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The BeltLine has affected both the way planners design and the way people adapt to the city. And while some residents are still unfamiliar with the project — many mistakenly call it “the Beltway” — its form is taking shape. From the affluent community of Buckhead north of the city to the long overlooked communities in south Atlanta, from the leafy and increasingly popular neighborhood of Grant Park to Atlanta’s burgeoning west side, mixed-use condos and developments are sprouting in anticipation of the project’s transit, greenspace and activity centers.

But with the fervor comes a share of concerns, and as the BeltLine continues to take shape, it’s forcing Atlanta to ask serious questions about how the city will evolve.

A MANY-SPLENDORED PROJECT

In 1999, Ryan Gravel, then a Georgia Tech graduate student, proposed the idea. Inspired by a semester abroad in Paris, Gravel envisioned a new use for Atlanta’s long-abandoned railroad tracks while poring over maps of the city. After years circulating in political circles, the concept took hold at City Hall and found an enthusiastic supporter in Mayor Shirley Franklin, the city’s first female mayor, who had made the “greening” of Atlanta a cornerstone of her administration. Here was a single proposal that solved a litany of Atlanta’s woes — congestion, gentrification, lack of greenspace, static economic development and more. BeltLine project planners and the city decided to use a tax allocation district (TAD) — known elsewhere in the nation as tax-increment financing — to generate nearly half the $2.8 billion needed to construct the project over 25 years. The TAD works by redirecting future increases in tax revenue to the project. The current incarnation calls for more than 1,300 acres of parkland, including 10 new parks — not cookie-cutter pocket parks, but uniquely designed amenities. One centered around a former quarry includes a 2-billion-gallon reservoir that could provide drinking water to the city. Light rail envisioned for the BeltLine would connect in fi ve places to MARTA, the city’s transit system, as well as to a proposed streetcar line that would serve Peachtree Street, the city’s trademark corridor. New transit would link 20 economic nodes strategically planted around the loop, many in poor and beleaguered areas of the city where developers do not invest without incentive. Once complete, the project will have cleaned and converted 1,100 acres of brownfield into developable property or greenspace, eclipsing the previous record of 138 brownfield acres cleaned up at Atlantic Station near downtown.

Especially innovative is the partnerships planners have formed with the private sector for raising funds and awareness about the project, and with other public agencies and city departments for collective problem-solving. Under this arrangement, for instance, a court-ordered stormwater project became a retention pond in a newly created park, saving residents the chaos of construction and the city $10 million.

Atlanta BeltLine Inc. CEO Terri Montague, who joined the project in 2006 because it was the fi rst of its kind in the nation to combine multiple disciplines under one umbrella, considers the BeltLine a “new paradigm for city building.” Otis White of Civic Strategies, a smart-growth consulting group, agrees: “It’s in an intriguing and different model.” The BeltLine, he says, would accelerate development of inner Atlanta just as Interstate 285, a congested and hectic ring that circles metro Atlanta, fueled growth in the suburbs. “For the first time, it’s going to pull in some of the land value you have on the north and south area and put it in a circle on the close-in neighborhoods and downtown area. It’s going to give a different organizing principle to growth in Atlanta.”

Even with the national housing market meltdown, development opportunities around the BeltLine have generated interest. Curious residents and real estate speculators fill weekend bus tours of the project area conducted by the BeltLine Partnership, the non-profi t fundraising and publicity arm. Warehouses, industrial areas, static commercial districts and property long considered worthless — as well as homes near the corridor in less expensive areas of the city — have suddenly become valuable. Growth and development that had clustered in the northern part of the city has begun to pop up elsewhere based on the promise of the project.

“That’s one of the great Eurekas already,” Montague says. “By late 2006 and early 2007, without a single public dollar invested in the BeltLine, development began to redistribute itself around the BeltLine corridor. We’ve got close to 40 projects that are spreading themselves around the project.”

If not the BeltLine, then what?” Montague asks. “If left to itself, what does Atlanta without the BeltLine look like? That’s not a scare tactic; it’s a practical reality.”

FOR THE PEOPLE?

When first proposed, the idea of a streetcar or light rail circling the city and connecting 45 neighborhoods captivated residents. Mike Dobbins, however, questioned its efficiency. A former Atlanta planning commissioner and now a professor at Georgia Tech, the witty and respected Dobbins has called the urban project a “fatally flawed” one whose negative impacts won’t be felt for some time. “It’s an elegant diagram that looks plausible, until you turn the page,” he says. “But page after page, none of the underlying questions have been answered.”

While focusing so many resources where there is as yet little demand for parks, trails and transit, Dobbins says, the city is overlooking connectivity problems inside the project’s corridor. He also points to the still-unresolved interconnectivity problems: several areas of the project cross active freight rail lines, and some of the “transfers” between light rail and MARTA service may involve nearly a half-mile walk. “It’s solution-ism,” he says. “It was imposed. And it’s still being imposed. And there are huge amounts of money and time and people with resources who have nothing to do but protect their interests in relation to this tiny slice, whose outcome is not going to be to the benefit of the 480,000 other people in the city.”

Montague disagrees, claiming that when the transit component is up and running, the resulting economic and residential development will help not only the city, but also the metro Atlanta region and state to generate interest and investment in other transportation solutions.

Some community activism groups and urban planning academics, however, share Dobbins’s concern that Atlanta’s people are the ones losing out in this deal. In 2007, Georgia Tech professor Dan Immergluck and think-tank Georgia Stand-Up released a study that found city and school property taxes on homes within an eighth-mile of the TAD along the BeltLine’s southern side increased 68 percent since the project was announced (compared to 32 percent for a home located a mile from the TAD). The foreclosure crisis had already cold-cocked this area of the city, and now residents were finding themselves with drastically higher property taxes, or in some cases, on the verge of displacement.

