out.

Really, though, this post is a chance to talk about Dewberry's continued use of the phrase "Uptown" to discuss his projects on the northern side of Midtown. Uptown was actually the name of the Midtown area at some point, although finding a reliable link for that is difficult. I think I've seen it on an old map somewhere.

At this point, though, it seems silly to keep insisting that a few parcels you own within a submarket deserve to be redefined as a separate area of the city. The company just keeps insisting on the using the term, though. Sometimes I get the impression they are using it just as the name of a series of development projects in the area, but mostly I get the impression that they want to call the entire area basically between Pershing Point and ~~26th street~~ the Brookwood interchange "Uptown". Dude, get over it, you are in Midtown.

Sanity from Atlanta's leaders, but not from the state

2010-01-07T00:23:00.000-05:00

Finally, sanity from someone in position to affect the zombie tunnel under eastside ATL:

Another Atlanta-area official, Atlanta Regional Commission Chairman Tad Leithead, said the ARC has no opinion on the project yet, and would have to study it extensively if it were to advance in the planning process. However, he added, very preliminary data show a funding gap, a possible $8 toll and not enough lanes, adding up to a project that "doesn't make any sense."

These issues, of course, don't even get into the neighborhood disruption issues. It simply doesn't make sense as a transportation project of any kind, much less one that could have a negative impact on long-established communities in intown Atlanta.

Still, the tunnel isn't going away any time soon. They seem determined to make this work somehow:

DOT is planning a forum to discuss the tunnel idea with tunnel company representatives in the spring. The forum is intended only for the most basic information-gathering on the project's possibilities and pitfalls, the director of DOT's toll program, Earl Mahfuz, said last month.

I should note that Kasim Reed voiced vociferous opposition to this tunnel idea, but Tad Leithead is the chairman of an organization that would to approve this damn thing so I think his statement is more newsworthy. I'm also pretty sure he is a Republican - he's given money to Tom Price over the years, at least. His skepticism is important in a way that Kasim Reed's is not, given his position and the political make-up of state government and the DOT.

Dogs and urban neighborhoods

2010-01-06T18:41:00.000-05:00

Friends of mine will know that I'm very much a dog person. I'm even a bit of an anti-cat person, and this is in no small part a result of my asthma-inducing allergy of cats. I especially hate kittens, because I am irresistibly drawn to pet them and initiate half a days worth of wheezing and sneezing. I am powerless over the cute, it seems.

But I digress. I'm talking about dogs here, people, and their positive impact on cities. This is a real estate blog, right? I thought so. Anyway, a number of blogs have picked up on the idea that dogs are good for cities because they equal pedestrians. This, in turn, helps makes neighborhoods safer. I'm supportive of this idea.

This also reminds me of a friend of mine who lives in Capitol View recently got a Great Dane/German Shepherd mix that comes up to my knees and is as tall as I am when stands on two feet.
The dog likes to put both front paws on the front door and stare at you out the window when you knock on the door. I'm hoping that will dissuade any potential robber, but you never know. Friends of mine who have gotten dogs for the purpose of home protection more often than not end up in over their heads, and/or with dogs that aren't very good guard dogs. I think the sheer size of this dog will do the trick, though.

My dog, of course, isn't going to scare anyone. He's 35 pounds of "yip". He's a decent size, but sounds like a chihuahua. He actually sets of the "glass break" warning for the house alarm. Sigh. La novia's dog, though, has a nice deep bark and is big enough to make you pause when she growls. She's a total softy, of course, but no one needs to know that.

Another, completely unrelated, reason dogs are better than cats - when was the last time your cat saved you from a cougar?

You get what you measure - APD version

2010-01-03T12:30:00.001-05:00

Stephanie Ramage has a post up dealing with the APD and her accusation of data manipulation:

As Rafael Goyeneche, president of the New Orleans Metropolitan Crime Commission, told me in November, Pennington was besotted with COMSTAT, a crime data mapping system that he later brought to Atlanta. Basically, it’s a numbers tracker. By focusing on the numbers of crime, rather than crime itself, Pennington set a tone in the NOPD that encouraged district majors (what we call zone majors in Atlanta) to compete with each other for low crime stats. The result was cops underreporting crime. Unwittingly or not, employees in any institution tend to pick up on what matters to their boss, and they act accordingly.

I certainly think Ramage has a point about underreporting, but I don't think it may be as ~~malicious~~ intentional as she suggests. I want to stress 'may,' because I can't know how intentional these things are inside the APD.

In b-school, one phrase that has come up a few times is "you get what you measure." When you make someone's performance evaluation dependent on a measurement, that measurement will likely improve. What WON'T improve is anything else. You are, in essence, telling them that all you care about is the measurement. If a low reporting of crime numbers is what you want, that is what you will get - never mind if it impacts customer satisfaction, or if response times stay high, or other aspects of the job that officers aren't spending their time on. You will get what you measure, and that is all.

This is why I've been calling for more than "more cops," but an organizational overhaul of the Police Department and an audit of their management practices. Are the police using a holistic scorecard, or is there too much focusing on the reported crime numbers? I think you can still use metrics to asses performance, but lets use more than just the number of reported crimes.

My first thought at some metrics I'd love to see published every month or at least quarter, in simple CSV files so that anyone with excel can do their own analysis if they want to:

Reported crimes, by type, zone, beat, etc.
Crimes solved, and whether that person was convicted (do they even keep track of this?)
Number of calls responded to, location, and how many were reported as crimes (this would help measure Ramage's accusation)
Response times, by zone, beat, etc.
Call center wait times, blackout times
Some sort of customer satisfaction measure - something like a quarterly poll of city residents, or some other regular

The city has some of this stuff, but they happen in irregular audits. I'd love to see the APD set up to record this stuff regularly.

My own version of a decade retrospective

2010-01-01T10:48:00.000-05:00

Cousins CEO Larry Gellerstedt had some interesting things to say when he spoke earlier in December at an Atlanta Commercial Board of Realtors event. The article is in the latest ABC, which has gone to a digital edition so I can't link to it, but some excerpts:

When we look at job loss [as a factor in the commercial real estate downtown] don't delude yourself that it's purely recession-induced," ...

..."if the only thing we have is a bunch of empty space that you can get cheap, and our unemployment rate is higher than the national average, which it is... folks, that is a road to nowhere."

"We have to have a governor that embraces Atlanta and tells the legislature to get off this 'two Georgia' stuff. It's old."

All pretty accurate, I'd say. I think a lot of folks in the metro region still have this image of Atlanta from the 90's, and the truth is that we aren't growing employment like we were then. We've only slightly outpaced the nation recently, and if you look at right, we have no where near the type of employment growth we did in the 1990s. If we had continued post 2000 like we did from 1991-2000, we would be off the graph.

The simply fact is that we aren't as competitive as we used to be, and we need leaders who can get things back on track. Our national reputation has suffered this last decade, and it isn't just your typical City of Atlanta/Bill Campbell stuff. It is the metro region as a whole.

Cities and universities

2009-12-29T15:31:00.000-05:00

CEOs for Cities has a post up about how universities can work to enhance cities:

Could universities better integrate with public transportation systems, increasing ridership and revenues while providing transportation options for their students?

Can universities better use the land they have to influence compact, mixed-use urban environments and get greater value from these assets?

Can universities rethink their approach to providing food and services in a way that grows small business and provides greater diversity, choice and convenience for their students?

I think Atlanta is actually a great example of how universities have helped make the city more urban. Georgia Tech/Technology Square, and Georgia State/Aderhold-Broad Street should be on anyone list for how universities can be great for urbanism.

Benchmarks for population - and effects

2009-12-29T10:22:00.001-05:00

Matt Yglesias has an interesting post about population growth for Washington, D.C.:

Something I think the city could use is some kind of explicit population growth target. That might help structure people’s thinking about specific development issues. The city’s peak population came around 1950 when about 800,000 people lived here. And the population of the United States as a whole was only 150 million back then. Given that the national population has doubled since then and continues to grow, it seems to me that a District with aspirations should be hoping to see a over a million people living here a few decades hence.

I wonder if this wouldn't be a good idea for the city of Atlanta.
Atlanta's population peaked in the 70's at around 500,000, so we are about back to our peak population right now. There are 5.5 million people in the MSA currently, and the ARC shows that increasing to 8.2 million by 2040. What is a realistic portion of that number that should live in the city?

Presently it is about 9%. ARC puts the city at 603,000 in 2030, which is a more like 8% of the regional population (which should be 7,378,000 in 2030). Where are an addition 240,000 or so people going to live within the city limits? When you start trying to find room for another 240,000 people, it makes arguing over eight stories at Monroe and 10th seem pretty silly.

Should the city set a goal of 20% of the metro population living in the city proper? That would be 1.6 million people in 2040. What would we need to do to triple the city's population in thirty years, beyond getting our government in shape? What level of infrastructure - road, sewers, transit - would we need to invest in to make this happen?

I think (hope?) that the city planning department and politicians consider this sort of stuff, but I don't think the population at large does. Maybe it isn't realistic to expect an extra 240,000 people to move into the city, much less an extra 1.1 million. Perhaps realistically, you could aim for 15% of the region's population. That would still still mean an extra 740,000 people or so. If we are serious about Atlanta regaining its position as the employment and cultural center of the region, doesn't that mean taking on a greater share of the population? Personally, I want leaders who set ambitious goals like that, and then try and figure out exactly how we are going to get there.

I also think it is good for regular folks to consider these numbers and what it means for Atlanta's growth. You can't advocate for a walkable Atlanta that competes with the rest of the region for employment and cultural amenities without considering what it actually will mean for the physical make-up of your own neighborhood. Perhaps the population growth will occur in other areas (e.g. gentrifying south and west Atlanta), but I don't see how Midtown, Virginia-Highland, et al escape the next twenty or thirty years unchanged like many residents here seem to expect.

Westside history lessons

2009-12-28T22:39:00.000-05:00

There is a great history of some westside neighborhoods in this AJC piece about the Whittaker School on Huff Road. For example, I never knew what gave Blandtown its name:

Blandtown, as the neighborhood was called, got its name from Felix Bland. A former slave, Bland after the Civil War took ownership of the land willed to him by his former owner, according to the memoir, “My 80 Years in Atlanta,” by Sarah Huff, who was 8 years old when Sherman shelled the city in 1864 and whose family gave Huff Road its name.

