Nearly $2B in public incentives to develop Gulch? (school districts, income)
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He's clueless. He shouldn't be looking at San Francisco. San Francisco is what to avoid. On housing they need to look at Dallas and Houston who have grown tremendously and yet had lower housing inflation that the slow growing cities on the coast.
You should not mix the issues. That is why people don't trust government. They take from one pocket in order to put it in another.
And the Gulch will get redeveloped. Why does it matter when if Atlanta has other, cheaper sites available. Tax increment financing IS giving money to developers. They are giving this money to the developer that would otherwise have gone to the city when somebody else built a similar tower or condo in midtown.
They say it takes $500 million to build the infrastructure to connect the Gulch back to the current level of the city. So why is the deal $2 billion + private streets? Its just the typical theft of public funds that goes on so much around here. It drives out developers who don't have political connections and aren't willing to grease the palms of politicians.
This was a pretty good summary of both the Gulch financing and the housing problems facing wider Atlanta. They weren't particularly new ideas to me, but I do appreciate a good write-up when I see one. That said, I have two main concerns with the article's conclusions of support.
First, is that they rather pass over my main concerns with the Gulch preserving the possibility of the MMPT, or some future equivalent. The author mentions that "[m]ultimodal access there [...] appears to be preserved in the plans," but doesn't give any actual specifics as to what they mean by that. So far, and please actually provide info if I'm behind the times on this, I have not seen any actual plans to do much more than pre-allocate future right of way for additional freight tracks. Nothing about platform space, nothing about additional room for new passenger only tracks, and nothing about bus bays. Given how transit is spinning up for some truly transformative changes over the next few decades, it would be irresponsible to destroy the possibility for a central station now.
Second, while I agree with the author that there are significant housing troubles in the metro, I do not see this deal as a particularly strong part of the solution to that. Not only does affordable housing tend to drive over all prices up relative to if it was market rate, but the CIM plan for the Gulch actually has fewer planned housing units than GDOT's MMPT plan. I did a simple comparison between the CIM plan & the MMPT plan, as far as development is concerned. Basically, CIM has quite a bit more office & retail space, but the MMPT has more housing and hotel space, and in pretty significant differences in each direction, too. If the concern is to tackle housing issues, then I would think the author would want to be pushing for more housing in the proposals, rather than accepting a short-supply because some affordable units have been thrown in.
In fact, looking at the MMPT's proposed development map, it occurs to me that quite a few of the buildings on the further reaches of the plan could be built up significantly (assuming there's not some pre-limiting structural reason otherwise). After all, for all the hype around CIM's plan, it's mostly low and mid-rise compared to actual towers, which are more predominantly featured in the MMPT plan.
Ultimately that could mean that, with a bit of a tweak to the existing GDOT MMPT plan, CIM could have the same amount of development squarfootage (if not more), and Atlanta could have the entire MMPT building. That makes me wonder how much it would cost for CIM to just adopt all the existing GDOT plans for themselves? After all, GDOT got ridiculously far in their planning efforts, and there are some 4,426 pages of planning documentation publicly available to show for it.
Maybe the city and state could find some more incentives / outright funding to sweeten the deal just enough more to get the MMPT built fully, as part of the over all redevelopment effort? Say, another $250 Mil. to round things out to an even $2 Bil. in combined incentives. That would account for what little inflation has occurred since planning wrapped up, while also basically putting in payments for use / lease. After all, an awful lot of the MMPT office space was being set aside for government use.
I want the Gulch filled in and developed, but Atlanta's got one shot to really get this right. There's one opportunity to appropriately balance public needs and private interests, or else the Gulch becomes one more in a group of generational mistakes that metro Atlanta has made regarding transportation.
GDOT did nothing with those plans, didn't back them up with funding or move ahead. The CoA cannot fund the MMPT alone and with 0 commitment from GDOT, SRTA, etc. on commuter and intercity rail network the need for a massive MMPT doesn't exist.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bu2
He's clueless. He shouldn't be looking at San Francisco. San Francisco is what to avoid. On housing they need to look at Dallas and Houston who have grown tremendously and yet had lower housing inflation that the slow growing cities on the coast.
You should not mix the issues. That is why people don't trust government. They take from one pocket in order to put it in another.
And the Gulch will get redeveloped. Why does it matter when if Atlanta has other, cheaper sites available. Tax increment financing IS giving money to developers. They are giving this money to the developer that would otherwise have gone to the city when somebody else built a similar tower or condo in midtown.
