Succeeding Under the Radar

People-Focused: A.J. Robinson, president of the Atlanta Downtown Improvement District (ADID). | Photo credit: Daemon Baizan

“All those niceties,” says Michael Paris, president and CEO of the Council for Quality Growth, “it’s coming from funding through the CIDs. People might see all these improvements, but I’d say 98% have no idea how that got done. It didn’t happen by magic. It likely happened with some participation by the CID.”

CIDs are areas where businesses tax themselves voluntarily to fund projects within the district, such as road construction, landscaping, water and sewage systems, signage and wayfinding, and public transportation systems. The work of the CIDs increases property values for businesses inside the district while improving quality of life for residents, who don’t have to pay extra taxes. There are now at least 30 CIDs in Georgia. Since the creation of the first in 1988, Paris says these quasi-governmental agencies have been “knitting the region together.”

“The CIDs matter a lot, not only from a business point of view, but quality of work-life [balance] for their employees and businesses,” says Paris.

Public safety and beautification, says Paris, are often the genesis of CIDs. As they forge government relationships, they take on bigger, more costly capital investment projects. It’s a pattern that’s played out for the Downtown, ATL Airport, South Fulton, Boulevard and West End CIDs.

“Georgia really does lead the nation in the concept of these CIDs as big infrastructure participants. They are economic engines,” says Paris.

The Human Element

“Our downtown community is the most visible part of Atlanta,” says A.J. Robinson, president of the Atlanta Downtown Improvement District (ADID), “so we know we have to represent the brand of Atlanta, and we want it to be as positive and look as good as it can.”

Protected Path: The Martin Luther King Jr. Drive Cycle Track was completed last year. | Photo credit: contributed

Robinson says the ADID has been “people-focused” since its inception in 1995. Twenty years ago, the CID began taking on capital seeding projects – sidewalks, street signs, bike paths – by creating the design, then seeking funding partners, he says. The CID would do the design, then seek funding through city, state and federal grants.

“The one thing CIDs here really pride themselves on is putting up some money to start a capital project, then leveraging as much public support as it can,” says Robinson. “The more leverage, the more successful you are. Sometimes it can be 50-50, sometimes 75-25, or 80-20, but then if you get something really big, it’s way off the charts.”

In March, the CID scored what Robinson calls “the ultimate leverage” – a $157.6 million federal grant for an ambitious project called the Stitch. The Stitch will create 14 acres of green space on a platform above the Downtown Connector, where I-75 and I-85 merge. When the Connector was built in the late ’50s and ’60s, it split apart neighborhoods in downtown and Midtown and destroyed thriving Black communities like the Sweet Auburn district, contributing to decades of racial inequality and disinvestment. When complete, the Stitch will feature interconnected parks, plazas and surface streets for walking and biking. Phase one of construction should begin in early 2026.

Reconnecting Neighborhoods: Rendering of an aerial view of what the Stitch will look like when complete.| Photo credit: contributed

Among other wins in 2023: the fall completion of the Martin Luther King Jr. Drive Cycle Track – a two-way protected bike path between Capitol Avenue and Forsyth Street – and the completion of a study for office-to-housing conversions, with the goal of all 4 square miles of the downtown region containing housing, according to Robinson.

“We have to plant seeds even though the payoff may be five to 10 years down the road,” says Robinson of the study.

For the near future, Robinson says the ADID is focused on preparing for major events – the 2025 College Football Playoff Quarterfinal on New Year’s Day and National Championship Game the following week at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which will also host eight FIFA World Cup games in 2026. Nearby State Farm Arena will be the site of the 2025 South Regional games of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament as well as other events like concerts and comedy shows. One goal is to install Intelligent Transportation Systems, such as dynamic message signs that can communicate lane pattern changes during large events. A similar product is used to support traffic management at Truist Park; however, the ADID is looking at signage that is appropriately scaled for use downtown.

Transformative Success

Fulton Industrial Community Improvement District (Boulevard CID) Executive Director Gil Prado says the area’s past represents a striking example of what a CID can accomplish – transformation.

With proximity to I-20 and I-285, as well as Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and the city of Atlanta, the Fulton Industrial business district is prime warehouse territory. Today, Prado says, the contiguous 12-mile industrial corridor boasts more than 500 industrial buildings, 1,000 businesses and 28,000 jobs with a $2.4 billion annual district payroll.

Prado says the area took a downturn in the ’80s with crime and skyrocketing vacancy rates. The state wasn’t maintaining roads, and grass in the medians was often 2 to 3 feet high. Area motels serving families visiting Six Flags Over Georgia in the ’70s had become after-hours hubs for drug and sex trafficking when workers in the area went home for the day. And local law enforcement focused its attention on residential over industrial areas.

