(rshsdepot) Atlanta, GA

[Bernie Wagenblast <brwagenblast_@_comcast.net>]

GRAND CENTRAL GULCH;
State funds drive larger plans for city's multimodal station

The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
DAVID PENDERED

A gulch in the heart of Atlanta's central business district is as close as
it's ever been to becoming a grand central station, serving commuter rail
and express buses and providing access to MARTA.
The station, on the drawing board for 13 years, is seen as a salvation for
metro Atlanta's traffic and air quality issues. It's also supposed to be an
economic boon to residents of outlying areas who will have an easier commute
to jobs in and around Atlanta.

The new twist on the old gulch story is the realization last summer that it
can be built in phases and cover more than twice the ground of the former
project. It got the final nudge last week when state lawmakers provided the
last bit of funding needed to buy land and release other funds to start an
engineering study.

Planners now see the multimodal station development as a public/private
venture that might take up to 40 years to build fully into a boulevard lined
with condos, shops, offices and hotels. Filling the urban crater with a
pedestrian platform would create a viable walkway all the way from the state
Capitol complex to Underground Atlanta, Philips Arena and the Atlanta
University Center.

"It will be all that, and more," said Jim Overton, a senior vice president
with Cousins Properties, which owns air rights between the planned station
and Philips Arena. "The market will look favorably on it."

Well, that's the plan.

It seems tremendously ambitious at a time when grocery chains don't see the
numbers needed to make a store work in the burgeoning residential
neighborhood near Centennial Olympic Park. Not to mention the stiff
competition the gulch project will face from similarly grandiose
live-work-play blueprints for Atlantic Station, Midtown and Buckhead.

These proposals for dense urban development are underpinned by a belief that
metro Atlanta will continue to be a mecca for newcomers and that many will
choose to work and live in the city to avoid a commute from the suburbs.
Those who don't live in Atlanta would commute by express bus and eventually
commuter rail to jobs and entertainment venues in the central city.

Wendell Cox is a Doubting Thomas. Cox is an adjunct scholar at the
nonpartisan Georgia Public Policy Foundation and principal of a St.
Louis-based public policy firm.

Cox says the flaw in the theory is the mistaken belief the central city
provides most of the jobs and entertainment venues in the Atlanta region.
The suburbs are now home to more jobs and abundant regional entertainment
venues, he suggests.

"Everyone in the suburbs would have to move inside Atlanta's city limits to
make these plans work," Cox says. "London is the type of city these plans
envision, and London has a million workers. In Atlanta, Midtown and downtown
have about 200,000 workers.

"There's this tendency on the part of the planners to plan everything as if
central Atlanta is the focus of everything," Cox says. "While central
Atlanta is an impressive place, it represents 6 to 7 percent of the
employment in the region."

But the private sector that has developed Atlanta has great faith in the
city's future and believe it will flourish even more if commuter rail and
express bus service are provided to the central city.

Still, some concede that decades could pass before the time is right to
fully develop the transit station and its environs.

"It will come together in 10 to 40 years (because) it will take that long
for ridership to mature on commuter rail and express bus," says Overton, the
Cousins officer. "It will be like MARTA ridership. MARTA is beginning to
come into its own. We have a sincere desire to participate in the project in
some form or fashion."

So does Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin.

"We've really been pushing this in our first 60 days," Franklin said of her
lobbying efforts to win the final piece of state funding needed for the
first phase of development --- the acquisition of land still in private
hands. Simultaneously, other funds should provide for a preliminary design
and engineering plan that can be shown to potential investors.

Franklin made all the right connections in seeking support. She made her
case to Gov. Roy Barnes and lawmakers who strongly influence state spending,
as well as the chairman of the state Democratic Party, Rep. Calvin Smyre
(D-Columbus). The outreach to Smyre was important because it reminded
Democrats that the mayor is a potentially powerful ally of the Democrats in
this year's congressional campaigns and statewide races.

