Atlanta

Late next year, MARTA will break ground on one of the most important projects the transportation agency will build in the coming decades: a $61.5 million bus rapid transit line connecting South Downtown to the southern arc of the Beltline, and all the neighborhoods, restaurants, and shops in between. 

Why it matters: The so-called Summerhill BRT is metro Atlanta's first foray into bus rapid transit, MARTA says. Think of them as extra special buses that run in dedicated lanes and free of car traffic. 

Done right, BRT can help move passengers just as efficiently as — and cheaper than — rail. And the 4.8-mile round-trip route will serve as a model for future BRT projects in other parts of Atlanta where light rail or a streetcar aren't justified.

Details: For 85% of the route, buses will travel in a painted-red, dedicated lane, stopping at 16 raised platforms with covered seating and monitors listing real-time arrivals. 

A big bonus: The buses will be able to trigger traffic signals at 28 intersections, guaranteeing a smoother and faster ride from start to finish.

MARTA is working with city and Beltline officials to make sure pedestrians (including students coming and going from Carver High School) can safely cross the railroad tracks at McDonough Boulevard, plus an appropriate connection with the Beltline.  

Respect the lane: MARTA plans to launch a public-education campaign to prevent the BRT lane from becoming another lane for cars like the "bus only" lane on the 17th Street Bridge at Atlantic Station. 

Traffic cameras could also crack down on motorists driving in the dedicated lane but would require a change in state law. No word on whether MARTA will lobby for that option.

Flashback: In 2018, MARTA and the city won a $12.6 million federal grant to help build a BRT route from Midtown's Art Center station to Summerhill that ended at Georgia State's Center Parc Stadium (formerly known as Turner Field). 

The transit agency subsequently changed the route to serve Downtown and the southern segment of the Beltline partly because MARTA's heavy rail line served much of the previous route.

What they're saying: The project isn't perfect, Matthew Rao of Beltline Rail Now tells Axios, but the BRT route is a "great first step" to create a larger transit network by linking the Beltline and MARTA.

Kip Dunlap of urbanism advocacy group Thread ATL agrees, but says the key to overcoming bus stigma in the city — a very real thing — is to demonstrate how buses can be "fast, efficient, desirable." 

Considering that the southern terminus at the Beltline isn't a job center or heavy residential area, Dunlap says, he wonders if ridership will prove that case.

What to expect from MARTA's bus rapid transit line

Late next year, MARTA will break ground on a $61.5 million bus rapid transit line connecting South Downtown to the southern arc of the Beltline.

A rendering of MARTA's bus rapid transit line

News

When Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms struck a nearly $2 billion incentives package with a Los Angeles-based developer to develop a mixed-use mini-city in Downtown’s “Gulch” called Centennial Yards, the company promised tens of millions of dollars in return to combat inequity.  

Yesterday, that developer literally handed Bottoms a $33.5 million check — and the Mayor knows how she wants to spend it.

Why it matters: CIM Group and its partner group led by Atlanta Hawks owner Tony Ressler will create 50 acres and up to 12 million square feet of living and office space on what today is a giant hole in downtown. 

If the city is investing so much in the area, it needs something in return.

By the numbers: Here’s how the city plans to invest the cash (in addition to $12 million to build an economic development fund).

$28 million will go into the city’s affordable housing trust fund to develop subsidized units, help residents offset rising property taxes, and other anti-displacement strategies.

$2 million to help create a new training center at Atlanta Technical College.

Plus an unspecified amount to test a guaranteed-income pilot project for needy families and to kickstart a savings-account program for Atlanta children.

Context: Once complete, the $5billion Centennial Yards will stretch from South Downtown to Castleberry Hill, filling a hole in the heart of Downtown that is currently a sea of parking lots and railroad tracks in the shadows of State Farm Arena and Mercedes-Benz Stadium.   

Richard Ressler, the founder and principal of CIM, says 20% of the projected 1,000 residential units in Centennial Yards will be affordable for a person making less than $48,320, for 99 years.

The developer has also set a 38% participation goal to include minority- and woman-owned businesses in the project.

Flashback: In 2018, shortly after taking office, Bottoms and supporters of redeveloping the Gulch ironed out a deal put into motion by her predecessor, Kasim Reed, and then Gov. Nathan Deal that could pay out up to $1.9 billion to CIM.