David Seem, CFO of Miller Zell and current CID board chair, says local business leaders were fed up with the status quo and frustrated with the lack of connections to county government leaders – connections he felt were necessary to address the area’s problems. They formed the Fulton Industrial Business Alliance in 2005, but Seem says it didn’t get much traction with county leaders. Real change, he says, only came in 2010 when they formed the self-taxing Boulevard CID and caught the attention of the county and state.

“Once we started having money to spend and were able to design projects that were shovel-ready and then present those to the local governments for cost-sharing, that’s when we really started getting traction,” says Seem.

Prado joined in 2012 and oversaw crime reduction efforts, beautification initiatives, road repairs, infrastructure improvements with sidewalks and intersection redesigns, and a marketing campaign to boost the area’s reputation.

“All those things led to economic development,” Prado says. “That’s our success story.”

Prime Warehouse Territory: The Fulton Industrial business district is close to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Aiport, the city of Atlanta and two interstates. | Photo credit: contributed

Prado says the area has gone from a 50% vacancy rate in 2005 to 95% occupancy today. He says the district, already home to Frito Lay, Quaker Oats, Publix bakeries, Pepsi and Coca-Cola, has welcomed new economic development over the past few years including UPS, Amazon and most recently, the area’s first data center.

Major infrastructure plans include improvements at the Donald Lee Hollowell/Fulton Industrial Boulevard intersection with design proposal requests starting this summer and operational and streetscape improvements to the Cascade and Camp Creek intersections, which Prado says are slated to begin in spring 2025.

In December, KB Advisory Group released an economic impact study for the Boulevard CID, the first since 2018. Over the previous five years, the CID added almost $525 million in total investment in the area and generated total sales tax revenues of over $17 million. The CID itself had an investment impact of over $46 million.

“We’ve gone through multiple lives,” says board chair Seem, “and we’re at a really good place right now. It’s a different environment. We have a ways to go, but it’s a thriving business community, and we’re trying to make it into more of a work-life community as well.”

Game Changer: Rendering of the South Fulton CID’s proposed pedestrian bridge across the CSX tracks and U.S. Highway 29 in Fairburn. Photo credit: contributed

Ahead Of Its Time

Like its neighbor to the north, South Fulton CID’s bedrock is warehousing, and its priority is transportation.

“We’re like the inland port,” says Joddie Gray, South Fulton CID executive director. “We have to get trucks to the interstate, and those trucks and the other traffic don’t always mix well. Safety is paramount and then access.”

Gray, who joined the CID two years after its 1999 inception, remembers when there were few traffic lights.

Addressing Challenges: Joddie Gray, South Fulton CID executive director, at the Fairburn Park & Ride. | Photo credit: Daemon Baizan

“The CID was ahead of its time in noting that this area wasn’t going to be viable for goods movement if we didn’t get in front of the transportation challenges,” Gray says.

Gray says the CID has long been playing catch up with industrial and manufacturing development outpacing its ability to transform the area’s once-rural road system. Gray says though annual self-taxing revenues have grown from $150,000 to nearly $1 million, that’s no match to other, bigger CIDs. It relies on partnerships with its cities – South Fulton, Palmetto, Union City and Fairburn, she says.

“We have a really wonderful partnership with most of our cities,” says Gray. “But without the CID making noise, I don’t know that there would have been the same results.”

Gray says many of the CID’s past and future projects are focused on worker safety, including new sidewalks, lighting and a bus line from the College Park MARTA station to warehouses on Oakley Industrial Boulevard. A grant application is pending for a pedestrian bridge across the CSX tracks and U.S. Highway 29. Without the bridge, more than 100 pedestrians must brave heavy traffic or even crawl through an idle train to get to work on time.

“The workers are the people who really don’t have a voice in a lot of these communities,” Gray says of a workforce that largely lives – and votes – outside the CID area. “Yet there’s an economic development impact with recruitment and retention. If we can’t be attractive to our workforce, then we’re sunk.”

Gray says she’s excited about pending reconstruction at the SR 74/I-85 interchange, a significant commuter corridor for Fayette County and a project she’s been working on for 20 years. The Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) will open bidding this August with construction to begin next year.

Catalyst for Change: Gerald McDowell, executive director, ATL Airport CIDs (AACIDs), by a compass surveillance trailer. | Photo credit: contributed

“I think it’s really going to be a game changer for access in our area,” says Gray. “Frankly, it’s 10 years too late. It’s needed for capacity, but it’s also needed for safety. I just want to make sure everybody’s arriving where they need to arrive safely and as efficiently as possible.”

The CID also recently kicked off an initiative to be “the most sustainable CID in Georgia.” Gray says her team has hired a consultant to guide them to “the next level,” including electric vehicle charging stations, solar energy, rainwater capture and sustainable new construction.

“Our CID has a lot of heart,” says Gray. “We’ve been scrappy since the beginning. We’re out there making it happen any way we can.”