Bland quickly lost the land for not paying taxes. A developer took title and began carving out a residential area. Then came the rail spurs, around which a mill, a fertilizer factory and a stockyard opened, according to a book by Georgia Tech professor Larry Keating called “Race, Class and the Atlanta Housing Market.”

Two more books I need to read.

Also of interest for readers of this blog is the recent history of the property - it was bought in 2006 by Robert L. Silverman, who founded Winter Properties. They had a lot of success in the late 90's and early 2000s, but I think things slowed down a bit recently. They still have some active projects (Meeting Park in Marietta), though. It is now for sale at half what Silverman bought it for three years ago.

h/t: A Is For Atlanta

More good ideas from English footie

2009-12-23T11:56:00.000-05:00

I was reading Mark Bradley's round up of national coverage on the Braves' Vazquez/Cabrera trade, and got to thinking how silly this whole trading players thing is. I previously lauded the Premier League's dual championship format, and I think the Europeans have the right idea about personnel management, too.

All of the commentary in Bradley's round-up is basically about assessing whether the Braves got a fair-market for Javier Vazquez. This means trying to assess the specific needs of both clubs with the specific talents of many different players. It also means assessing the potential free agent signing the Braves can do with the extra salary freed up by dumping Vazquez. Teams have to try and find clubs that have both the player they want, plus that want a player they have. The whole trading idea just seems way to complicated to me.

In European football, you simply buy or sell a player's contract. You determine a market value for the rights to the player's contract by negotiating with teams that want him, and you pocket the transfer fee. This money can then be used for paying salaries or for buying contracts for other players. If the Braves want to unload Vazquez, they simply sell him to the highest bidder, instead of having to take Melky Cabrera and some (very good) prospects.

In economic terms, the present value of the contracts for Cabrera and the prospects should be equal to the present value of Vazquez. All the talk about "was this a good deal" is really about trying to determine whether one team ended up with a higher PV for the contracts under their possession. The mix-and-match nature of trading makes me think that it is very, very hard to make this collection of contract values match perfectly. Someone is always going to get a better deal at the time of the trade, regardless of how each player performs down the line.

Isn't this analysis just a lot easier to do through just paying for the contracts outright? If you still insisted on a trade, you'd at least be able to make up any discrepancy in present value in cash. I would also think that the flexibility inherent in the European system would bring added value to these contracts, which would be a positive for team owners.

City politics update

2009-12-23T09:15:00.000-05:00

Lots of articles recently on Kasim Reed and the new council members. Plus more MARTA drama.

Reed has chosen Lisa Borders as co-chair of his transition team. He also went to Washington last week to lobby the feds for money for the streetcar.
Reed has also announced a panel to help come up with ways to fix the city's pension problem. No idea who is (or will be) on it, just that it is chaired by former AJC editor John Mellott.
I was unaware that three of the new council members are CPAs or financial analysts by training. I'm not sure if it is just the slightly optimistic tone of the article, but I am cautiously optimistic about the new crop of council members.
MARTA and Jill Chambers still can't see eye-to-eye.
"Every year they say they’re going over a cliff and there’s going to be a crisis, and yet MARTA’s running just fine," Chambers said. "You can almost cut and paste the press release from the year before."
MARTA CEO Beverly Scott says Chambers' statements are "inaccurate and fail to grasp the magnitude of the crisis."
So things should go well next year at the legislature...

TADs and encouraging revitalization

2009-12-22T14:54:00.000-05:00

Stephanie Ramage's recent post about TADs is interesting. I disagree with Ramage about the magnitude of her criticisms, but I think they are very valid. To summarize, she views them as too politically motivated and too big a burden on services and future tax revenue.

She uses Historic Westside Village as a sort of case study, which I think isn't very illustrative - Westside Village started as a Bill Campbell boondoggle, and the TAD component comes in later in the story.

There are plenty of other successful TAD projects in the city, but I largely I think Ramage's criticisms shouldn't be completely dismissed. As a supporter of TADs, I wouldn't be doing myself any favors by ignoring the very real risks inherent with TADs.

What I want to focus on though is what I think the fundamental difficulty with TADs is:

But the trick to a TAD, says John Matthews, an expert on TADs at Georgia State University's Fiscal Research Center, is that they should be designated for areas that are truly blighted.

Atlantic Station, for example, was built on a brownfield, a place so contaminated by the steel mill that formerly occupied it that no one wanted to build anything there. Oddly enough, it was developers, not City Council members, who came up with the plan for Atlantic Station.

The problem I have with this statement is that TADs are designed to help areas where the market does not support development. At the end of the day, Ramage is basically saying the city has no business trying to finance development in areas that can't support it. I think there is a case for the "but for" criteria TADs are designed around, but I don't really want to focus on that at present.

I think the biggest problem with Westside Village (and lots of other developments) is that people have tried to take short-cuts to the neighborhood revitalization cycle by skipping the "risk-oblivious" stage that includes artists and young people. Simply building new stuff in bad neighborhoods isn't going to revitalize anything, as we are seeing.

If we can agree that the city should be trying to revitalize downtrodden areas, then just how SHOULD it be trying to do this instead of with TADs?

Going back to neighborhood cycle, I think it is a matter of identifying what attracts the risk-oblivious and the risk-aware residents. Some folks will suggest that true revitalization is spontaneous, and the government just gets in the way. That might in fact be true if we are talking about historical government "revitalization" programs like Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium or Underground Atlanta. But can anything be done that might try to encourage more traditional, "spontaneous" revitalization?

So what are risk-oblivious and risk-aware residents attracted to, other than low rents? A sense of community, pedestrian environments, historic bungalows, local stores, neighborhood amenities, local bars and clubs. So perhaps instead of issuing bonds to finance new, private commercial development, the city should be focusing on supporting community amenities to compete with the suburbs.

What can the city invest in and offer that the suburbs can't? We can spend more on transit and neighborhood parks. We can use financial programs to encourage rehabbing old homes and small-business loans for local shops and restaurants. We can make zoning easier for nightlife. We can spend our energy on improving street grids and infrastructure, as painful as that can be for the public. And finally, we need to provide a high quality of basic services such as public safety.

While I still think TADs are a good idea, I also think that they can divert our attention from the more fundamental issue of attracting people to the city. If we can attract people to the city, then TADs will be much more successful in terms of getting projects over the hump.

Reed to be "muscular" with panhandling problem

2009-12-17T14:17:00.000-05:00

Mayor-elect Kasim Reed is pledging to enforce existing ordinances and get "muscular" with the panhandling problem downtown.

"We're going to enforce the ordinances and we are going to fix the panhandling challenge in the city of Atlanta, period," Reed said to rousing applause from members of the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau.

"We are going to deal with this issue in a very muscular way," he said.

I am not sure if new ordinances are needed, not that Reed has proposed any. Stronger enforcement is a good first step here.

FWIW, I'm downtown quite often and I have certainly felt like the panhandler situation has been much better the last six to nine months. I can't remember the last time I got asked for change Downtown (although it happened to me at in Midtown Tuesday). I'm not really sure why - maybe I'm just getting better at ignoring it all?

Can we be smarter about transit advocacy?

2009-12-17T12:43:00.000-05:00

Richard Green, a professor at the University of Southern California who blogs about real estate, has a great little post about how transit advocates sometimes don't do themselves any favors. The issue in the post is local opposition to a major highway tunnel proposed for downtown Seattle:

Let me stipulate that the project may very well not pass a cost-benefit test. But the line "will only advance the interests of car commuters" reflects both snobbishness and detachment from reality. According to this blog, more than four-fifths of commuter trips and 85 percent of all trips in Seattle are made in private automobiles. Complaining that something advances the interest of auto commuters is like complaining about advancing the interest of, say, children--pretty much every one of us is one, or loves someone who is.

As the Onion so wisely headlined, "98 percent of US commuters favor public transportation for others."

This sounds uncomfortably familiar to my rantings about a tunnel under my neighborhood:

Cost - surely building tunnels for highways is a very expensive enterprise. Regardless of whether the state itself pays for the construction (such as with a public-private partnership), when it comes to a comparison for value, this can't be very high. Those same dollars could be spent on things like the BeltLine or MARTA expansion or commuter rail and provide much more value if you include any measure other than "move more cars from Roswell to Hartsfield faster".

Having said all that, I completely agree that Richard Green has a point. Obviously I'd prefer to see those state dollars spent on transit projects, but I'd also prefer to see those state dollars be spent on projects with a better payoff - I suspect that toll roads or BRT on the major highways would be a better use of funds. Hey, go for a northern arc, that honestly doesn't affect me much at all.

If I'm honest with myself, I'm not very sensitive to the plight of the suburban commuter stuck on the connector or on 316 or wherever. I should be, though, since these are the folks who the Legislature actually cares about. I'm pretty sure they are also fellow human beings who are just trying to make it through the day, like me.

We have to find a way to advocate for transit without being holier than thou. I include myself in this criticism.

Clermont condemned; no one surprised

2009-12-16T23:59:00.001-05:00

Via Creative Loafing, I see that the Clermont Hotel has been condemned and must close by Dec. 31. The inspection which preceded the condemnation was triggered by the property's foreclosure, as Inman Park Properties was unable to sell the property in time. The building is practically rotting on the inside:

"There are several issues that would have to be addressed," said Kevin Jones, a manager with the Fulton County Department of Health and Wellness. Dirty linen, old bedding and bed bug stains were among them, he said. Inspectors also found mold growing on the walls, black water spilling from faucets and broken toilet fixtures.

None of this should surprise anyone who has followed Inman Park Properties over the years. The company is infamously neglectful of property. In June IPP got a lot of coverage from CL and the AJC, and the owner came off sounding more like a collector than a legitimate real estate investor. I can't really fathom what business strategy he had in mind when he bought all this property and the did absolutely nothing with it.

Anyway, anyone interested in great deal on a real fixer-upper knows where to look!

UPDATE: I can't have this post up without linking to Too Busy to Hate's requiem for the clermont.