They say it takes $500 million to build the infrastructure to connect the Gulch back to the current level of the city. So why is the deal $2 billion + private streets? Its just the typical theft of public funds that goes on so much around here. It drives out developers who don't have political connections and aren't willing to grease the palms of politicians.
Dallas and Houston also have huge city limits.
Atlantic Station needed a platform to raise the development to street level and hide parking. Other than 17th St, those streets are private. Private streets means the developer has to maintain, etc. the streets.
GDOT did nothing with those plans, didn't back them up with funding or move ahead. The CoA cannot fund the MMPT alone and with 0 commitment from GDOT, SRTA, etc. on commuter and intercity rail network the need for a massive MMPT doesn't exist.
GDOT's planning was completed in 2014. That's right, GDOT was actively creating highly detailed plans right up to four years ago, if they haven't continued to do so since.
I want to put that into context. Clayton County joined MARTA in 2014, and was announced as likely being the first route of commuter rail that the metro will see, and which MARTA will build; it's still being designed, but it has funding and will be built. The streetcar loop was completed in 2014, and the first city-wide light rail plan released to go with it, and now More MARTA has finally gathered funding to act on large chunks of that plan in a few years. The Clifton Corridor was still in planning in 2014, even though it's been considered, in some form, since the 60s, and is still in engineering work now, with funds only recently secured. In 2014, the Westside BeltLine trail broke ground, even though Gravel's thesis was written in 1999. In 2014, the ATL transit bill did not exist, MARTA was still forced to split their budget 50/50 by law, Gwinnett was not set to vote on joining MARTA, neither Fulton nor DeKalb had started plans for More MARTA funding themselves, and Cobb was not considering a 2020 transit funding referendum.
My point is this: in the world of great public works, four years is no where near enough time to call something like the MMPT dead. Certainly not given the new developments in the transit world since the planning wrapped up, and especially with state lawmakers saying the state should reopen its efforts last year.
We still have time before we should truly call the thing dead.
Additionally, Clayton is getting Commuter rail. With the MMPT, and a bit of work, the final miles between East Point and Downtown could be set up to complete the line.
Clayton is a county that's less dense than Gwinnett, Cobb, and DeKalb. DeKalb is already a MARTA county, Gwinnett could be a MARTA county by next year, Cobb could be so (or close enough) by the following year, and if we toss Fulton back into the mix (it's just below Clayton's density), then we can see that MARTA would now have control of a HUGE proportion of GDOT's rail plan. Clayton is setting up the demonstration, and the other four of the core counties are gearing up for expansion funding. With some healthy reconsideration of priorities, commuter rail could become far more common within the metro. I don't think MARTA will be able to handle all, or even most, of the route miles within its control, but it's a far cry from 'pipe-dream'.
Not only that, but the ATL transit bill enables other metro counties to establish funding for transit as well, which could, if done right, extend the reach of potential commuter rail service throughout the metro.
Not only that, but the state has been making historic, if rather small, contributions to transit funding as of late, with more considerations likely to come.
Furthermore, the MMPT has always been about more than just commuter rail. Amtrak could potentially make use of it if it was in place today, but much more immediate and likely would be the centralization of bus services. Greyhound, Megabus, and even GRTA all have rather disconnected services & terminals. The MMPT would supply a bus bay to concentrate all of them, as well as MARTA's own local bus routes. They would then have sheltered access to the heavy rail hub at 5-points, rather than the cub-side and disparate set up in place now. In addition to that, would be the streetcar's Crosstown Downtown West Extension, and Capitol Ave BRT route, which are both receiving More MARTA funding.
As for wider system implementation, and other expansions, all I can really say is that we never quite know what the future will hold. Political times are changing. It wasn't until two years ago that Atlanta finally approved a huge MARTA expansion. Until one year ago, the ATL legislation, and accompanying funding mechanisms didn't exist. The state's only recently started funding transit projects other than GRTA, and even that was a big step up from the nothing that was around before. Even further up, the nation is getting more and more restless with the state of infrastructure, not just in terms of condition, but in relation to other nations. It's one of the few bi-partisan issues we have left. Politics are changing every year, and we never know what opportunity will come flying around the corner.
For now, though, we aught to at least preserve the ability to take advantage of it when it does, and do our best to serve what we know is coming until then.
