The proposed Beltline project would increase the city’s parkland more than 40 percent. But for now, it’s just a vision.

> By STACY SHELTON
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
> Published on: 02/14/05
On the crest of a hill overlooking an old train track and a sunset view of downtown Atlanta’s skyscrapers, 2 acres of possibility await in Reynoldstown.

A padlocked fence with barbed wire protects the city-owned lot. Inside, the only visible assets are a covered vehicle and a storage shed.

But there’s so much more.

A 141-page report released last month by the Trust for Public Land, a national land conservation group, sees the overgrown lot turning into Holtzclaw Park, one of four parks proposed along 22 miles of train tracks looping Atlanta and called the Beltline.

The site could become a beautiful neighborhood park at minimal cost, according to the report, written by the design team of Alex Garvin & Associates of New York.

“Due to its small size, an organized group of neighborhood residents might even spend a Saturday turning this abandoned lot into a spectacular gem,” the report suggests.

Atlanta’s proposed Beltline has been dominated by visions of a trolley or train line encircling the city, accelerating redevelopment for lofts and funky urban businesses in formerly abandoned industrial centers and blighted neighborhoods. But the first plan to hit the streets is not about transit-oriented development. It’s a proposal to create a connected series of new and expanded parks.

The Trust for Public Land’s grand, green vision, as laid out by one of the country’s top urban planners, would add 1,400 acres of parkland, increasing the city’s existing park acreage by more than 40 percent. Atlanta would no longer be a basement dweller among big cities when it comes to public parks.

The vision includes joggers running around the Atlanta Waterworks reservoirs on Howell Mill Road, à la New York’s Central Park; boaters sailing on a quarry-turned-lake west of downtown; and horseback riders cantering along a Georgia Power easement in southeast Atlanta.

“All this is speculation,” said Jim Langford, the land trust’s Georgia director. “What do people want to see happen? What does the city want to see happen? We’re laying this out as a possibility.”

A 21st-century model

The problems are as numerous as the possibilities.

They are specific. The potential lake is now Bellwood Quarry, owned by Fulton County but under lease to Vulcan Materials Co. through 2034. If converted to a park, it would become the city’s largest at 579 acres — nearly three times larger than the current title holder, Freedom Park.

The problems are also comprehensive. Acquiring just the parkland could take 10 to 20 years and cost several hundred million dollars. On the upside, though, most of the properties identified in the report as potential parkland are already owned by a public entity: the city, Fulton County, MARTA or the state Department of Transportation. Langford said fewer than 150 landowners control the rest.

A public-private effort would be needed, much like the trust-led Chattahoochee Land Protection Campaign.

Since the mid-1990s, that effort has raised $141 million in government grants and private donations to create a protected greenway along the Chattahoochee River from its source near Helen downstream to Columbus, on the Alabama border. About 70 miles of river frontage and 14,000 acres have been acquired.

While the Chattahoochee campaign will continue, Langford said, “We are evaluating now how and whether to do a similar campaign for the Beltline. Atlanta has done it for Symphony Hall, for the Arts Center. People have come together, and it may be time to do that for the Beltline. It can become a model: the 21st-century model of park systems in the country.”

On the public side, the Atlanta Development Authority, which focuses on economic development, is looking at whether a special tax district could be used to pay for the Beltline, from land acquisition to construction to maintenance.

‘City-altering experience’

The first large private donation for Beltline parkland was made last month by the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, which has decided to focus its donations for green space aquisition along the Beltline. The foundation gave the Trust for Public Land $2.5 million — some of it set aside as a challenge grant for others.

Elise Eplan, the foundation’s vice president for special initiatives, said the Beltline “would be an immediate, city-altering kind of experience.”

Another likely donor is the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation, which already has given $200,000 to the PATH Foundation for Beltline work, said foundation President Pete McTier. But first, that venerable Atlanta foundation will need to see more coordinated leadership behind the Beltline. “The various parts have to come together,” McTier said.

In addition to the Trust for Public Land’s report, MARTA and the Atlanta Development Authority are completing their own studies. And Gwinnett County investor Wayne Mason is trying to figure out what to do with the 4.6 miles of track he recently bought in northeast Atlanta, through some of the city’s priciest neighborhoods.

“It is a most worthy ambition for our city, but one that is completely fragmented and very expensive, particularly if it is to unfold as a unified project,” McTier said.

A history of neglect

If the city, and Mayor Shirley Franklin, take charge of the Beltline project, and if it comes to fruition, the next question will be how the city maintains the public spaces. Atlanta has done a poor job of maintaining its parks in the past, and not every park can generate a group like the privately funded Piedmont Park Conservancy to take care of it.

A 2002 report by Franklin’s Parks and Green Spaces Task Force found that the city spent far less to maintain its parks than cities recognized for their park systems. In 2000, Atlanta spent $58 per resident on park maintenance, while Seattle spent $160, Minneapolis $144 and Chicago $128.

