Atlanta’s housing crisis: stop making it worse with bad arguments against growth (Buckhead: to live in, codes)

[bu2]

Originally Posted by cqholt

NPU's follow Robert's Rules, so unless that 1 person sues the developer, NPU will go with the majority of Yes.

They eventually got it approved, but as I said, it cost $15,000 and a year's time. They had to go through the whole process.

I remember Mayor Reed promising to make it easier to do business in Atlanta. I don't know how successful he was, but there was a AJC article just after he took office saying the same permit that took 5 weeks in Cobb County took 43 weeks in Atlanta.

[samiwas1]

Originally Posted by arjay57

Why can't you build that in Ormewood Park? Seems like you could build that in most of the city, except for maybe R-5 and certain commercial areas.

Re your pictures, we've got tons of areas like those shown in your third photo, jsvh. Here's one in Buckhead, where they carved out about 6 acres in a single family neighborhood and plopped in 50 homes, including new streets and a common area. Across the street they put 11 townhouses on 1 acre.

There are a zillion places like this, many of them much denser.

Seriously...if that third picture is what we're talking about with density, then great in many areas. I see those developments everywhere.

Originally Posted by bu2

They eventually got it approved, but as I said, it cost $15,000 and a year's time. They had to go through the whole process.

I remember Mayor Reed promising to make it easier to do business in Atlanta. I don't know how successful he was, but there was a AJC article just after he took office saying the same permit that took 5 weeks in Cobb County took 43 weeks in Atlanta.

Child's play. In our area, one person was able to stop a development that had the approval of all NPUs and pretty much every resident for miles, for almost ten years.

[cqholt]

Originally Posted by samiwas1

I should have clarified that I was talking not just about the core midtown and downtown, but of the areas most people would refer to as being in downtown and midtown.

This is the entirety of Manhattan from the southern tip up to almost Washington Heights laid over a map of Atlanta.



But, I guess the real question is...is the density of NYC what anyone actually wants? I certainly hope not. I don't think I've seen too much of that around here. Mostly just denser housing.

Why don't we aim for DC, Seattle, or Portland density? Those are attainable.

[cqholt]

Originally Posted by bu2

They eventually got it approved, but as I said, it cost $15,000 and a year's time. They had to go through the whole process.

I remember Mayor Reed promising to make it easier to do business in Atlanta. I don't know how successful he was, but there was a AJC article just after he took office saying the same permit that took 5 weeks in Cobb County took 43 weeks in Atlanta.

Part of that is the overhaul of Department of City Planning, which Tim Keane is currently leading.

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by bu2

I remember Mayor Reed promising to make it easier to do business in Atlanta. I don't know how successful he was, but there was a AJC article just after he took office saying the same permit that took 5 weeks in Cobb County took 43 weeks in Atlanta.

Atlanta was notorious for its agonizingly slow and disjointed permitting process. Assuming a project complies with existing zoning, it should never take 43 weeks to pull the permits. Whoever dallied that long ought to be fired. I think they're doing better now but there's still plenty of room for improvement.

Of course pulling permits is not the same thing as attempting to rezone the property, or to build something that requires significant variances or watershed incursions. That's going to take longer because there are several stages of review -- as there should be.

[samiwas1]

Originally Posted by cqholt

Why don't we aim for DC, Seattle, or Portland density? Those are attainable.

I can go for that. Nice, highly dense downtown/midtown area. Medium density area north of midtown to Buckhead And a few little pockets here and there of medium to high density. Then the remainder is nice, quiet, tree-filled, beautiful neighborhoods. Sounds good to me.

This map would be pretty acceptable.

[brown_dog_us]

Originally Posted by fourthwarden

If parking is forced to be installed, it is at the expense of others. If the demand for driving is as high as you seem to believe it is, employers and businesses wouldn't reduce their parking to absolute zero as you think they would.

If parking is in as much demand as you think, there will be those who supply it, either for their customers', personal use, or for anyone who pays. If there's so much demand, then there's no way that the local streets can supply everything, and business would suffer, at which point, parking would be built. That's opposed to the way it is now, where parking is built regardless of the actual demand, which incentivises more driving than would be used otherwise, clogging roads.

Developers look at their parking needs and look how many of those spots the surrounding streets can support. They almost never show that research to planning, but they always show it to the bank who is financing the project.

The best way I've seen parking handled is to remove all free parking in the area, have the business provide it, and then offer the employees a spot or the money for the spot. If you tell an employee that they can have $5-$10k a year for leasing their spot to another business, they will take MARTA, bike, carpool, rollerblade, scooter, etc.

Like I've said bunch on this thread, you have to remove the free parking first.

[bu2]

Originally Posted by arjay57

Atlanta was notorious for its agonizingly slow and disjointed permitting process. Assuming a project complies with existing zoning, it should never take 43 weeks to pull the permits. Whoever dallied that long ought to be fired. I think they're doing better now but there's still plenty of room for improvement.

Of course pulling permits is not the same thing as attempting to rezone the property, or to build something that requires significant variances or watershed incursions. That's going to take longer because there are several stages of review -- as there should be.

And the permits are once you've gone through everything else.

[bu2]

Originally Posted by brown_dog_us

Developers look at their parking needs and look how many of those spots the surrounding streets can support. They almost never show that research to planning, but they always show it to the bank who is financing the project.

The best way I've seen parking handled is to remove all free parking in the area, have the business provide it, and then offer the employees a spot or the money for the spot. If you tell an employee that they can have $5-$10k a year for leasing their spot to another business, they will take MARTA, bike, carpool, rollerblade, scooter, etc.

Like I've said bunch on this thread, you have to remove the free parking first.

I think its important for the city to get rid of parking subsidies. In places like Buckhead and sometimes even downtown, employers pay for employee parking. Yet they pay the building owner for those spaces in the lease. Its a subsidy to driving as opposed to transit use. Now they often subsidize transit passes as well. But getting rid of free parking makes the economic calculus less favorable to driving alone.

[cqholt]

Originally Posted by samiwas1

I can go for that. Nice, highly dense downtown/midtown area. Medium density area north of midtown to Buckhead And a few little pockets here and there of medium to high density. Then the remainder is nice, quiet, tree-filled, beautiful neighborhoods. Sounds good to me.

This map would be pretty acceptable.

Our historic, SFH, streetcar suburbs are not going to be bulldozed for medium density. Y'all should really see the Atlanta City Studio and their presentation about preserving existing, historic SFH and building dense around transit stations (including the BeltLine), etc.