*image courtesy of Tadson via flickr

Reed reiterates shorter timeframe for BeltLine

2009-12-15T22:52:00.001-05:00

Thomas Wheatley has a good article about Kasim Reed and the BeltLine. The next mayor wants to make the BeltLine a reality sooner rather than later:

At a groundbreaking ceremony on Saturday for the Beltline’s multi-use trail in southwest Atlanta, the city’s next mayor made a symbolic appearance, voiced his commitment to the project and reiterated something he said on the campaign trail: He’d like to see the Beltline become a reality in the next decade. And Reed says he’s gonna push for that to happen.

This is something I've been talking about for quite some time, and frankly I dismissed it when Reed mentioned it on the campaign trail. I took note of it, but he phrased it rather non-committal way so it didn't really register.

As Wheatley notes in the article above, there is a matter of just how exactly to move things along quicker - all it takes is money...

h/t: Rusty Tanton

Green links

2009-12-14T14:05:00.000-05:00

Ken Edelstein, who runs Atlanta Unsheltered, recently called my attention to a new project of his, MyGreenAtl. While this blog isn't really an environmental blog, I know a lot of my readers are very environmentally-minded. So I hope you enjoy the site. I've certainly enjoyed what Ken does with Jeanne Bonner at Atlanta Unsheltered, so I expect MyGreenAtl will be just as good. Ken also has a nice article on America's relationship with the automobile at Media Mayhem.

And while were are in the world of evironmentalism, I thought I'd share an interesting article about zero-energy housing:

It's a house built with less lumber and more insulation; with recycled countertops and bamboo cabinets; with a geothermal system and a 10-kilowatt solar array...

And one of those lessons is that simple is better, Watt said, both for the homeowner who may not have any predisposition toward tinkering, but also for the cost of the project. SpringLeaf's houses, for example, will be all electric. The houses are not designed to have any solar thermal water heating equipment, and natural gas is not used. Instead, the appliances are electric and the heating and cooling system is a based on a geothermal electric heat pump, which leverages the earth's stable below-surface temperatures to keep the house comfortable.

I have to admit I was a bit surprised when Ken dropped me a note about his new project. I've communicated a bit with Jeanne about various development projects in town and what-not, but I have never seen Terminal Station as an environmentally conscious blog. Sure, I blog about alternative/public transportation quite a bit, and also about sustainable development and smart growth. But you won't find and "environmentalism" tag or even a "sustainable development" tag on the side bar.

My interest in these topics is almost wholly unrelated to environmentalism. It just so happens that the kind of development I'm attracted to, that I think has a positive impact on our lives, is also more environmentally sustainable than sprawl. It is also much more interesting and rewarding from a practitioners point of view.

The free market argument for rail transit

2009-12-09T00:46:00.000-05:00

Joe, who used to blog here before he went to Harvard, sent me a link to a great video with Bill Lind, author of Moving Minds: Conservatives and Public Transportation.

It isn't ground breaking stuff, but it seemed apropos given the post below about tunnels. My favorite part in the video where he makes the point that we used to have a private, profitable rail industry in this country. We killed it with massive government intervention and subsidies in the form of highways.

Lind's book is now on my Christmas list.

East side zombie road tunnels won't die

2009-12-08T16:34:00.002-05:00

Of course I'm frustrated that this underground toll road through my neighborhood won't go away. It seems like every idea that I think is laughable seems to stick around (Mary Norwood as mayor, underground highways through intown Atlanta, building a new central library...).

Anyway, the DOT has this underground toll road on their public-private partnership list. My reaction when I first heard about the idea way-back-when was unsurprising - I hated it. I am going to try and enunciate exactly why this strikes me as a very bad idea:

Cost - surely building tunnels for highways is a very expensive enterprise. Regardless of whether the state itself pays for the construction (such as with a public-private partnership), when it comes to a comparison for value, this can't be very high. Those same dollars could be spent on things like the BeltLine or MARTA expansion or commuter rail and provide much more value if you include any measure other than "move more cars from Roswell to Hartsfield faster".
Impact on neighborhoods - I find it very difficult to believe that this highway wouldn't be destructive for local neighborhoods. Where will you vent all that exhaust? What about during construction? How are the interchanges for access to Downtown going to impact existing street grids? Surely there will have to be emergency access points that will necessitate surface street interruption. This doesn't even take into account the affect of areas south of I-20 where the road may become a surface street. Cuz, y'know, screw East Atlanta and stuff.

I guess those are my first two problems. If I could be satisfied on those issues, I'd at least be willing to give this tunnel thing a fair hearing - I'm all for ways to improve transportation in this state. I'm not entirely opposed to public-private partnerships (although I suspect that the government sides often get the poor end of the deal). I think toll roads are a great idea, as well. I'm reasonable. But this tunnel, it deserves the stupid ideas tag.

The silver lining? This is far from over:

It's far from a done deal. The chief of transportation planning at the Atlanta Regional Commission, Jane Hayse, said the project had not yet been approved by the ARC board, and it would have to be in order to proceed. Removal from the ARC project list can be the technical act that knocks out a project , as with the Northern Arc. In addition, a federally mandated study of the project's impacts will investigate its likely effect on the environment and social justice, and can lead to changes in the project or even a recommendation not to build it.

h/t: Rusty Tanton

Will this transportation funding finally pass?

2009-12-01T22:42:00.000-05:00

Lost amid the election coverage is a new transportation plan being floated by leaders at the General Assembly.
The measure would be a two-part bill aimed at breaking a logjam that has kept transportation funding bottled up in the legislature for the last three years, even as business leaders clamored for action to relieve Atlanta’s worsening traffic congestion...

The first part of the legislation, targeted primarily at metro Atlanta, would allow counties to band together and float regional 1-cent sales tax proposals to pay for highway and transit projects in their communities. Each referendum would give voters a list of projects to be funded with the tax revenue.

Keen said the second piece of the package would establish a mechanism for dedicating a portion of future revenue growth in Georgia to transportation improvements. The proposal, which would be statewide in scope, would be aimed at swaying lawmakers around the state to support the metro-Atlanta component of the bill.

I am not sure how I feel about the idea of including specific projects in a referendum. When the state was doing it last year, I felt like it was a lot like pork, and it caused unnecessary panic when bad ideas ended up in the list. When it comes to local entities passing the legislation, I can see how it helps voters know what their money will be going for - presumably these individual referendum would get plenty of debate in county commission hearings, etc. But the prospect of the Fulton County Commission trying to hash out a funding plan for local transit projects with Gwinnett and Cobb sounds like a horrible, horrible idea.

As always, it depends on what the actual bills have to say, and I need to know more before I can have a fully informed opinion.

Less than serious blogging resumes

2009-11-23T14:44:00.000-05:00

I'll admit that I was one of the guys in high school who gave unmitigated crap to all my soccer-playing friends. Lots of yapping about it not being an American sport, and thus not a "real" sport, etc., the kind of stuff you say as a teenager to try and get under their skin. I, of course, played baseball, the most American sport of all.

Fast forward fifteen years.
I find watching any team other than the Braves to be tedious. The game is too slow if you don't have rooting interest. Maybe fantasy leagues change that, but I've got enough going on without spending hours managing the roster of an imaginary team. I watched several games of the World Series this year mostly because my dad wanted to, but as a sport, I'm pretty much over baseball. Instead, I find myself getting much more excited about European football, er, soccer. I get way more excited about a UEFA Cup game than I do for playoff baseball these days. I have finally begun to see what my high school friends saw about soccer, and I am a burgeoning convert to the other football.

And so last night I found myself watching the MLS Cup finals. I am still new enough to the sport that I find most MLS games boring - I was introduced to the game through World Cup and UEFA Cup, and MLS almost feels like a different game to me. And I will admit that I am new enough to the sport that I had a singular interest in the game - I wanted to see Landon Donovan and David Beckham.

Without paying for Fox Soccer Channel, there simply aren't that many opportunities for American audience to see top-flight soccer talent. So we are reduced to watching an over the hill Beckham late on a Sunday night, hoping to see ... I don't really know what exactly. I'm so new to the sport that my conception of what is possible is still being created. I have seen enough to get hooked, but that is it.

Beckham was supposedly a master of the game. So I tune in, on the hope that he still has something left in the tank and that I'll get to witness it. It is like watching Jordan play for the Wizards, however. You still sit forward when he gets the ball, but nothing really seems to happen.

"You are saying this guy was the best, right?"

"Oh, yeah, you should have seen him..."

Anyway, I digress. I started off this post to talk about championships, specifically the English Premier League. The Premier League has a regular season champion, and a parallel elimination tournament which has its own champion. I love this because it reward regular season success in a definite way, as opposed to baseball. In baseball, teams play an ungodly long season which means nothing once you get into the playoffs. Good god, I hate this system and, yes, this is a direct result of watching the Braves come out with a single championship despite years of regular season dominance. Ugh.

But we have the same problem in college football and the NFL. Look at the undefeated regular season of the Patriots a few years ago - does anyone really think the Giants were the better team because the won the playoff tournament? In college football, poll voters reward teams for losing early, rather than late, because we place a premium on who would win if they played today. No consideration for the season as a whole - better to get hot late.

But why does MLS use an American-style playoff? A team with a losing season just won the MLS Cup, beating the League's biggest stars. I think the parallel championships is a much better way to decide these things. And it is another reason why I'm beginning to love the other football.

Excellent choice of words, Decatur Metro

2009-11-20T13:36:00.001-05:00

Decatur Metro, while discussing potential plans to build the multi-modal station Downtown, has a link to a DC blog Track Twenty Nine. Track Twenty Nine has some schematics for how various rail lines could fill the Gulch area, which DM termed "rail porn". Excellent choice of words - we salute you!

As far as the multi-modal station goes, GDOT is considering building it with the $87M in federal funds slated for the Lovejoy line. Also mentioned in the AJC article is one of the ideas floating around for how to pay for commuter rail lines:

The project could address the fundamental problem that has dogged the commuter rail line proposal: Mass transit ticket sales rarely pay the full cost of operating the system on an ongoing basis. One idea is to gain a revenue stream for the rail lines by building and renting out office space above the terminal. DOT, MARTA and other agencies could move into that space, and form a reliable renter base even in a shaky real estate market.

Sounds good, but I think it is much harder in practice to execute. If you could fill all (or a lot) of the office space with MARTA, GDOT and other government agencies, you could probably get decent cash flow out of the deal, but I'm not sure what it means for the rest of Downtown. It isn't like government workers are a revitalizing force for urban renewal - they basically go to work, eat lunch, and go home. So Downtown will get some more sandwich shops. To be really successful, I'd love to find a way for the multi-modal station to be more of a draw for different businesses.