As Garvin & Associates put it in its report, “There is no point in spending millions of dollars to create a great public realm if it starts to deteriorate from the moment it opens.”

Both the mayor’s task force and the Trust for Public Land report recommended setting up an independent city agency to run the parks. The Atlanta City Council, though, has opposed that concept, in part because members worry that it could open the door for a state takeover of city-owned Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

Ryan Gravel, whose Georgia Tech thesis launched the Beltline vision, is trying to engage the help of the people of Atlanta. He helped start Friends of the Belt Line, a nonprofit group, to give people a way to stay informed and take part in discussions.

“The Beltline is for the people, for the city of Atlanta,” Gravel said. “It will contribute to citizens’ quality of life both by offering parks and green space — which includes public health and other concerns — and also transit, getting people to work and where they need to go. And redevelopment in areas that haven’t seen development in decades. . . . It’s not just about developers, and it’s not just about the city. It’s about the people who live in the communties along the way.”

Trees for health

The Beltline would pass through 46 neighborhoods, within walking distance of more than 137,000 people.

Peggy Harper, a neighborhood leader inMechanicsville, in south Atlanta, and president of the Atlanta Planning Advisory Board, which advises the city on zoning decisions and other planning issues, said that whether or not a train ever loops the city, adding the parks and connecting them with a trail will make a huge difference.

“If nothing else, this NPU-V has the highest incidence of childhood asthma in the city of Atlanta,” Harper said. “If buying the Beltline keeps my children from having asthma, I’m all for it. And that’s exactly what happens when you put in a park and plant trees. The health of an individual goes up.”

By WALTER WOODS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 02/06/05

Emory Morsberger owns what may be the most infamous piece of property in Gwinnett County, a stone Lawrenceville townhouse where almost 30 years ago a sniper waited for Larry Flynt.

He owns the second-most-infamous property, too: the low-rise building across the street where the porn publisher and his lawyer were shot and wounded.

Today, because of Morsberger, the once-vacant, slightly creepy assassin’s blind is reopening as a comfortable attorney’s office over a neighborhood cafe. Next door, there’s an ice cream parlor.

Morsberger, Gwinnett’s politician-turned-developer, isfamous for his jolly roadside politicking, his booming voice and his seven daughters. Wayne Mason, a mentor, declares that Morsberger’s children stream out of the family van “like chickens.”

But he’s become a gossip topicagain for quietly buying up nearly half of downtown Lawrenceville — the Flynt sites, a car lot, department stores and a 100-year-old church.

Now, not so quietly, Morsberger is scraping much of the town back to its original 1800s brickwork and plank floors, trying to make Lawrenceville into Gwinnett’s Decatur, a square of quaint shops, popular restaurants and a community theater in the old church.

Lawrenceville’s once-lively courthouse square dozed as the rest of Gwinnett prospered. County government emptied the historic courthouse in 1988 for a modern version down the road, taking the lunchtime shoppers with it.

Over the years, the landmark became surrounded by empty storefronts, used car lots and a pawnshop. But Morsberger saw its potential.

“He’s got a lot of work going on, and he’s spending a lot of money,” said an interested observer, Lawrenceville Mayor Bobby Sikes.

Morsberger is also making noise in a corner of Snellville, where the loudest sound used to be the bat cracks from the E.R. Snell ball field and the thrill of “bingo” from the Highway 78 American Legion Hall.

After a two-year political wrestling match over his 40-acre property off Highpoint Road, near the center of Snellville, Morsberger challenged the Gwinnett Board of Commissioners in court to get approval for the village-style development he wanted.

And then there’s City Hall East, Atlanta’s woolly mammoth, the largest and perhaps neediest office building in the Southeast. Morsberger and his partners last year beat out two well-connected teams for the right to salvage the 1926 former Sears building. That victory may turn out to be a classic case of “be careful what you ask for.”

Each project looks different, but in a sense they’re all the same, part of Morsberger’s mission to bring a sense of town back to sections of a metro area known for big-box parking lots and miles of cul-de-sacs.

It would be easier to build shopping centers, but consumers, even in the suburbs, are pining for an old-fashioned sense of place, of Main Street U.S.A., Morsberger said. And he’s convinced they’re willing to pay for it.

Morsberger, who’ll turn 50 this spring, insists that even in Gwinnett — where “apartment” is a slur and people want “everything nearby and nothing close” — consumers are sick of braking down U.S. 78, Jimmy Carter Boulevard and other long strips of oily parking spaces, fast-food marquees and exhausted shopping centers. (By itself, 78 has 500,000 square feet of empty or under-used retail, the equivalent of an Atlanta skyscraper.)

“People are not considering a Wal-Mart center or the Mall of Georgia to be their hometown,” he said. “People are looking for that sense of community.”