Under the deal, the developer will receive city and state sales taxes collected in the footprint of Centennial Yards for 30 years. The developer also got a 20-year property tax break on the project.

Redlight the Gulch, a fiscal watchdog group, fought the tax breaks all the way to the state Supreme Court, but lost on appeal.   

Yes, but: Critics of the deal then, and now, note that the incentives greatly outnumber the investment. 

However the city tries to argue that the social benefits work in Atlanta’s favor, the city (and state) are still forgoing cash that could pay for infrastructure, affordable housing, public safety or any number of programs.  

“Focusing only on the positive side of the ledger is not an appropriate way to evaluate public policy,” says J.C. Bradbury, an economic professor at Kennesaw State University and critic of public incentives. “The grand celebration of one side of the equation seems a little silly.”

What the Gulch incentives deal got for Atlanta

Once complete, Centennial Yards will stretch from South Downtown to Castleberry Hill.

A rendering showing people biking and walking in the early at a proposed mixed-use development near State Farm Arena

Business

Real Estate

Oh, and money. They desperately need more funding. When the NPUs first met, their internal office had 18 dedicated staffers (federal funding helped). Today, it has four.    Atlanta’s once-innovative program to include residents in the decision-making process about big-picture issues affecting their city needs a complete overhaul, according to a three-year study by a local champion for civic engagement.

Why it matters: It should be a critical avenue for regular folks to weigh in on long-term planning visions and policies like affordable housing, density, cash bail reform and climate change.

Called the Neighborhood Planning Unit system, the 25 resident-led groups — each named after a letter in the alphabet — aren't always equipped with the tools or information to shape policy, according to the Center for Civic Innovation.

In some cases, NPUs have become a check-in-the-box for a project or proposal. Some don't have the resources, training or available hours to push back or lobby properly.

A rebooted NPU system could become a laboratory for smart policies and projects to inform residents about city government. 

The backdrop: Since their creation in 1974, NPUs have evolved into their own unique identities. 

Some are run with military-style efficiency, others drag because of bickering among members. 

Some restrict voting privileges to property owners, or require members to have attended a specific number of meetings in the past year to cast a ballot.

How to fix it: CCI’s 10-point recommendation list urges the city to renew NPUs purposes and goals and raise awareness about their work.

Oh, and money. They desperately need more funding. When the NPUs first met, their internal office had 18 dedicated staffers (federal funding helped). Today, it has four.    

Yes, but: Terry Ross, a longtime leader of NPU T, which covers West End, Ashview Heights, and other communities, tells Axios he agrees the city needs to provide funding to assist training and professional services — but believes that NPUs must remain autonomous.

What’s next: CCI hopes City Council will adopt its recommendations before the end of 2021 and finish the reforms in time for the NPU system’s 50th birthday in 2024. 

Atlanta's once-innovative system for citizen engagement faces big changes

A civic group says the NPU system needs a big overhaul.

Illustration of two street signs with garbled, changing nonsense text.

Politics

Atlanta was built with bricks and stones made and chiseled by men, women, and sometimes children at works camps, where they labored without pay to the point of exhaustion, permanent injury, and sometimes death. 

A coalition now wants to honor  them — starting with acknowledging the labor practice at what will become Atlanta’s largest park.  

Driving the news: Jill Savitt, the president and CEO of the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, says the museum and cultural rights organization is partnering with northwest Atlanta residents and artists, corporations like Microsoft and nonprofits including the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation to create what’s thought to be the first convict leasing memorial, in Westside Park.

The centerpiece of the 280-acre greenspace, which opened this year, is a 30-day emergency drinking water reservoir made from the remnants of the 400-foot-deep Bellwood Quarry.

Context: Neighborhoods near Westside Park were becoming gentrified at such a dizzying clip that Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms in 2020 called time-out on issuing building permits in the area.

Microsoft plans to build a 90-acre tech complex next door to Westside Park.

History lesson: The period after the Civil War and the early 20th century is known as the “nadir of African American history,” a time of lynchings, theft of Black-owned property like farms and convict leasing. 