Franklin positioned the transit station less as a project to benefit Atlanta
and more as a regional development tool.

The station is a linchpin of a commuter rail system expected to foster
economic boomlets at virtually every stop, as rail is extended through
Macon, Athens, Gainesville and other cities. Franklin emphasized that the
downtown station project is now and will continue to be managed by the
state.

"I'm lending my support in a very visible way to Georgia Department of
Transportation and the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority and using
my honeymoon period to move this project forward," Franklin says. "My
involvement is really one more example of the city supporting the region and
supporting state initiatives."

State going forward

The state is pushing forward with funding and planning.

State lawmakers provided $ 2.6 million in the amended 2002 state budget to
buy land for the station project. The money is the final piece of a local
match that would draw about $ 20 million from the federal government that
U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) helped secure. The state already had provided
the match with $ 2 million in bonds, and the city provided $ 1 million in
cash, plus city-owned land at the site.

Paul Mullins oversees the station project as DOT's director of intermodal
development. He says the project could be at the brink of the construction
stage in about a year.

Mullins says much of the land for the train station and regional bus
terminal is publicly owned by the city, Atlanta-Fulton County Recreation
Authority, the state and MARTA. Title work on the nearly 20-acre site is
under way and an initial report is expected at the end of April.

If all this talk sounds familiar, it is.

The new wrinkle is an offer last year by Norfolk Southern railroad to sell
to the state a little-used freight line from Atlanta to Macon and property
in Atlanta including a tract from Spring Street to Philips Arena. That
portion of the deal would allow the station's development to leap across the
CNN Center parking decks.

Tract stirred talks

The possibility of acquiring this larger tract spawned discussion last fall
of the station becoming a transportation hub in the central city that could
spur private-sector development reaching 10 to 20 stories into the sky.

The concept complements Atlanta's effort to shape itself into a more
walkable city by promoting mixed-use developments.

"When Norfolk Southern put all that land up for sale, all of a sudden there
was no reason to limit the vision of this postage stamp of land we had been
considering," said Michael Dobbins, Atlanta's planning commissioner, who
plans to continue with the project after he retires next month.

Dobbins is widely credited with coming up with an idea that eliminated a big
hurdle in the ultimate project.

He suggested that Greyhound Lines Inc. locate its station near the CNN MARTA
station, instead of near Five Points station. Greyhound's Gary Jones said
the company approved the plan after reviewing ridership figures showing the
vast majority of Greyhound riders use MARTA's East-West line.

That helped the project break free from a big-box prototype near Five Points
station and possibly become a new urban center.

"This is a bigger project than we'd been thinking it is," Dobbins says. "It
needs to have the potential to grow and expand and be developed
incrementally as we assemble land transportation systems that are going to
be increasingly popular. The success of Gwinnett's bus service is a perfect
example of that.

"The other key thing about this project is that transit just doesn't work
unless you have a high concentration of destinations," Dobbins says.

"You just can't run a streetcar where there isn't anything and expect it to
survive. This idea of creating 2 million to 4 million square feet for a wide
array of uses over the next 10 to 20 years is vital."

Familiar concept

Like so many controversial public projects in Atlanta, this one is the
latest incarnation of a familiar concept.

Everyone involved agrees the current plan will change, just as Ga. 400 was
modified before it sliced through Buckhead and the Presidential Parkway
became basically a driveway to the Carter Center.

But the point is that those controversial projects did get off the drawing
board.

Sharon Gay, who chairs the rail program team, seems confident the rail and
bus station will be built. She's looking ahead to naming a facility now
called the Multi-Modal Passenger Terminal.

Former Atlanta City Councilman Doug Alexander, who has lobbied for years for
a rail program and now works as the state's rail manager, thinks Terminal
Station would be a good name. Atlanta once had a station by that name.

"Let's use the name we've had before," Alexander said.

"It is the terminus of the railroad lines into Atlanta, the bus lines into
Atlanta. So let's use the name that served for a long time."


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The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org

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