The traffic-stalled lives we live are wearing us down, he said, as people, and as a society. Case in point: It takes Morsberger a solid hour to drive from his office in a converted Lawrenceville funeral home to City Hall East. “That’s ridiculous,” he said.

As a Little League coach, “I have parents who never come to games, unless they’re on a Saturday … and they don’t sign up to coach,” he said.

Why? “Because they’re sitting on I-285,” he said. “What does that do to our quality of life?” Morsberger asked. “What does it do to us as a society?”

Developing in a different way (or “redeveloping,” a term he prefers) has become his accidental crusade — accidental, because it’s the career he picked up after success in computers and failure in politics, and a crusade because of the resistance and hassles he’s had to endure.

But Morsberger’s crusade, and his clout, reach beyond the property deeds in his pockets. His political résumé and business victories have made him a political and policy player.

In January, he put together a re-election fund-raiser for Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin at Gwinnett’s members-only 1818 Club. (Why would a Gwinnettian help re-elect Atlanta’s mayor? “Because as Atlanta goes, so goes Gwinnett,” Morsberger said.)

He’s also steering a long-awaited report on development for the Gwinnett Board of Commissioners. Newly elected Chairman Charles Bannister has a copy on his desk; the public will hear the final version in March.

The preliminary report, which took two years, recommends bringing dense, Midtown- and Decatur-style developments (minus apartments, importantly) to Gwinnett’s blighted areas, namely Jimmy Carter Boulevard, Gwinnett Place mall and U.S. 78.

The Gwinnett County Revitalization Task Force, which Morsberger chairs, wants the county to smooth rezoning and even give tax incentives to developers who’ll buy up, demolish and redevelop those districts’ many failed shopping centers.

It’s an idea who’s time has come, Wayne Mason said. “Revitalization in Gwinnett? I’m one of the preachers,” he said. Such districts are “like a sore — if you don’t treat it, it gets big.”

Similar redevelopments, often called “new urbanism,” are being tested at unwanted retail or industrial sites around the country, including metro Atlanta. Think Atlantic Station.

New sheriff in town

Lawrenceville, Gwinnett’s county seat, had long been a sore spot before Morsberger took an interest, Mason said. Years back, Mason tried to buy up parts of the town and bring in new businesses himself. But the attitudes were “backwoods” then, he said. Few property owners were interested in selling, and he gave up.

“But he’s done more to Lawrenceville than I ever thought he could,” Mason said of Morsberger. “If you could resurrect the dead, they’d think it was the 1920s down there.”

Morsberger, like a 1920s town sheriff, has keys to much of the city. On a walking tour last month, he unlatched the glass doors of the restaurants, shops, offices and even a bar (yes, Lawrenceville is wet) that he’ll open this year. Many of them have his now-trademark “Progress Coming” signs posted in the windows.

On New Year’s Eve, he helped pay for a city fireworks celebration around the 1885 courthouse that drew 8,000 people. He’s also nudged the city to build a parking deck for his future customers. And there’s even talk of condos in both new and renovated structures in the not-so-distant future.

Not everyone is thrilled. One car dealer who has since moved out briefly used his marquee to question if “progress” meant one man owned the whole town.

But Mayor Sikes believes people want to see Lawrenceville change. “It’s different for Lawrenceville, but it’s going to be great,” he said.

Beating the naysayers

Morsberger moved his offices to Lawrenceville last year, but some of his first trials with Gwinnett real estate were in Snellville.

Fresh from a disappointing run for Congress in 1992 — he lost to U.S. Rep. John Linder — Morsberger turned his attention to a sad cluster of townhouses off U.S. 78.

He bought the units, some with cars resting on cinder blocks in the front yards, and gradually fixed them up, Mason remembered. Everything he touched turned around, Mason said. “I was amazed, and it paid off for him.”

Eventually, he bought some acres on the other side of the highway, and in 2003 he approached the county about building Mountain View Village, a mixed-use center of offices and houses, parks and retail.

His project, only the second to test Gwinnett’s then-new mixed-use zoning category, may have been ahead of its time, said Brett Harrell, executive director of the Highway 78 Community Improvement District, a group Morsberger helped start.

“A number of people are naysayers about mixed use” in Gwinnett, Harrell said. The attitude was, “no one’s going to live over a store, or walk to a store,” he said. Morsberger is certain they will.

But his project came up during an election year roiled with concern about development, Harrell pointed out. Personalities and politics flared.

Gwinnett’s commissioners shot down the project in 2003, and again in June, citing school overcrowding. Morsberger appealed to Superior Court.

By December, tempers had cooled — and the polls had closed — and the commissioners approved Mountain View Village.

