A recent meeting of CREW Atlanta provided attendees with an update on how Atlanta’s Westside communities will benefit from the planned new Falcons Stadium in their area. Some community members have been skeptical of claims that the stadium will revitalize their neighborhoods, but a number of prominent organizations are already working diligently to improve economic conditions in the blighted Westside.
The Vine City, Castleberry Hill, and English Avenue communities surrounding the stadium site are fortunate to have an advocate in Arthur Blank, the Home Depot founder and Falcons owner. Blank is a strong supporter of Atlanta’s Downtown and its economic development. Blank, the City of Atlanta, and other entities have stipulated that the area around the stadium must be revitalized while the new $1.2 billion stadium is undergoing construction. Their resolve was not purely altruistic; the city could not legally release $200 million in taxpayer funds for the new stadium until city officials and the neighborhoods came up with a plan to revitalize the west Atlanta area.
After months of contentious meetings between city officials and community representatives, a “community benefits plan” was approved and passed by the Atlanta City Council over the summer. The plan outlines how $30 million in promised funds from the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation and Invest Atlanta, the city’s economic development arm, will be spent on redevelopment efforts. The plan delineates project categories but does not definitively state which projects will be funded. It proposes a three-year timeline to disperse the revitalization funds.
The funds to be allocated include $15 million from the Blank Foundation’s newly created Westside Prosperity Fund, which will give grants to projects and programs that promote economic development, safety and crime prevention, education, and healthy communities in Vine City, English Avenue, Castleberry Hill and other contiguous neighborhoods. Another $15 million from Invest Atlanta comes from the Westside Tax Allocation District (TAD), which since 1998 has been working to address “blighted conditions and [to] expand redevelopment efforts to adjacent residential areas of Vine City and English Avenue.”
In partnership with Invest Atlanta and other entities, the Blank Foundation has already created the Westside Works Program, which was previously mentioned in this blog. The four-week, intensive program teaches construction skills to people living close to the new Falcons stadium and rewards them with a job offer at the end of the course. In addition, in the next few months, the foundation plans to launch a Capacity Building Program to help “smaller, neighborhood-based organizations increase their impact,” according to the Blank Foundation’s web site. The program will provide operating funding support, training and technical assistance, and peer-to-peer mentoring to selected organizations.
To enable the distribution of its $15 million pledge to Westside development, Invest Atlanta has established a Community Improvement Fund for the Westside TAD to “leverage the ongoing economic benefits spurred by the construction of the new Atlanta Falcons’ Stadium project,” according to Invest Atlanta’s web site. The fund will invest in “transformational capital projects that result in lasting impact over a generation and spur private investment and redevelopment of the neighborhoods in the Westside TAD.”
Other interests are investing heavily in Westside improvement efforts, chief among them Friendship Baptist Church, whose historic sanctuary had to be demolished to make way for the new stadium. The church sold its property to the City of Atlanta and the Falcons for $19.5 million and is now seeking to reinvest much of that money into the Westside community, where the church intends to stay. To that end, Friendship Baptist Church has partnered with the City of Atlanta to buy most of the 37 acres owned by now-bankrupt Morris Brown College. Friendship paid $3.875 million to buy the vacant Middleton Towers, the Morris Brown gym, and the parking lot across from the towers – about five acres for a total cost of $14.825 million. Invest Atlanta paid the balance of nearly $11 million.
Friendship Baptist plans to build its new sanctuary on the Morris Brown campus. The church already owns three acres on Mitchell Street across from its now-demolished sanctuary, as well as more than 13 acres along Northside Drive and Mitchell Street. To develop these properties, the church has partnered with national development firm McCormack Baron Salazar, which has extensive experience in community revitalization projects. Friendship says that its development plans include affordable and market-rate housing, retail space, and community amenities such as a sports complex with swimming and basketball, child care and after-school facilities, and tutoring programs.
With so many entities planning to pour money into the Westside, Mayor Kasim Reed said this summer that he and members of the Atlanta Committee for Progress, a board of local CEOs and university presidents, hope to form a philanthropic nonprofit called the Westside Future Fund. The nonprofit will raise private dollars to support other nonprofits and city agencies’ efforts to improve economic conditions in the communities surrounding the Falcons stadium site. The targeted communities include English Avenue, Vine City, Atlanta University Center campus, Ashview Heights and parts of Castleberry Hill.
According to Reed, the fund will be modeled after the Atlanta Beltline Partnership, a 501(c)3 that raises funds from private donors to help build out the Atlanta Beltline green space project. He sees the nonprofit as a way to coordinate the various groups overseeing investments into the Westside. The groups applying for funds from the Westside TAD may have to coordinate with the future nonprofit, according to Reed.
With so many interests eyeing the Westside area, perhaps its impoverished communities will at last have access to the jobs and other opportunities they so desperately need. Beyond construction jobs at the stadium, Westside Works envisions employing local residents as concessionaires, for example. As the new stadium rises, Atlanta’s West side may finally see its long-awaited revival.
Blog contributed by Hugh Rader, Advisor with Cresa Atlanta. Hugh has more than eight years of experience as a tenant representative and is an expert on the Downtown real estate submarket. For information on developments in Downtown West and around the Falcons Stadium, contact Hugh at 404-446-1597 or hrader@cresa.com.