With no free labor to exploit, the South’s emerging new businesses collapsed. Private businesses started paying local or state governments to put convicted people  — mostly Black and often falsely accused or picked up for petty misdemeanors, historians say — to work in grueling conditions like brickyards and railroads.

The most well-known example in Atlanta, described in thorough detail in Doug Blackmon’s Pulitzer-winning book "Slavery by Another Name," is the Chattahoochee Brick Company, roughly 4 miles from Westside Park.

Much less is known about the history of Bellwood Quarry, which closed in 2007, one year after being purchased by the city.

What's next: Savitt tells Axios that the group is launching “Truth and Transformation,” a multiyear, multipart initiative to learn more about convict leasing, the Atlanta Race Riots of 1906 and other lesser-known parts of Atlanta history. One goal, Savitt says, is to show the hardships endured and the resiliency of survivors.  

Next week, group members head to West Creek Ranch, a retreat where nonprofits can share strategies and build camaraderie. By early 2022, they’ll release a detailed plan of meeting dates, focus-and-feedback sessions and other opportunities for public engagement.

Memorial design, curriculum planning and multidisciplinary public engagement will continue throughout the year with extensive charrettes, public meetings and information sessions.

The group is aiming for the memorial to be constructed by 2025.  

A memorial for Atlanta's convict leasing victims

Atlanta was built with bricks and stones made and chiseled by men, women, and sometimes children at industrial camps, where they worked without pay to the point of exhaustion.

A building overlooks a giant reservoir with the Atlanta skyline in the background

The new pump house overlooking a 2.4 billion gallon reservoir made from the shuttered Bellwood Quarry. Photo courtesy of the Atlanta Department of Watershed Management

Professors are protesting a controversial policy change approved yesterday by the Board of Regents that they say will give administrators the power to terminate tenured faculty.

The policy, critics say, essentially eliminates the concept of tenure — the peer-awarded and peer-reviewed status in higher education that gives professors academic freedom — at 25 public colleges and universities in Georgia. 

Why it matters: Tenure can allow faculty to speak freely and present ideas, no matter how controversial, to students, colleagues and the public. 

Just as important, says Matthew Boedy, a professor at the University of North Georgia and the president of the American Association of University Professors' Georgia conference, the status affords due process, because tenured faculty are supposed to be reviewed and held accountable by their faculty peers, not administrators.

The opportunity for tenure helps attract academic talent to the state, which in turn helps educate a future workforce.

The practice has come increasingly under fire from conservative officials in recent years, including attempted bans in Iowa and Missouri. 

Context: Last year, the regents, the governing body of Georgia's public college and university system, formed a working group to reexamine the post-tenure review process — the first time since 1996, a university spokesperson says. 

Language introduced last month that professors and academic advocates said would have allowed administrators to fire tenured faculty without cause was removed after pushback. 

More than 1,500 university system faculty members have signed a petition protesting the overhaul. 

Details: Under the new policy, professors who have back-to-back unsatisfactory administrative reviews could choose to follow an improvement plan developed by the department chair, dean and the faculty member. 

If they do not show improvement, they risk seeing a drop in salary or losing tenure or even their job.  

Previously, tenured professors could be fired only for reasons related to "professional fitness," the AAUP says, and only after a hearing before a faculty body. 

What they're saying: The change is intended to "promote faculty development and accountability as well as to align these with our mission of student success," says Regent Erin Hames, according to the AJC. 

Boedy tells Axios that "The Regents sent the university system — in their own words, a highly regarded system — over a cliff no one has crossed like this before. … Statewide faculty are in shock, still not quite sure why the group of people who claim to care for the reputation of the university system just ruined it."

What's next: Prior to the vote, the AAUP had threatened to launch an investigation if the regents carried through with the policy change. That could be followed with formal censure of Georgia's university system. 

Tenure changes coming to Georgia universities

More than 650 professors have signed a petition protesting the tenure overhaul.

A black sign with gold lettering positioned at the entrance of the Georgia Tech campus.

Thomas Wheatley

Featured stories

What to expect from MARTA's bus rapid transit line

What the Gulch incentives deal got for Atlanta

Tenure changes coming to Georgia universities

A memorial for Atlanta's convict leasing victims

Atlanta's once-innovative system for citizen engagement faces big changes