Also, moving all those government agencies into the buildings would mean they are no longer renting space elsewhere - such as GDOT at One Georgia Center. Unless you can actually generate demand for office space, you are just playing shell games. Maybe the multi-modal CAN generate demand, but I think we should spend some time laying out specifics on how that is going to happen. New development doesn't magically generate people who want to move into your space (look at all the empty office space in Buckhead).

h/t: obvs. to Decatur Metro

Poncey-Highland Master Plan; I rant about "road diets"

2009-11-20T00:32:00.005-05:00

The Poncey-Highland master plan was released last night. You can find the details here.

The first thing that jumped out at me was the North Avenue "road diet". (Click the link or the picture at right to see the full-size jpeg.)

Can I just say that I find "road diets" annoying? I know that there is a lot of traffic on North Avenue - I use it every day to go to and fro at Georgia State. The reason for the traffic is not because North Avenue is poorly designed north of the BeltLine, it is because North Avenue is a million feet wide SOUTH of the BeltLinePonce and because de Leon is a mess during rush hour. The real problem there is because there aren't enough east-west corridors other than Ponce de Leon. All the traffic bulbs, medians, and swervy lanes aren't going to change that - these are band aids. Hideous, Disney-character-covered, fall-off-in-the-shower band-aids to appease a neighborhood group.

I hate traffic bulbs and lanes that swerve for no reason other than to mess with drivers. Yeah, yeah, that is the point, I get it. But they've already got on street parking in this plan, and North Avenue is not THAT wide! make the lanes a little narrower and widen the sidwalks or something. Some of these plans are just super annoying and I think you can slow traffic down enough with the other methods.

I know some Tech planning students read this blog - please explain to me why North Avenue needs random sidewalk bulbs, random crosswalks, and lane changes, and why something more subtle (just narrower lanes and on-street parking) won't suffice.

For example, just before Linwood the eastbound lane swerves left to accommodate a crosswalk midblock, before then heading straight into the left turn lane of the westbound lane at the intersection, forcing the driver into an awkward swerve back to the right to stay in the correct lane and not hit cars waiting to turn. Surely a little median would serve better here? WTF?

I personally find many "road diets" and speed humps to be an all-thumbs approach to traffic calming, and every time I see them, I cringe. I'm not saying ALL road diets are awful, but I abhor the speed humps they installed a block from my house. The McLendon Ave stuff isn't awful once you get past the golf course, unless you are a biker.

By the time any of this happens, hopefully I will be long gone from GSU and I won't have to be annoyed by this every day. If I am still driving to school when this North Ave stuff is built, I will probably end up shooting down Greenwood to cut over to Ponce Place and Ponce de Leon. Until everyone started complaining about Greenwood and they put some stupid speed humps there.

h/t: Georgia Zoning Blog

NPU F decision on BeltLine a disappointment

2009-11-17T23:38:00.000-05:00

I actually hesitated before writing about NPU F's rejection of the NE Beltline plan. I have not been involved with all the discussion and meetings, and I think the NPU process is a net positive for the city as a whole.

I have previously commented on the plan, so I won't belabor the point. Suffice it to say that I find the neighborhood's reaction extremely disappointing and short-sighted. I think it is an excellent example of why NPUs only have advisory power - the city council (either this one or the newly elected one) should realize that it is in the City's best interest to direct responsible growth at this intersection and elsewhere.

Shameless self promotion

2009-11-17T13:22:00.000-05:00

Jon over at A Is For Atlanta asked me to participate in his "Five Questions With..." segment. He has some very nice things to say about this here blog, and he's spruced up my answers with lots of relevant links and pictures. Don't miss the old school Al Sharpton pic!

And thanks for asking me to do it, Jon!

Reason from beyond the Perimeter?!

2009-11-16T23:19:00.001-05:00

From perhaps the most unexpected place, Peach Pundit enunciates one reason why Kasim Reed is at this point Atlanta's best hope:

Meanwhile, Kasim Reed has the backing of all groups within the City Of Atlanta who must buy into fundamental change. He also commands respect and has good working relationships with the other group that must be brought into discussions to provide the carrot and stick to force the City Hall constituencies to change their ways: The State Legislature.

Kasim Reed holds a unique position in this pivotal point in time. He has the respect of two distinct and distant constituencies who are both integral to the future growth and success of the City. Worst case scenario, it is four more years of status quo while the forces for change are able to recruit a better candidate. But if Kasim is to live up to his challenge, he is the person best suited to bring all parties to the table, and set a course for Atlanta to work with the surrounding region and not against it.

I remain unconvinced about Kasim's ability to affect fundamental change in the city's policies or operational systems. However, anyone attempting to change things needs to have the buy-in from the stakeholders involved. I'd say that the most likely outcome of a Mary Norwood administration would be as described by the Peach Pundit post:

Sure she represents change, but is there any evidence it will be change for the better? Or would her inability to communicate or get along with fellow council members or city staff make her a figurehead who goes largely ignored while the city continues to spiral out of control under the weight of its own entropy?

Mary Norwood can complain that the rest of the City Council hasn't been willing to work with her, but that doesn't change the fact that she would have to work with them as Mayor.

Note: beware the entire post liked to above - while largely reasonable, it drips with a certain OTP smugness and condescension that required a large degree of restraint on my part not to engage.

h/t: el hermano

Sports and adaptive re-use: Highbury Square

2009-11-11T10:39:00.000-05:00

Previously I highlighted an interesting aspect of San Diego's baseball stadium, where they integrated a historic building into a new stadium. How about going at adaptive re-use from the other direction - adapting an old stadium into luxury housing?

That's what English football club Arsenal did when they moved to a new stadium. Historic Highbury Stadium became Highbury Square apartments. The stands were hollowed out to became units, and the pitch (the playing surface) became a garden.

Unfortunately, the deal has not been as successful financially:

Though sales have been steady, occupancy rates remain only around the 70% mark, according to the club. In September, Arsenal sold a tranche of nearly 150 apartments to real-estate group London and Stamford Property at a discount to market value of 20%, with cashflow problems blamed. A spokesman for Arsenal declined to comment on the specifics of the deal. Financially, at least, the stadium move may not have been entirely successful for the club.

Race, party affiliation, and city elections

2009-11-06T13:54:00.000-05:00

I previously mentioned that I found the DPG's mailer about Mary Norwood possibly being a Republican to be in poor taste. I just left it at that, but perhaps you found it odd since I also commented in my non-endorsement post that I found Norwood's "forgetting" who she voted for to be suspect. Well, Jay Bookman pretty much sums up how I feel about the mailers:

The line between typical political hardball and tactics designed to milk racial suspicions can admittedly be murky. ...

But murky as it may be at times, that line does exist, and it’s important. The state Democratic Party, for example, edged close to or even over that line last week when it injected itself into the nonpartisan campaign with fliers charging that Norwood is a Republican.

On the surface it was a meaningless distraction, and Norwood did herself no favors with her flustered response. It doesn’t matter in the least whether Atlanta’s mayor is tall or short, white or black, male or female or Republican or Democrat.

But in a city in which Republican equals white, the underlying message wasn’t hard to decode.

All of the major candidates have done a pretty good job of avoiding making this election about race. The DPG basically did all the suburban race-baiters a huge favor with that mailer, and I for one would prefer not to give them freebie's like that.

Also, while I think Norwood's answer about presidential elections is suspect, I don't think she is a "closet Republican". My suspicion is that she probably identified as a Republican for some years while she was just another Buckhead resident. As someone clearly interested in politics, she might have even been involved in GOP politics a little - hence the trip to the state convention in 1999.

I also suspect that since serving for 8 years at City Hall she realized that was an untenable position, and adopted the independent affiliation. Changing parties is not really that big a deal, ESPECIALLY if you have never held elected office as a member of that party. It is a little different after holding elected office, especially at the state level or above, but we aren't talking about anyone who did that.

Norwood always struck me as more ambitious than ideological. Her stepdaughter is gay, and supports Norwood. There is no way Norwood would have a strong ideological home in today's Georgia GOP, even if she identifies with a lot of their fiscal policy ideas. I suspect her GOP leanings are closer to those of many of my friends who tell me they would be Republicans if it were the 70's, or who vote Republican because they are really libertarian and can't stand the Democrats, etc. I'm probably way more comfortable with business issues than most local Dems I know (Lisa Border's connections with developers was a plus for me, for example).

The issues affecting the city are so far removed from partisan politics that focusing on Norwood's possible Republican past is silly. Besides, there are plenty of OTHER things you can attack Norwood on. The DPG mailers are an immature attack for an election which requires serious debate. Also, I think the DPG should mind their own business and stay out of local, non-partisan elections.

LILO transactions abridged

2009-11-05T16:09:00.002-05:00

The paper I linked to earlier (pdf here) concerning lease-in lease out (LILO) transactions is a very good read. It is also relatively easy to follow if you have a basic knowledge of finance.

If you are interested in just what it is that Jill Chambers thinks MARTA officers are too dumb to understand, I'll try and summarize:

A tax-exempt organization like MARTA has property and assets that it owns. Let's call them the "owner".
The owner leases the property to an investor. Let's call him the "taxpayer". (I'm borrowing terms from the Yale paper.)
The taxpayer takes out a loan for the present value of the lease obligations, and pays it to the owner up front instead of making annual payments. The taxpayer takes out a loan to make this payment, so he'll owe principal and interest on it over the course of the arrangement.
The taxpayer then leases the property back to the owner.
The owner takes that lump sum (the present value of the lease obligations), and invests it in bonds. He'll use this investment to pay for the sub-lease he made with the taxpayer.

The annual cash flows look like this:

The invested lump sum throws of interest, which the owner (MARTA) uses (in conjunction with part of the invested amount) to pay the taxpayer for the lease.
The taxpayer uses this payment to pay back principal and interest on the loan he took out to finance the lump sum payment in the beginning.
The owner (MARTA) doesn't get anything on an annual basis - remember, they got everything up-front in order to invest it.