With the larger stake in residential development aimed at drawing suburbanites back into the city, Atlanta’s hardhit residents may not be able to participate in the BeltLine vision. Atlanta — particularly its African-American community — is no stranger to broken promises (think of the 1996 Olympics, the shutdown of the city’s public housing and the postponement of TADs promised in rundown areas). “We know white fl ight was real, but there’s an intention to invite folks that had fl ed 20 to 30 years ago back into the city,” says Deborah Scott, executive director of Georgia Stand-Up. “That diversity’s great. But as we promote the diversity of the city and the idea that this is a ‘New South,’ we cannot forget what happened to those individuals who have been the baseline of the city. We know the highway systems have plowed through many of these communities — like Auburn Avenue — and that helped destroy a black business community. The fact is that it’s happening, and someone has to draw attention to it.”

As written in legislation, the TAD must spend and distribute funds in a “fair and equitable manner,” but many are scratching their chins in confusion over the term “equity” and just how equitable it is. This summer, a heated debate ensued when BeltLine leaders decided to allocate nearly half of the first TAD bonds to a suburban developer who had several years earlier scooped up a vital piece of transit right-of-way in the project’s affluent northeast quadrant. Outraged community activists openly criticized the decision, calling it an out-of-the-gate affront to the BeltLine vision. Project leaders called it a difficult but necessary move — the right-of-way is the spine of the BeltLine, and without every sliver of it, the project comes close to collapse. They are now working with an independent advisory board that offers suggestions on TAD allocations and with community groups on models to define and measure “equity.”

“Our position is: if one public dollar is being spent, it should not be just for the developers,” Scott says. “There should be benefits for the community. And there’s too much money involved — way too much money involved — for any of us to let it go unchecked.”

It was the work of Scott’s organization and affordable housing advocates such as the Atlanta Housing Association of Neighborhood-based Developers that convinced the city to dedicate 15 percent of each series of TAD bonds into an affordable housing trust fund. Developers could compete for the funds by meeting a set of guidelines recommended by a task force, such as setting aside affordable units, establishing community land trusts and showing preference toward BeltLine-area residents, city residents and public-service employees. All told, BeltLine leaders estimate the fund will add 2,800 affordable units along the project corridor. Concerns mount, however, that even that number won’t ensure a diverse mix of incomes throughout the project.

“I have an architect’s training and a planning background,” says Andy Schneggenburger, a BeltLine affordable housing advisory board member and executive director of AHAND. “So when I saw the concept for the project, I thought, ‘Wow. This is fantastic and exactly what Atlanta needs.’ That’s on the face of it. But along with that, I’ve been doing community development for at least a couple of years now, and I’m familiar with that challenge. ‘OK, revitalization of communities is the mission, but how do we do that without displacing all the folks who’ve been there, and how do you execute revitalization projects to leave an economically sustainable and diverse community when you’re finished?’”

A WORLD WITHOUT A BELTLINE

Even more discomforting than the unforeseen consequences of its implementation is what could happen should the project never come to fruition. The project’s entire future came into question with a recent court decision. In Feb. 2007, the state Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional for the TAD to use tax revenue from school properties (which represents more than half of Atlanta’s property tax revenue) for development purposes. “A vision was launched and unleashed, and then our primary funding source was held in advance for two years,” Montague says, adding that it delayed the city from securing vital transit rights-of-way for the project. “That’s about as hard as it gets. Not having the money meant the city not being able to control its destiny.” In response to the verdict, the state Legislature passed a resolution that would allow voters to decide on Nov. 4 if school taxes could be used for development. A “yes” vote could return the weakened TAD mechanism to its full purchasing power. If it fails to pass, BeltLine leaders will have to step up fundraising or find more creative means to fund the project. Although project leaders succeeded in raising funds for the first five years of the BeltLine — Atlanta’s business elite also graciously donated funds to the project after the Supreme Court ruling — the recent credit crisis has narrowed the pool of cash while increasing the number of other initiatives in Atlanta seeking funds.

Even in light of the challenges, the BeltLine has made strides. Through a partnership with the Trust for Public Land, a local non-profit that secures desirable properties for local governments to later purchase and convert into public space, the BeltLine and city have secured vital acres for the park system (named the BeltLine Emerald Necklace after Boston’s park system). Master planning of nearly half the different subareas of the project is complete or nearing completion. Rights-of-way in two of the BeltLine’s four quadrants have been secured, inching it closer to eligibility for federal funding. Project planners recently began a two-year environmental impact study with MARTA, the organization which will most likely operate the project’s light-rail component. No one believes the BeltLine will be the panacea to all of Atlanta’s woes. But boosters say it provides a structure to help the city prepare, in a relatively short period of time, for the anticipated influx of residents into Atlanta. “If not the BeltLine, then what?” Montague asks. “If left to itself, what does Atlanta without the BeltLine look like? That’s not a scare tactic; it’s a practical reality. If you almost double the population with the existing transit options — with no BeltLine affordable housing trust fund — if you allow the city to sprawl to the northeast and northwest and you keep Atlanta at 3 percent greenspace instead of the 10 to 13 percent it should have, let’s envision what quality of life looks like in that city of Atlanta. Let’s envision what that city looks like and see if that’s what the city wants to choose.”

This article appeared in the Winter 2008 issue of Next American City magazine. SUBSCRIBE NOW!