Managing Progress

“You don’t have to be big to have a big impact,” says Kevin Green, president and CEO of Midtown Alliance, the nonprofit coalition of business and civic leaders that staffs and operates the 1.2-square-mile Midtown Improvement District.

In 2022, Midtown Alliance harnessed the power of the parklet – orphaned parking spaces transformed into mini-parks – along Spring Street, amping up the district’s livability by inviting residents and visitors to linger longer.

It’s one example of how big doors swing on little hinges throughout the North Fulton Community Improvement Districts (CIDs), which are made up of Midtown Alliance, Buckhead CID, Upper Westside CID, Perimeter CIDs and North Fulton CID. These quasi-governmental organizations leverage funding, expertise and partnerships to make infrastructure investments and improvements in their communities. They are self-funded, collecting taxes from commercial property owners who are CID members. And they move quickly, identifying issues and fast-tracking projects. That agility works to their advantage, especially with smaller investment projects like parklets where unused space is quickly animated into lively greenspace.

These five CIDs made exceptional improvements and progress in 2022 and plans for 2023 continue in that same transformational vein.

Midtown: Activating Public Spaces

On the development side, more than 1 million square feet of office space, 1,600 residential units and 230 hotel rooms were completed in Midtown. That’s exciting, but Green was most enthused about a change in the way the infrastructure permitting is now done.

Atlanta’s city council passed a resolution amending the cooperation agreement with the Midtown CID so the CID could independently procure and manage construction for transportation infrastructure projects. This new agreement began unsticking approval and procurement jams that had slowed the process of advancing Midtown’s biggest and most pressing infrastructure projects.

“Midtown Alliance has nine capital projects totaling more than $35 million in construction costs either currently in construction, out for bid, or scheduled to be bid during the first half of 2023,” Green says.  “If construction pricing cooperates, we’ll have many projects starting construction in 2023.  We’ll also have a lot happening with other projects that are in design and engineering but not yet ready to bid for construction.”

The CID can’t control permitting and pricing, but it can focus its energies on collective experiences that create community.

“That encompasses everything,” Green says, “Transportation projects, parks and plazas, having successful storefronts and street-level retail.”

To that end, Midtown Alliance unveiled impactful projects like Commercial Row Commons, a new $1.2 million public plaza at Peachtree Place between Peachtree Street and Crescent Avenue near the Midtown MARTA Station. The plaza, which opened in August, was created by realigning the intersection of Peachtree Street and Peachtree Road and removing on-street parking spaces on the north and south sides of the block. Widening the sidewalks and burying overhead utilities created even more space, which now includes art installations, plaza furniture and enhanced lighting.

As part of the 10^th Street Park renovation, the Alliance opened a new off-leash dog park in November with a well-attended TAILgate party. Providing places for people and their pets – and activities once they’ve gathered – remains a focus for Midtown Alliance. More than 3,900 people – residents and people working in the district – responded to the 2022 Community Survey.

“They continue to underscore the fact that we’re all about happy people on foot here,” Green says. “We can point to changes in the skyline, and the numbers are staggering in terms of the investment, but a building is not success. It’s not about the skyline; it’s about the experience people have as they walk through the district.”

Buckhead: Looking to the Future

Sometimes an end is a beginning, and it looks that way for Buckhead CID. With high-profile projects on tap, the first quarter of 2023 also signals the completion of the CID’s first major infrastructure project.

“We will wrap up all the little items to finish the third phase of the original Peachtree Revitalization Project, which was the impetus for the creation of this CID 23 years ago,” says Jim Durrett, Buckhead CID’s executive director and president and CEO of the Buckhead Coalition. “It’s substantially complete now but we’ll see things we need to address – i’s to dot and t’s to cross – during the first couple of months [this] year.”

The project, meant to create an attractive, walkable corridor along Peachtree Road in the late 1990s, had its desired effect both on Buckhead and the region. Other communities copied Buckhead’s blueprint for urban cores looking to get people out of their cars by connecting to transit and trails and creating new pathways across old divides.