So shouldn't all this stuff equal out? Why is anyone making any money on this deal? I'll quote from the paper:

My analysis reveals that the underlying source of tax benefits is the arbitrage created because a LILO is effectively two sequential loans: the taxpayer borrows money from third parties, lends the money to the owner as a prepayment, and the owner then lends the money back to third parties. Tax arbitrage is created because the taxpayer deducts interest on the funds used to make the prepayment whereas the owner pays no taxes on the interest earned on that prepayment.

Make sense? While it may look like the taxpayer is the only person making money here (because he's the only one getting tax savings), these savings can then get distributed between the partners if you wanted. Indeed, MARTA has made $119 million on these deals so far.

The paper notes that the total tax savings are about 10%-15% of the value of the asset. Assuming the taxpayer/partner stays in business to keep making payments, why wouldn't you expect a cash-strapped entity like MARTA to try and make money on its assets?

Unsurprisingly, the IRS doesn't like these deals, since they are the ones getting screwed.

UPDATE: Atlanta Unfiltered has a link to The Tax Foundation's article about SILO (Sale-in, Lease Out) deals, which are a variation on the LILO deal. In a SILO deal, the owner/agency sells the asset to the investor, who can then deduct the depreciation as an expense. At the end of the deal, the original owner of the asset typically has the right to buy back the asset for a nominal amount ($1).

Jill Chambers can suck an egg

2009-11-05T11:22:00.000-05:00

I'm a bit late on this news, but MARTA has shown up Jill Chambers in solid fashion. Chambers requested an audit of MARTA's complicated Lease-in Lease-out (LILO) transactions, and the audit came back saying that MARTA has made $119 million so far on the deals.

Maria Saporta is right when she says:

This audit review should be enough to silence Chambers once and for all. She has made MARTA and the state jump through time-consuming hoops on her witch hunt for evil and wrongdoing.

And now it’s time for her to stop....

In fact, for the life of me, I don’t even understand why MARTOC exists in this day and age. Remember, the state of Georgia does not have any money in the game.

Unlike all the other major transit agencies in the country, the state shamefully does not contribute to MARTA’s operations, which puts our transit system at a major disadvantage...

Again, no other major transit agency in the country has to deal with this kind of constraint.

I said quite some time ago that while MARTA was not without problems, but that it was fundamentally doing the right things. In the almost 11 months since I wrote that post, I haven't seen anything to change my opinion of MARTA's managment.

Chambers of course thinks MARTA just got lucky on the LILO deals:

However, she said federal pressure aided transit agencies such as MARTA in escaping fees on the transactions, and the other findings were not a vindication of MARTA leaders' decision-making.

"I’m not sure they knew what they were really voting on," Chambers said, describing the transactions as too complicated for the average person.

So if Jill Chambers can't figure these out, The bottom line is that MARTA wouldn't need to engage in complicated financial transactions if Chambers and the legislature would let MARTA have access to all of its funds and would get serious about integrating MARTA with a regional transit solution.

I am about to dig into just how LILO transactions work with a 30-page pdf from Yale School of Management. Hopefully I can do a better job of understanding these transactions than Jill Chambers.

Is anyone really surprised APD isn't cooperating with the CRB?

2009-11-05T10:19:00.000-05:00

Atlanta Unfiltered reports that APD officers aren't cooperating with the Citizen's Review Board.

Ten Atlanta police officers have refused to cooperate with investigations of alleged misconduct, and Chief Richard Pennington has failed to respond to a call for discipline in a case of excessive force against a lesbian couple, an oversight panel said in a letter released today.

Well, I for one am just SO surprised by this. After fighting it every inch of the way, I expected the APD to act completely contrary to its normal behavior and actually cooperate with the CRB. Yes sir, when it comes to accountability and transparency, you can always count on the APD.

Mary Norwood and race

2009-10-30T16:32:00.000-04:00

Hey, did you know that Mary Norwood is white? No, seriously. She's from Buckhead, and she's a white housewife. What? You knew that? I just wanted to make sure you were aware, these sorts of things can be hard to catch.

The big story lines of the election have been:

Atlanta is broke! What a mess...
Crime sucks, and so does the police chief
Republican bogeyman!
Mary Norwood is white

Most of the attention has been on the changing demographics of the City of Atlanta, and the usual suspects have injected race into the debate in a way that the candidates have studiously avoided. (FTR, I think the DPG attacks on Mary Norwood are poor form.)

However, what I really want to focus on is the fact that Norwood is getting 34% of the black vote according to the cross tabs in the latest Insider Advantage polling. She is pulling more black support than either black candidate. She is pulling 56% of white voters, which is a majority but far from an overwhelming landslide.

Let's say that Norwood were polling at say 10% among black voters (about what Republicans can expect to get from black voters). By my math, she'd only be getting 32% of the total votes, and we'd be talking about a much closer race.

If Mary Norwood is Mayor of Atlanta, it will be because of black voters, and their willingness to vote for a white candidate.

Just something to chew on the next time someone from Macon who traffics in selling outrage wants to tell you this election is all about race.

My non-endorsement for mayor

2009-10-29T16:24:00.001-04:00

I thought making a decision on who I'd vote for mayor was going to be difficult. Well, it was until I actually looked into it. Let me explain...

I started this election out with a certain point of view. I worked at the State Capitol in 2004 and 2005 for a state senator representing Atlanta. I got the chance to meet Kasim Reed a few times, although I'd be surprised if he remembered since my direct involvement in politics since then has been minimal. I came away with a positive impression of Reed. I thought he was indicative of a newer model for black politicians - simply compare Reed's accomplishments and style with Senator Vincent Fort. Reed actually gets things through the legislature, while Fort mostly gets press attention.

I think Reed was a great senator, but I never came away from him thinking that he was particularly visionary or dynamic. He is a solid legislator and a good politician. I am not particularly sure why he wants to be mayor, or what drives him for this particular position. I also have concerns that he has spent too much time in legislative politics, which kind of adjusts your expectations towards inertia and status quo. After a while at the Georgia General Assembly, you kind of get used to nothing happening and adjust your expectations accordingly.

I have only met Lisa Borders in passing. I was introduced to her once at a function. I've seen her at City Council meetings. I've read about her getting broken into, and I know all about her connections to "big developers," as well as her family ties. I don't think she has done much as Council President, although it isn't the sort of position where you can get much done. Despite making it her pet project, Cathy Woolard couldn't get the BeltLine very far off the ground until the Mayor decided it was important. The BeltLine wouldn't have happened if it weren't for Woolard's support, but the position of Council President is terribly impotent.

Among the things I like about Borders are that she has executive business experience and the confidence of the business community (which is necessary to get anything done as mayor). She has lived in the city, and has personal experience with crime. I don't think this necessarily makes her more qualified to deal with it, but at least she is more likely to get what people are talking about.

So I approached the race with the following ideas:

Mary Norwood was out of the question. She has done a remarkable job campaigning, and I'm very impressed with her ability to garner black support, but I think she is a light-weight when it comes to policy ideas. She has a history of jumping on silly cause-du-jour issues, and her website only has two items in the "issues" section - police and finances. This micro-focus is the sort of thing that would be better suited to a council person chairing the appropriate committees, not a mayor who has to handle everything.
Kasim Reed has done a great job for Atlanta in the legislature. He is smart and capable, but he doesn't seem to have much connection to or history with large swaths of the city. I've met him, he's capable.
Lisa Borders has corporate executive experience, but hasn't accomplished much. Many of my professional and political acquaintances support her. I hear good things about her intelligence and her ability to work with the business community. I don't know her, although I know plenty about her.

I haven't had the chance to get to any mayoral debates or forums, despite how many there have been. A lot of the time I have had class, and other times I have had prior engagements. I have also been unenthusiastic about the race in general. I'm a bad citizen. From a distance, my impression has been that Mary Norwood has been a better campaigner, and that Lisa Borders has been more ham-fisted with her attacks than I expected.

The focus on the perceived Republicanism of Norwood and/or Borders is annoying, although at least Borders didn't "forget" whether she voted for George W. Bush or not. At least Borders hasn't apologized for having connections with high-powered Republicans like Tom Bell, while Norwood has been less than convincing (to me at least) with her record on attending the state GOP convention. I don't care that much about whether either is a Republican, although I am a fairly partisan Democrat in all honesty. I'm more annoyed that Norwood can't just be honest about it. [UPDATE: The more I think about it, you can easily suggest that Borders isn't being honest either. At the end of the day I guess it is a judgment call on whether you believe the candidates.] Additionally, her mantra to make the city work for "all of us" strikes me as divisive. It implies that there is some area of the city where city hall is working, at the detriment of other areas. I think all areas are equally unserved, and if anything the area that Norwood (and myself, to be honest) hails from has no room to be complaining.

I have tried to keep an open mind as to whether I will vote for Borders or Reed, and have at times thought I'd end up voting for both candidates. Last week I decided it was time to make a decision, but that I needed to know more. I figured this would be a lengthy process of reading all the new stories I'd just skimmed earlier in the year, etc. I started with the basics, though - the AJC/LWV Voter guide, Creative Loafing's endorsements, and the candidate web sites.

After that, I didn't really feel the need to do much more digging. Kasim Reed's issues page has rather generic paragraphs, with fairly simplistic ideas. Lisa Borders has specific ideas about how to address situations. I was surprised by the difference in how the two candidates approached the issues, at least in how the decided to present it in a website.

Reed's ideas and website felt like the sort of site a politician has because he figures he needs an issues page. "People are concerned about crime, so let's have some more cops." I have continually been unimpressed with the depth of his policy ideas, especially when it comes to the APD. This is probably a deal-breaker for me. I'm sure he has spoken at length in some forum about this, but in everything that I have read his ideas about the police don't get much further than "more cops".

Border's web site addresses specific ideas with actionable items. "Here is a goal, and here is how we are going to get there." I like the idea of focusing on "basic city obligations" as a mission, because it gives a solid rubric to judge spending decisions against. I also that her "attract new business" section includes examples of when she has actually done so (with the WNBA Dream). Finally, I find her platform relating to the APD to be more comprehensive than Reed's.

One big difference I noticed is that Borders basically says that we need to raise taxes. She calls it finding new revenue sources, but a lot of it is about using different kinds of taxes than sales and property taxes. Reed has a section on Tax Relief.