Given the extent of assistance CIM is getting, even if it is in tax-relief form from both the state and city, the MMPT could be built outright. As bu2 pointed out, there's a real weird mismatch in the level of rendered public services and incentives given. I would like to balance that scale a bit, and in a way that should still leave the area profitable, if not even more so than before!
We can see that by looking at just the parking vs. commuter rail aspect of the Gulch. GDOT's plans for the MMPT anticipated replacing the existing (in 2014) 3,540 spaces, with 3,248 spaces within the scope of the MMPT site (see: MMPT Final Conceptual Design & Master Plan PDF page 1606). Furthermore, according to Atlanta's own Dowtown Master Plan (PDF page 246), only 60% of downtown's 96,000 public spaces are used during peak levels, which leaves a surplus of 32,000 spaces to absorb any future removal of parking from CIM's development. Finally, the mobility access gained from the MMPT would far outweigh the loss from the removed parking. GDOT's commuter rail plan, on its own, estimated some 8.7 million riders a year, or over 23,800 persons per day just on the 7 lines shown in that image. Even if only half those riders used the Downtown-Centric commuter rail to go downtown, it would still be more capacity than if the 8,000 parking spaces that CIM is planning were completely filled up with daily workers. That capacity only increases when you start to include other planned commuter rail lines, intercity routes, interstate routes, and various other transit capacity improvements that the MMPT would enable.
If nothing else, they need to design their future decks & sub-street structure so that those decks can be removed, and replaced with the planned track spaces & platforms when requested. It's clear to me that GDOT could supply CIM with designs for the MMPT substructures if requested, and I'd be surprised if the load-tolerances weren't enough to serve CIM's needs, considering that GDOT was doing much of the same street rework and new development planning that CIM is.
I don't think that's really too much to ask, considering that CIM is potentially getting enough public incentives to outright build the MMPT. Honestly, that full buildout would actually be my preferred outcome. Give CIM the incentives in exchange for them building the MMPT (mostly) as GDOT planned. I'm sure some agreement could be reached on annual lease & usage payments vs. other public funding & incentives. The MMPT plan came with a ton of new towers, and an entire mall in the station building itself. That initial plan can be shifted into something more than even what CIM is proposing now. Then, new passenger services could be added in in increments as projects come online. If nothing else, the combined bus & heavy-rail hub would be a good start, with the streetcar and BRT extensions coming in a few years, and perhaps the state could pitch in to help MARTA run the Clayton line on into downtown.
CIM would have the most transit-oriented development in the metro, let alone the state. As studies have shown, their real-estate would be in prime demand for it, too, so I have trouble accepting that it would not be a good business decision on their part.
Last edited by fourthwarden; 10-10-2018 at 10:58 AM..
He's clueless. He shouldn't be looking at San Francisco. San Francisco is what to avoid. On housing they need to look at Dallas and Houston who have grown tremendously and yet had lower housing inflation that the slow growing cities on the coast.
You should not mix the issues. That is why people don't trust government. They take from one pocket in order to put it in another.
And the Gulch will get redeveloped. Why does it matter when if Atlanta has other, cheaper sites available. Tax increment financing IS giving money to developers. They are giving this money to the developer that would otherwise have gone to the city when somebody else built a similar tower or condo in midtown.
They say it takes $500 million to build the infrastructure to connect the Gulch back to the current level of the city. So why is the deal $2 billion + private streets? Its just the typical theft of public funds that goes on so much around here. It drives out developers who don't have political connections and aren't willing to grease the palms of politicians.
Huh??
You totally missed the point of him bringing up San Francisco. He's only making the point that a $billion incentive wouldn't go very far there because of how insane housing costs are.
And don't kid yourself if you think this kind of economic development incentives only exist "around here".
"Developer CIM Group and the city of Atlanta are locked in 11th-hour negotiations on a public financing package to support the $5 billion project aimed at transforming downtown’s Gulch.
Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has pushed for a Monday City Council vote on the current proposal, which calls for up to $1.75 billion in public financing. But that plan might have hit a wall. It appears the measure does not have the eight council votes needed to pass, and a Monday vote is doubtful, people familiar with the matter told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Bottoms has staked significant political capital on the Gulch project, which she says will transform a neglected area in the heart of downtown. But she was forced to shelve an earlier vote.
CIM and the city met for hours Thursday and Friday to hash out new terms. They discussed ways to reduce the overall taxpayer contribution and increase the public benefits, said three people who asked not to be identified because they aren’t authorized to comment."
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