Slow go in Atlanta

With City Hall East, Morsberger could be years from a happy ending. The immense building, more than 2 million square feet, is sagging and tainted with lead and asbestos. The city’s fire, police and 911 call center departments are housed there and must relocate before the renovations can begin.

Morsberger and his team — Lane Co., Integral Group and Adams & Co. Real Estate, among others — plan to convert City Hall East into a 1,300-unit condo and apartment community with small offices, stores and cafes on both Ponce de Leon and North avenues.

Though the team won the city’s bidding process last year, the Atlanta City Council has yet to approve a contract with Morsberger’s partners. Plus, the city is considering whether to build a new headquarters for the police department, which could delay City Hall East’s conversion for years.

But the team is convinced City Hall East will draw consumers, and in the end will be worth untangling the red tape.

“When you do a project like this, you create a market that is not obvious to the uninformed observer,” said Egbert Perry, chief executive officer at Integral Group, one of the partners. “The reality is, when you create housing choice with amenities in the city center, you create a market for people in [areas like] Alpharetta … to live closer to where they work.”

Morsberger, even sitting in a dirty break room in City Hall East, is unflappably upbeat. It’s something he’s become known for, a tireless, almost steely, positivism.

His response to most questions is “incredible,” not in the sense of “implausible,” but in the sense of “astonishing.”

He’s so certain of his developments, that “for him it’s a reality before it’s a reality,” said Harrell, of the Highway 78 Community Improvement District.

“He speaks of things as if things are done.”

> By ROBERT KIRKMAN
> Published on: 02/02/05

Debates about metropolitan growth and suburban development in the Atlanta region tend to focus on economics and politics: What are the costs and benefits, in money and political capital?

But debates about growth also have an ethical component.

Now, I know I’m already in trouble for saying this. Many are worried I’ll start denouncing suburbs as evil and suburbanites as immoral, misguided or stupid. I have no intention of doing so.

For philosophers, ethics is not just a matter of commandment, accusation, guilt and punishment. Instead, it is an inquiry into the values and obligations that should guide human conduct. It is a way of asking questions rather than a set of established answers.

Among the basic ethical questions: What is the best kind of life for a human being? What do we owe to one another? And, what can we hope for?

A particular way of changing or using our environment is generally good to the extent that it supports and contributes to a “good and just life” that can continue into the future; it is bad to the extent that it impedes or detracts from such a life.

Of course, people disagree strongly about what it means to lead a “good and just life.”

In saying that suburban development is an ethical matter, I mean only that it raises questions about values and obligations, questions that should have a central place in public debate and decision-making at every level.

We should focus on the three basic ethical questions: “well-being,” “justice” and “sustainability.”

In matters of well-being, the question is: What makes a good place to live? We should consider human health and safety, sense of place, community and family life, and access to educational, economic and cultural opportunities.

For example, suburban development provides comfortable housing in quiet neighborhoods for those who can afford to live in them.

But it also reduces opportunities for making physical activity a regular part of everyday living, and it has radically changed how we interact with our fellow citizens. We are much less likely to see our neighbors on a daily basis, and to live, travel and work with others unlike ourselves.

Matters of justice concern our obligations to one another and perhaps to nonhuman creatures and natural systems.

The questions include: Who gets to live here, and who bears the costs? Who is excluded? In what ways do those who benefit not pay their fair share of the costs?

We also should keep thinking about the relationship between private property and the public good.

For example, requiring developers to provide affordable housing as part of any new development will allow a wider range of people to benefit from living in good places, but it also imposes limits on the rights of developers to do as they see fit with their property.

We still must figure out when such limits are appropriate and who should have the authority to enforce them.

We also should consider sustainability: How long can the dynamics that shape this place last?

We should keep a sharp eye out for ways in which our patterns of building and living might undermine themselves by disrupting natural systems, imposing unbearable fiscal burdens, or by pushing the ideal landscape farther and farther out into the countryside.

As more people move into the suburbs, the suburbs offer less of the tranquility and semi-rural charm people are looking for.

When we bring all three sets of issues together, we are likely to find what many might expect — that the current dynamic of metropolitan growth has some good features, including clean and safe living places and access to economic opportunity for those who can afford to live in better suburban communities.

But there are also a number of serious problems, including persistent patterns of exclusion and the high environmental and fiscal costs of maintaining suburban infrastructure and suburban ways of life.

The challenge will be to have a serious public conversation about what better places might be like and how we can start to build them. This will lead us deeper into the much more difficult conversation about what it means to lead a “good and just life.”

But if we are honest with ourselves and willing to learn from each other, then we have at least a chance of making reasonable and responsible decisions about the future of our built environment.

Robert Kirkman is an assistant professor in the School of Public Policy and director of the Philosophy, Science and Technology Program at Georgia Tech. He has a degree in philosophy and his current research includes how environmental philosophy pertains to the built environment, especially to the process of suburbanization and metropolitan growth. He lives in Decatur.