I personally don't have a problem with high taxes, per se, but I believe you better be providing a quality product for what it costs. Atlanta currently isn't. My impression is that Reed would try to keep taxes about where they are, but I'm doubtful he'll do much to improve city services. Borders may increase the tax burden (although mostly on daytime officer workers, and tourists), but I have more faith that she'll be able to actually reform the city's financial and managerial operations.

The hardest part of making a decision was Reed's history of success at the state legislature. He really has gotten some difficult things through the Capitol, and I believe he could be helpful advocating for Atlanta. However, he was unable to get anything done regarding MARTA or a local transit funding mechanism when he was actually there last year.

I think these are both capable but flawed candidates. I would be satisfied with either Reed or Borders as mayor, but I'm not excited about either. I haven't seen any indication of malfeasance on part of either of them, and both seem intelligent enough for the job. But, you gotta vote for one of 'em...

I will be voting for Lisa Borders because of she has presented a clear blueprint for how to begin turning things around. I trust her experience with the business world more than I trust Reed's experience with the Georgia Legislature, and the details of her platform indicate that she is more in tune with what Atlantans need and want from city government.

More from Saporta on GDOT's ineptitude on transit

2009-10-27T09:00:00.000-04:00

Maria Saporta reports on how Washington is viewing GDOT's actions. They are unimpressed:

Just last month, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood came to Atlanta to deliver the message for transit in person. Get your act together , he told Georgia officials...
“They were already aware that we were demoting the Intermodal Division,” Stoner said. “They said, ‘Obviously Secretary LaHood’s message did not get through.’”
Stoner’s contacts in Washington, D.C. even jokingly asked him if there were anything more Georgia could do to hurt its ability to get federal transportation dollars. (Don’t tempt them).

Yup. Sounds about right for this state.

The state of transportation in this state almost makes me want to cry. Not just because the state is moving backwards or because GDOT is comically inept. It is because I have zero faith that this will change any time soon. As far as I know, none of the major GOP candidates for Governor would be any better on these issues than Perdue has been. I wish Sam Olens were running, I would vote in the GOP primary. (Oops, did I say that out loud?)

Can anyone give me a single reason why the next Governor, who will almost certainly be a Republican, will be any different than Perdue?

This sort of stuff is why the metro area needs its own source of transit funding and its own process to allocate that money.

Shirley calls out Mary Norwood

2009-10-26T14:32:00.000-04:00

Shirley Franklin commented on a Political Insider post Sunday, and had this to say about Mary Norwood:

I support candidates with vision, integrity and intelligence and I have voted for candidates with these 3 characteristics throughout my life. Mary Norwood has none of these. Therefore, I do not support her candidacy for mayor.

Wow. The rest of the comment is in that same line of thought. I guess that is to be expected when Norwood has spent her entire time running for mayor blasting Shirley. I'm only surprised that Shirley was willing to go on the record with such harsh language when she has been relatively silent on the mayor's race thus far.

I don't follow Norwood enough to comment on her integrity, although watching her show up at any community event where there is a camera certainly says something about her character. As for vision and intelligence, nothing I have seen of Norwood's public life leads me to disagree with Mayor Franklin. We are talking about the woman who wanted to make it illegal to build a high rise if it blocked the view from another high rise!

I'm working on a post about who I'll be voting for in the mayoral race. I'm not calling it an endorsement, since I'm not nearly that important. It will simply be the mental process which has led me to vote for one candidate over the other. My mind is about 90% made up, and hopefully I'll have something up in the next few days. I'll give you a hint: it isn't Mary Norwood.

Saporta: DOT moving backward on transit

2009-10-24T23:32:00.000-04:00

I missed this last week. Maria Saporta reported that new GDOT commissioner Vance Smith has moved the "Intermodal Division" to the "Intermodal Programs" of the Engineering Division.

And the timing couldn’t be worse. Last month, Ray LaHood, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, came to Georgia where he criticized the state’s lack of planning and development of transit and rail.

Georgia already is being scrutinized closely in Congress for sitting on $87 million in federal funds that are supposed to have gone towards building a passenger rail line between Atlanta and Lovejoy (or preferably Griffin or Macon). The state has been told that it will lose those dollars if it doesn’t move forward with the project.

Yes sir, just the people I want running MARTA... Of course, what did we think would happen when we put a road builder in charge of the DOT? This would all be comical if it weren't so sad.

Idea on eminent domain a bit silly

2009-10-24T14:21:00.000-04:00

Lisa Borders said she'd use eminent domain to let the city take abandoned/blighted properties. It created a big to-do. As a blog that focuses on local politics and real estate, I guess I should have a say....

I got the impression from the quote that it was in reference to foreclosed or abandoned properties with absentee landlords (typically banks) who cannot or will not maintain property. So my question is, why do we need to use eminent domain?

With eminent domain, you still have to pay fair market value, or "just compensation," for the property. I presume that the bank or absentee landlord would be happy to get rid of the property right now, they just can't sell it. Why can't the city just buy the properties, rather than using eminent domain?

Using eminent domain would likely provoke a ton of lawsuits by landowners who thought their property was either undervalued or not blighted. Just buying the property outright seems to be much easier, and it isn't like the city has a ton of funds for this sort of thing. Target the houses that are REO and use the funds quickly. The value to the community of just purchasing the homes from the banks quickly would be better than going through the whole condemnation process, right?

If Borders is talking about landowners who are not maintaining vacant property, yet don't want to sell, I would wonder if these aren't essentially abandoned properties. Are they paying their property taxes? Probably not if they aren't doing anything else with the property. Put a tax lein on the property and put it into foreclosure, if the banks haven't already.

I see the eminent domain comment as more a signal to the neighborhood that the city would be willing to be aggressive and to use all available tools to help clean up the neighborhoods. As an actual tool, I think it is unnecessary and too blunt of an instrument.

State control of MARTA? No thanks...

2009-10-23T14:32:00.001-04:00

Okay, I'm sure you expected that my reaction to the idea of a state takeover of MARTA would be, "No." However, I did try to give the idea a chance. For one thing, I think Rep. Fran Millar's approach is a million times more productive than any other approach I've seen from the state level:

...to compound the problem, we have now been told by Georgia State University that MARTA will probably be short $85 million in sales tax receipts for fiscal 2010 and over the next decade could be short $1.4 billion. In other words, MARTA cannot be financially viable in the long run with only Fulton and DeKalb as its source of primary funding....

This is our one chance to get away from a department of highways and have a meaningful department of transportation. With this new MARTA financial data, any reasonable person must conclude that Fulton and DeKalb can no longer carry this burden alone.

I like Republicans at the state house who are interested in actual solutions, as opposed to morons like Jill Chambers.

My problem is less with Atlanta "losing control" of MARTA or anything like that, but rather that I don't think the GDOT is the right place for MARTA to end up. MARTA needs to be a regional system, which logically suggests a regional management agency. GDOT is a state agency with a broken power structure, whose transit program is in disarray, with entirely too many connections to rural road builders. All the reasons why I disliked the state-wide transit funding idea still exist in Millar's scenario. Anything that lets rural legislators have a say over MARTA won't end well.

I would be more amenable to a truely regional transit agency. Clayton County is shutting down its C-Tran bus service, one of the heaviest used bus systems in the metro area. Cobb County has its own bus service, as does Gwinnett. Seriously, let's go ahead and combine all this and set up a regional transportation agency that is funded with a regional sales tax. Use the sales tax to fund transit, as well as all the other transportation needs for the metro area.

I have absolutely no problem with the realization that a regional transportation agency would probably lack the focus on Atlanta that you get now with MARTA. I have no problem with suburban counties sharing the governing power for MARTA, since they'd actually have something to do with the service (unlike Jill Chambers).

DeKalb stadium? Guess what category I'm filing that under...

2009-10-23T10:09:00.000-04:00

If you read this on RSS, you may have missed my "stupid ideas" tag. It exists for ideas such as building a new Central Library, reviving I-485, and video casinos at Underground. We can add "building a stadium in Doraville" that that list.

On a simple level, I believe that a stadium for the Atlanta Falcons should be in, um, Atlanta. The Georgia Dome also regularly hosts events such as the SEC championship games, Final Fours, Peach Bowls (not gonna call it that other thing), celebrity get-rich seminars, and church revivals. Many of these events pack the hotels Downtown. What sense does it make to try and move this infrastructure to Doraville?

I'm sure it will be a big surprise, of course, that I also think a stadium for the Falcons needs to be Downtown. While I dislike tourist attractions as a strategy for reviving central cities, I do think central cities are best equipped to support such attractions. I also belive that such attractions are good additions to the milieu of urban life. Separating out the big draws loses a lot of the synergy that having all that stuff Downtown creates.

I know the idea in Doraville is to have a stadium, plus a lot of other stuff, but ... all that exists already Downtown. Where there is ALREADY A STADIUM.

Also, I'm mildly concerned with the way that DeKalb is handling matters on this GM site. The communication with Doraville has been spotty at best, and the county seems to be getting very involved in a piece of property that is privately owned. New CEO Burrell Ellis is pushing hard, even considering going after $35 million in Obama bucks to purchase part of the property:

Ellis said he felt as CEO of the largest government involved in the potential redevelopment of the former auto plant that he had to do something.

General Motors Co. first said it hoped to close on the sale of the plant by the end of 2008, but the real estate market started to collapse and land values plummeted.

GM later filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009, emerging from the process earlier this year.

“We kept thinking GM was going to move on this site,” Ellis said.

“I know we’ve indicated to GM we want this site to be revitalized. At some point, the market will force them to do something.”

I am very concerned about leaving zoning and land use up to a government that seems to be most interested in moving quickly and creating jobs. The political incentive to "fix it" means that you could end up with something (like a stadium) that the community doesn't want, that hurts the region, and that the county is partly on the hook for. I think there are plenty of opportunities for government to get involved in land development - TADs are one great example. IIRC, Atlanta's invovlement with Atlantic Station came further down the road than what DeKalb is doing with this GM plant, and it involved a much larger host of community partners.

"Livable" parks

2009-10-23T09:16:00.000-04:00

I didn't realize that the National Park Service not only owned the MLK birthplace block on Auburn Avenue, but that they let people rent the houses. I suppose I could have put one and one together, but I'd never really considered who owned and lived in those houses. They recently acquired another piece of the block from the Trust for Public Land, and the article included this bit:

“We will fix it up to the time Dr. King was living here, and then we allow people to live here,” said Forte of the renovated houses on the block. “Structurally, it’s in pretty good shape.” ...