Into the Future

The ATL Airport CIDs (AACIDs) have proven to be the missing piece of a hard-to-crack puzzle: how to get things done in an area spanning portions of six cities (Atlanta, College Park, East Point, Hapeville, South Fulton and Forest Park) and both Fulton and Clayton counties. What the area lacked, says executive director Gerald McDowell, was a synchronized plan.

“It was impacting development; it was impacting investments,” says McDowell. “Investors came into the area, and when they realized they had to deal with multiple jurisdictions, it was very challenging and sometimes even risky for those developers or for a particular investor.”

McDowell says the formation of the Airport West CID in 2014 and the Airport South CID in 2015 became a catalyst for transit and transportation updates needed in the South Metro area. When the two CIDs joined under the single entity known as the AACIDs in 2021, he says it changed everything because the AACIDs “collapsed the whole area into one district.” And the conjoined CIDs became the single point of contact for agencies such as GDOT and MARTA.

“Our leaders and our stakeholders now are visualizing possibilities that weren’t even taken into consideration before, that were unrealistic to even pursue,” says McDowell.

Enhancing Mobility: People who work within the ATL Airport CIDs will be able to use microtransit outside of MARTA’s operating hours, during a two-year pilot set to launch this year. | Photo credit: contributed

From the beginning, McDowell says the AACIDs’ work has been guided by the belief that 21st century public transportation around Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport has to be on-demand, not on a schedule.

A two-year pilot of a microtransit system is set to launch this year. The pilot, funded through a $2.6 million grant from the Atlanta Region Transit Link Authority plus a 30% match from AACIDs, will establish a mobility district allowing 24/7 transit options for workers, employers, residents and visitors. Overnight shift workers will be able to access transit options outside of MARTA’s operating hours.

In addition, last year, the AACIDs signed a memorandum of agreement with MARTA, the city of College Park, and Clayton and Fulton counties to launch an on-demand automated transit network (ATN) demonstration pilot. MARTA offered $10 million to build a .2-mile driverless vehicle guideway from the SkyTrain station at the Georgia International Convention Center to the Gateway Center Arena. McDowell says they’re close to choosing a contractor and hope to be operational in 2025.

Stepping Up: West End CID Project Manager Chris Pierre. | Photo contributed

MARTA will also conduct a feasibility study into using the ATN as a future circulator around the airport. Both components, says McDowell, are a “huge win.”

“When we started back in 2017 exploring these mobility solutions, people thought that wouldn’t happen for 25 to 30 years,” says McDowell. “Now we believe it’s going to happen before the end of this decade.”

Pride in Partnership

“The little engine that could.” That’s how project manager Christopher Pierre describes the West End CID (WECID).

Formed in 2017, the West End CID jumped in to address public safety and beautification issues, with license plate readers at intersections and clean-up and beautification at interchanges. Since then, Pierre says the CID has gone through two expansions, and annual revenues have grown from around $200,000 to nearly $400,000. He says each year, the CID is stepping up in scale.

$200,000 Grant Winner: The Ralph David Abernathy Great Streets study will likely spur improvement projects, creating a more walkable community, as seen in this rendering. | Photo credit: contributed

Nicole Hall, CID administrator, and Pierre are most excited about the Ralph David Abernathy Great Streets Study. The study was funded by a $200,000 Livable Centers Initiative grant two years ago from the Atlanta Regional Commission. West End was one of just two CIDs to win one of the nine grants. With the study’s completion last month, the CID and other grant recipients will be eligible to apply for federal transportation funding for projects such as sidewalks, multi-use trails and smart corridor improvements. The goal is to create more vibrant, walkable communities by offering increased mobility options, encouraging healthy lifestyles and providing improved access to jobs and services.

West End CID Administrator Nicole Hall | Photo credit: Brandon Clifton

Pierre says the CID will soon have “the potential to really reimagine what people experience when they come to the West End with [Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard] as a key corridor in that neighborhood. I think when the full vision is brought to fruition, it’ll be something that impacts the neighborhood and the city for decades, if not centuries, to come.”

Pierre says the CID can start approaching partners – the municipalities, GDOT and the community – to push the plan forward.

“I am really proud of how we’ve been able to be the catalyst for the partnerships,” says Hall. “It’s something that I think [the property owners] really wanted and needed, to bring all these entities together. They’re our clients, and they’re putting in this investment to help the community overall.”

The CID’s efforts appear to be paying off.

“We definitely deal a lot with the overall community or neighborhood more than probably a lot of other CIDs do,” says Hall, “but I think that’s what makes us unique because [the community is] extremely supportive.”

“The West End is just electric,” says the Council for Quality Growth’s Paris. “New restaurants, new bars, new mixed-use development. And, in terms of taking the tiger by the tail and [promoting] economic development, I think the West End CID has really been integral.”

Supportive Community: West End CID held a public open house for the Ralph David Abernathy Great Streets study. | Photo credit: contributed