Construction to bridge another such divide begins in the first quarter of 2023 with the start of Phase I of the Lenox Road Complete Street project. Phase I, a boardwalk on the Lenox Square side of Lenox Road from the Lenox MARTA station to Peachtree Road, is the first step to full-scale, safe pedestrian access from the MARTA station crossing over Peachtree Road. Then an elevated pedestrian and bike structure will cross over GA 400.

Meanwhile, right-of-way acquisitions are wrapping up for the Piedmont Road widening project. Once completed, the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) will advertise the job for construction and the roughly two-year project will commence. When finished, Piedmont Road will be easier to navigate, with three through-lanes in each direction and a center turn lane, and it will be easier on the eyes as well.

“The west side of Piedmont will have a very generous pedestrian- and cycle-way,” Durrett says. “The heavy lift to begin is that the Piedmont corridor has some of Georgia Power’s high-tension transmission lines and Georgia Power has to move four of those poles. Then they’re going to bury distribution lines [the lines on wooden poles]. All this will be done before Christmas 2025.”

Expect HUB404 – the nifty 9-acre greenspace designed to sit atop MARTA’s Buckhead station and a portion of Georgia 400 from Peachtree to Lenox roads – to make substantial progress in 2023. Representative Nikema Williams (D-GA-5) secured $750,000 in federal Community Project Funding in the 2022 federal budget to fund the engineering and final design for the park.

“The CID has obligated north of $1 million as a match for that,” Durrett says. “Those funds will be the first spent on doing preliminary engineering to get us to a point where we can start doing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process.”

Perimeter: Pardon our Progress

Drivers slowly making their way through the I-285/Georgia 400 interchange have just one question: When will the construction end?

“The official target completion date is the fourth quarter of 2023,” says Ann Hanlon, executive director of the Perimeter CIDs, made up of the Central (DeKalb) Perimeter and Fulton Perimeter CIDs. “We’re at the point where there are a lot of lane closures, literally the final stages of the project.”

The greatest disturbance to commuters and travelers was the closures of two lanes, eastbound and westbound on I-285, roughly between Ashford-Dunwoody and Roswell roads. The GDOT schedule calls for that area to remain tight for months. The CIDs take responsibility for ensuring the public knows what’s happening, using social media, podcasts, daily updates to its website and a weekly newsletter to ensure transparency with their constituencies.

“We’re trying to overcommunicate when it comes to the project and lane closures as people try to decide whether to come into the office on a daily basis,” Hanlon says. “We want them to have the information they need to make those decisions.”

A marketing and branding effort launched by the CIDs will coincide with the completion of the GDOT project.

“Perimeter will have four new access points and things will flow better,” says Hanlon. “We’re working internally so we’ll be able to communicate that [message] to people. We want them to know why it’s going to be better and how it’s going to function when it’s all finished. We want to provide visualization tools, videos and things you can just click on your phone to see how it will work.”

Other priorities include bolstering the trail system, looking to make connections to the AlphaLoop to the north and PATH400 in Buckhead. In the meantime, a 14-foot-wide trail with a barrier-separated bike path is being constructed on the Perimeter Mall side of Ashford Dunwoody Road between Hammond Drive and Perimeter Center West. The project will cost about $4 million, to be split between the CIDs and the City of Dunwoody.

Perimeter CIDs kicked off 2023 with a Request for Proposals for a Transit Oriented Development study of the Dunwoody MARTA station, done in partnership with MARTA.

“That station was built in the ’90s prior to the Olympics and was intended as an end-of-the-line suburban station,” says Hanlon. “That’s not what the community is anymore. This is an urban, densely walkable area. As all these other large suburban counties – Cobb, Gwinnett – talk about whether to build out their transit, we think the Dunwoody MARTA Station should be the Grand Central Station for the top half of Metro Atlanta. There’s a ton of opportunity here and we’re casting a big vision for that redevelopment.”