The MLK district is only one of three “livable” national parks that preserve the historical and cultural qualities of a place while it continues to thrive as an ongoing community.

Forte also hopes that the street can be transformed into being less of a thoroughfare and more of a residential, pedestrian-oriented street, much the way it was when King was growing up there. She would love to see streetlights and landscaping that would become even more of a tourist and educational destination.

I have done a little bit of searching, but I can't find what the other two "livable" parks are.

Google maps adds parcels

2009-10-14T16:38:00.000-04:00

It appears that Google Maps has added parcel info to their display. Apparently this is a result of Google switching to in-house map data from an outsourced data company. This is lots of fun for real estate junkies such as myself...

Also, much apologies for the lack of posting. School is quite a lot of work this semester (although I think I set the curve for my financial analysis class on the last test). I'll try and have some posts about the upcoming elections, although I probably won't be "endorsing". I will probably note who I will be voting for, however, along with reasons.

I don't really think 13th counts

2009-10-05T17:47:00.000-04:00

The ABC cites a poll showing Atlanta "among most popular places." This means that Atlanta is the 13th most desirable place for people to live:

New York City topped the Harris Poll this year as American’s No. 1 choice to live, followed by San Francisco, which tied with Denver at the No. 2 spot, San Diego was No. 4 and Seattle was No. 5. The other cities on the top 10 are Chicago (No. 6), Boston (No. 7), Las Vegas (No. 8), Washington, D.C. (No. 9), and Dallas (No. 10).

So..... I look at that list and I think "man, we've got a lot of catching up to do." Not, "hey, we are one of the most popular places." Also, a lot of these places are areas that strong urban/pedestrian cores.

I think there are some "institutional advantages" that places like San Francisco, NYC, Chicago, Boston, and maybe DC have over Atlanta in terms of history and walkable infrastructure that results from that. However, Seattle, San Diego, Dallas, Denver and Vegas should all be on a short list of "cities we should be better than." Perhaps the natural environment makes Denver, San Diego, or Seattle a bit more attractive than Atlanta - we don't have the Rockies or the Pacific on our door step. Atlanta DOES have lots of natural resources at its disposal, however, and we have very vibrant outdoor community.

We SHOULD be able to compete with some of these cities - the fact that we aren't higher on this list is because of our city and region's inept leadership over the last two decades. We should have been cultivating a stronger walkable core with more alternative transportation, but instead we've been sitting on our hands....

More on crime techniques

2009-09-27T11:04:00.001-04:00

Stephanie Ramage has an interesting post up that is a different take on the AJC's crime opus.

We know that when a reporter spends more than 2,000 words on the number of reported crimes, police department policies and the media’s role in perception, with only about 600 devoted to any actual crime—the John Henderson slaying and a list of homicide highlights that left out the murder of Harish Roy—and that no survivors of those crimes are interviewed for the story, the story is not about crime: It’s about numbers, policies, and low-rating other media.

The story is a little bit too inside-baseball for me, media wise. Still, she has some solid points about how the AJC compares Atlanta to other cities. I also think there is a density issue to the "asset turnover" of police officers. Denser cities, like Boston, can get more use per officer because they spend less time driving to and fro and more time policing. That is just an idea of mine, though, with no proof.

I'm personally more interested in learning about the criminologist she interviews, David Weisburd. He's apparently done some work on effective policing techniques, and a quick googling brings up this book on crime mapping, as well as a number of other books. She gave him a call:

It was Weisburd who studied policing in Minneapolis in the mid-1990s and found that by concentrating more police in troubled micro-areas or “hot spots,” crime could be reduced overall by as much as 13 percent. Since then, he says, the method has only grown in currency and support. The entwined ideas that adding police doesn’t have much impact on crime and that for a city like Atlanta, with a poverty problem, “a high crime rate is inevitable”—as the AJC’s Judd claims “criminologists say”—are outdated.

“That used to be a consensus among criminologists,” says Weisburd. “But at least since 1990, there has been a growing body of literature about how police can affect crime rates.”
He doesn’t discount the fact that various social factors affect crime, but, he says, “there are poor areas with little crime.”

I am curious about how the APD utilizes the crime-mapping data they have. I assume, and hope, that they use the data for more than a web page display and public information. However, I don't hear much about how they are using it to target hot spots and to inform officer distribution. I also think it is slightly ridiculous that someone like me (with el hermano and Cassie) has to be the one who produces the GIS maps and data reports on micro-levels. It would be unbelievably simple for the APD to generate data reports and maps on a regular basis.

College Football Hall of Fame to ATL. Yawn.

2009-09-22T23:35:00.000-04:00

So the College Football Hall of Fame is moving to Atlanta, and we beat out Dallas and T. Boone Pickens to secure the move. As a Michigan grad, I engage in an extremely mild amount of schadenfreude at seeing South Bend, Indiana lose the Hall of Fame. As an Atlanta resident, I am a bit disappointed as it appears the boosters of the move are going to be taking a piece of property on the east side of Centennial Olympic Park at Harris Street:

View Terminal Station Development Tracker in a larger map
I am generally of the opinion that Atlanta needs more residents and sustainable development, not more tourist attractions. I also would love to see a higher density development than a likely two story building on that particular piece of dirt.

I'm not opposed to the HOF relocating. I'm enough of a home town booster to rejoice at beating Dallas for something, especially football related. So far, the Hall of Fame has given me Notre Dame snubbing and Texas snubbing. If we could work in some Alabama snubbing, it'd be the holy trinity of self-important football schadenfreude. But the College Football Hall of Fame is a decidedly B-grade tourist attraction, certainly not on par with the Aquarium or the CCHR. It doesn't match up to the World of Coke, either, which frankly is a B-grade attraction, too. The HOF might even be C-grade.

So I'm disappointed that this actually happened, but I guess realistically it is good to have something being built Downtown. It might be a positive addition to the city, but I still think in the long run that the opportunity costs for that parcel are too high.

Reader email: New BeltLine CEO

2009-09-22T11:41:00.001-04:00

I got an email from a reader, and was about to write him back when I figured my response might be worth posting:

They named a new Beltline CEO. What do you think? If he was teh VP of Atlantic Station, the only thing I can say is I am concerned for the Beltline. I know Atlantic Station is a major improvement from what it was, but the last word I would use for Atlantic Station is "impressive."

It all comes down to quality and design. If the CEO doesn't have it, then the project won't have it, simple as that.

I have been ambivalent about Atlantic Station in this space. At one point I said, "Atlantic Station is in many ways a huge disappointment it also did a lot of things right." That is still about how I feel, although I've warmed up to the place the more I go there. I really only end up there once a month or so for a movie, and it is always fairly busy. It feels more urban as they fill in 17th Street with more high rises, but I also haven't been near some of the ugly multifamily buildings in a while.

I also don't know much about Brian Leary as an individual. However, from an outsider's perspective, my first instinct is that BeltLine made a pretty good hire. First, I think the private enterprise experience is important, and Atlantic Station is one of the few mega projects that has actually delivered anything to market. Allen Plaza is the only other one I can think of, and the BeltLine has had mixed results working with the Barry folks on the Wayne Mason parcel. Projects of this magnitude are very, very difficult to pull off, and Brian Leary has been a key part of one that can generally be called a success.

I call Atlantic Station a success because they created a lively, almost fully leased retail destination, and a fairly successful residential component. Sure, the condo sales aren't so hot right now, but that is hardly unique to Atlantic Station. I think the apartments have good occupancy rates, as well. Non real estate types often underestimate how difficult it is to build anything, much less something on the scale of Atlantic Station. All you need to do is look at the vacant or half-built sites out there to see how impressive Atlantic Station actually is, in the grand scheme of things.

It is easy to get snagged on the design aspect - and Atlantic Station leaves a lot to be desired. It feels too separate from the rest of the city, the buildings on the square look fake and Disney-esque, the parking is a ginormous pain in the ass, the bridge is ugly (thanks DOT), the multifamily buildings are generally pretty ugly (thanks Lane Company), there are tons of chain retail, and there is a giant IKEA big box on the edge of the development. Some folks will tell you it feels "ghetto" - which is utter b.s., by the way. I went to APS for 9 years, and Atlantic Station is NOT ghetto - it attracts middle class black shoppers from the 'burbs. Calling it ghetto says more about you than it does about Atlantic Station.

However, this email was about the BeltLine. Brian Leary, as CEO of the BeltLine, will not be designing buildings or even particular parcels. I doubt he'd have anything like the kind of micro-managing ability most developers I know expect to have on their projects. Most developers care about everything down to sink fixtures and cabinet knobs. The CEO of the BeltLine will be about making sure the project is advancing forward on time, with financing, and with the appropriate amount of involvement from the community. Atlantic Station gets close to an A in all three of those categories. Home Park has had some complaints about Atlantic Station, but they were heavily involved in the planning stages of the development.

So I think someone with Leary's experience should be a good thing for the BeltLine, although I said previously that I don't know anything about him as an individual. I have no idea what his personal abilities are like, what kind of a leader he is, etc. I think these things, and fitting with the existing BeltLine culture, are important. But I'm fairly optimistic about the hire.

UPDATE: I should probably link to Maria Saporta's article on Brian Leary.

Required reading on APD

2009-09-21T14:18:00.000-04:00

The AJC had a long piece in the Sunday paper about the Atlanta Police Department - you should read the whole thing. There are a few things I wanted to highlight, though.

I've been saying that simply adding more officers isn't much of a solution. The AJC thankfully points out that:

Despite recent cuts, Atlanta has more officers for every 1,000 residents than all but one of seven benchmark cities identified by a consultant to the mayor.

The only city in that group with more officers than Atlanta — St. Louis — also is the only one with a higher crime rate.

While I think there is a matter of density to consider, I hope we can agree that "more officers" doesn't automatically translate into lower crime rates.

The second thing is the issue of "perception".
At its core, the APD is a service business, whose customers are the citizens of Atlanta. Regardless of the empirical quality of the work, service businesses need to be concerned with the perception of that work. I may order the best burger in the world, but if the server is a giant jerk who ignores me cops an attitude, acts like I'm a bother, and treats me like an idiot when I ask for more Coke, then I'm not going to have a good opinion of that restaurant. APD can tout lower overall crime rates all they want, but the following is going to ensure that citizens continue to complain about the service they get from the police department:

Just 40 percent of Atlanta police officers are assigned to routine patrol, the city’s internal auditor reported in April.

As a result, the auditor concluded, the department experiences frequent “blackouts” — periods during which no officer is immediately available to handle emergency calls.

The police zones covering northwest, southwest and southeast Atlanta were in blackout almost three hours a day in 2007 and 2008. In the other three zones, blackouts averaged 40 to 80 minutes a day.

Two areas that I have identified as having the greatest increase in property crimes, SE and SW Atlanta, quite literally have no one home for three hours EVERY DAY. The article notes that in June it took an average of 20 minutes to simply dispatch an officer on a call. It is probably closer to 30 minutes before anyone shows up. Judging from the people I've talked to, waiting 30 minutes for an officer is an unacceptable amount of time to wait, and will ensure a perception among citizens that the APD is incompetent, doesn't care, or can't handle the city.

Finally, I have commented that I wanted to avoid using sensationalized incidents to score points or to drive policy. I hate it when politicians do the "I met so and so in Smalltown, Ohio last week, and listen to how awful their life is, and my legislation will fix it." Inevitably, you get bogged down in the specifics of whether so-and-so is a stand-up citizen, or whatever, and the actual policy argument gets lost amid all the B.S. I'm glad the AJC summed up the reality of the Standard shooting:

Much of what was reported about Henderson’s killing turned out to be false. He was not shot execution-style. Nor was he wounded four times. He was hit once in the leg during the robbery and once again in the head, maybe by accident, as the robbers fled. One of the bullets came from a handgun the robbers took from Henderson’s co-worker.

And the area around the Standard was hardly unprotected before the robbery.

From 2:55 to 3:05 a.m., police dispatch records show, the officer assigned to the neighborhood was checking on a gas station at Memorial Drive and Hill Street — 500 feet from the Standard. The officer resumed patrol moments before the robbers smashed the bar’s door.

Short of standing guard at the Standard, it appears the officer could have done little more to prevent the crime.

Yet we heard after the Standard ad nauseum about how the furloughs were to killing the city, or we want to think that more officers on patrol can prevent crime. It just isn't that simple, and using incidents like the Standard as proof of anything other than the maliciousness of criminals has a potential to backfire. That is why this blog has tried to focus on data, analyzed in a hopefully objective fashion.

Atlanta crime data: Larceny from Auto

2009-09-18T15:24:00.004-04:00

This is the second in a series of posts looking at APD crime data. Previously I looked at residential burglaries. For an overview, including methodology, see Atlanta crime data: project overview.

Looking at the the Larceny from Auto (car break-ins) data is rather different than the home burglary story. With home burglaries, we saw rather localized results, where it was possible to identify areas of the city that saw disproportionate increases. With car break-ins, we basically have several major problem areas in the city for all years of our data set.

For the city as a whole, car break-ins are up. Things started off well, as car break-ins actually dropped in 2005, but picked up again in 2006. 2008 was a particularly bad year.

Overall, I can't see significant trends in the data other than the fact that 2008 was a very bad year for car break-ins. Without the 2008 series, many of the NPUs have average annual increases in the single digits, and a few NPUs actually have fewer car break-ins. So for, the first half of 2009 is showing a decrease in major problems areas, as well.

Don't park your car in Buckhead, Midtown, or Downtown

Breaking down car break-ins by NPU very quickly shows that the it is dangerous to park your car in densest areas of the city with the greatest amount of on-street parking and open-air parking lots. Combined, NPUs B, E, and M account for 54.83% of all break-ins over the period studied.

What you can also see here is that the trends aren't as strong for car break-ins as they were for home burglaries. For a lot of NPUs, the numbers of incidents are relatively level. The biggest increases are seen in 2006 and 2008, but in different areas. All of the increase in car break-ins in Buckhead (NPU B) occurred in 2008, while 2006 was a bad year for Midtown (NPU E). Midtown, incidentally, actually had a net decrease in activity because the increases in 2006 were offset by large decreases in 2005 and 2007.

Other areas with significant car break-in issues include NPU F (including Virginia-Highland), NPU N (including Inman Park, LIttle Five, and Cabbagetown), NPU W (including East Atlanta), as well as NPUs T and V (Summerhill, Mechanicsville, Peoplestown, Capitol View). For the most part, these problem areas correlate to areas with lots of nighttime activity. For crying out loud, don't leave stuff in your car when you go out at night!

East side again a problem area

The concentration of car break-in activity also means is that relatively modest increases in activity in these NPUs gets magnified. When car break-ins increase by 30% in Downtown over five years, it accounts for 24% of the increase in all break-ins. By contrast, care break-ins in NPU P increased by 156% yet that only contributed to 4.6% of the overall increase in activity.

Compare this graph, showing just the additional incidents by each NPU, with the second graph, showing the overall percentage change in car break-ins for each NPU.

Several things jump out to me. First, while downtown accounts for a lot of the increase in burglaries, Midtown and Buckhead are less culpable. NPUs N and O show both significant percentage and absolute increase in activity. Almost all of the increases for N and O occur in 2008.

2009

So far, most of the major problem areas are all showing decreases in car break-ins for the first six months of the year compared with the first six months of 2008. Buckhead, Midtown, Downtown, East Atlanta, and Little Five NPUs are all down, while Virginia Highland is up. NPU O, which includes Edgewood and Kirkwood, has really taken off, though. Car break-ins have almost doubled there - no surprise given the recent reports there.

Apologies for the lack of content

2009-09-17T22:15:00.004-04:00

It has been too long since I wrote. I have been very busy with school, but I am beginning to get a handle on the semester. I'm spending hours every day playing with spreadsheets, which is fantastic.

At one point a classmate complained about the hours he was putting in for our Financial Analysis class.

I responded, "Yeah, it is fun, but it takes a long time."

"You think this is fun?!"

I guess I'm in the right program.

Anyway, I should have a post up on car break-in data tomorrow. I have had all the analysis done for two weeks, I just hadn't had the time to write anything up. I got about 90% of the work done tonight while watching the Tech-Miami game, so you can look forward to that.

Transportation forum recap and mayoral news

2009-09-03T00:40:00.004-04:00

Joeventures gives a pretty good write up of the most recent mayoral forum. Lisa Borders comes off the best. Joe has some okay things to say about Kasim Reed, but thinks he lacks the ability to be an effective CEO. That is one way to express a concern I share, too.

Also, Kyle Keyser of ATAC enters the race. I guess he's putting his name out there for public debate.... but I don't want to look at him the same way I look at the other candidates who might actually be in charge of the city. I mean... I have doubts he can raise enough money to qualify. I'm pretty sure that all the major candidates are aware that crime is an issue this election, and Kyle deserves some credit for that. However, I'm not sure what his candidacy will accomplish beyond that fact.

h/t: Grift Drift

History of I-485

2009-09-01T16:56:00.003-04:00

Via Thomas Wheatley, there is a comprehensive history of the original I-485 fight on the Inman Park Neighborhood Association web site. The PDF was originally put out by the Morningside-Lenox Park Neighborhood Association in 2003.

Wheatley's article also include a letter from the Inman Park Neighborhood Association president to Oxendine that is worth reading. The end of the letter is, for me, the bottom line.

These Atlanta neighborhoods, including Inman Park, most soundly defeated this highway proposal decades ago, at a time when they had little organization and little resources. Today, we are highly organized and closely networked. We have neighbors and friends in many high places, and we have a lot of money, set aside specifically to protect ourselves against these kinds of proposals.

This basically sums it up - I'd like to see Oxendine try. Really. The entire east side of the city would go into primal-scream mode. The original I-485 fight, along with the subsequent Stone Mountain Freeway fight, were the catalyst for urban renewal in Atlanta. Beyond just not wanting a freeway through our neighborhoods, the fights have become even more important as a sort of local mythology.

Consider the ferocity with which folks fought against Wayne Mason, and that was for a relatively minor issue. I have no doubt that the intown neighborhoods would use every lever at their disposal, including:

a life time of support for John Lewis
a state House and Senate delegation with years of service and experience (and chits)
a sizable amount of disposable income useful for political donations (beyond what the neighborhood organizations have at their disposal for legal fights, etc.)
the made-for-the-media story line of "neighborhood fights the big bad road builders"
connections and often executive-level employment at Atlanta's major companies

I have little confidence that Oxendine could get any sort of bill through the legislature that would allow this to happen - if the entire Atlanta delegation didn't completely flip out I'd be surprised (and it would be legislative malpractice if they didn't).

I highly doubt that Oxendine gave this idea more than a minimal amount of thought. Not that he really gives a crap about pissing off intown neighborhoods. It is just that this is just an idea for him to put out there to say, "hey, I have transportation ideas." If he got elected, he'd never want to spend political capital on this fight. I doubt he has considered what it'd take to get such a road built. This will never happen. That doesn't make it less insulting or threatening.

That is perhaps the best way to view this proposal, as a threat to a way of life in the most drastic way possible. It isn't just threatening the symbols of that way of life, it is threatening to dig up and pave over the actual real estate that makes up a community. Auburn Avenue has never recovered from the connector getting put right though it. Can you expect Atlanta, from Morningside down to Reynoldstown and East Atlanta, to not freak out? Oxendine may as well just spit in my face.

What a wonderful smell you've discovered

2009-08-29T11:04:00.005-04:00

I had a whole long post written about Ox's idea to revive I-485, but it basically degenerated into a string of curse words. All I can say is that I find the idea of a parallel connector to be one of the most offensive, divisive, disgusting ideas I have heard in a very, very long time.

If I try to write anything else I will devolve into a spluttering mess and just embarrass myself. Perhaps I can prepare a cogent attack on this idea later, but I'd give it's chances for passage about a -10%.

Mayoral forum on alternative transportation

2009-08-28T08:00:00.003-04:00

The Atlanta Bicycle Campaign is hosting a mayoral forum focusing on alternative transportation. Reader Doug alerted me to the event, which I unfortunately will be unable to attend. So many of these events coincide with my classes...

The pertinent data:

Tuesday, September 1
6:30pm
Loudermilk Center Auditorium
40 Courtland Street NE
Bicycle valet parking will be provided

Click the picture at the top of the page for a bigger version of the flyer.