$6.5 billion worth of investments planned for downtown Atlanta over 5 years

ATLANTA, Ga. (CBS46) – Downtown officers shared a brand new funding map that outlined $6.5 billion going in direction of south downtown over the subsequent 5 years.

“This funding is basically bringing retail. It’s bringing eating places. It’s bringing higher public and inexperienced area for people to get pleasure from on their lunch break or in between conferences,” stated Alena Inexperienced, Director of Financial Improvement Central Atlanta Progress.

Inexperienced compiled this knowledge from private and non-private tasks both simply completed, underway, or deliberate in south Atlanta in 65 acres of downtown Atlanta.

“We’re going to see a doubling of residential items to our downtown within the subsequent 5 years,” Inexperienced stated.

She stated many new complexes can have almost 1 / 4 of devoted reasonably priced items.

She added that there are already indicators that the downtown core has revitalized considerably because the peak of the pandemic.

Inexperienced stated site visitors is up 50% year-to-year.

In Summerhill, which has seen vital current growth, some neighbors stated they’re involved this development prioritized the well-off.

“I really feel like if I work right here, I ought to be capable of stay right here as effectively within the metropolis,” stated Messiah Jones. “I shouldn’t have to remain on the outskirts and work within the metropolis,” Jones stated.

CBS46 reached out to the Atlanta Downtown Neighborhood Affiliation. Officers offered this assertion in an e-mail:

Making certain these tasks contribute in direction of good individuals infrastructure Downtown – we’re in whole help.

We’re positively excited and consider that these tasks have huge potentialities for optimistic impression.

Fortunately, urbanism developments and rising understanding of excellent urbanism is on our facet! That stated, parking stands to threaten the whole lot. It doesn’t matter what is constructed, if lawmakers, builders, and Atlantans can’t get on the identical web page about embracing non-car transit, we’re destined for gridlock and unhappy blocks consisting solely of parking decks perpetually. We’re excited to see Metropolis Council (Dozier) in dialog with builders (CIM) concerning parking minimums, and so on.

Timeline, politics, funding, and so on all pose a risk to those as effectively. As residents, we’re excited to have all of the alternatives these developments promise (locations to dine, store, socialize, and so on), but when historical past and previous errors/expertise have taught us something, it’s that we could possibly be ready years (or perpetually) for promised developments. Nonetheless, it’s these previous disappointments that make the clear progress and incremental activation of present tasks extraordinarily thrilling!

We need to additionally embrace that PUBLIC area and PUBLIC entry is vital. If all these entities personal their separate (huge) items of Downtown, they’ve all of the extra duty to offer high quality public area accessible to all as that is at present missing and developments in Atlanta are inclined to create beautiful rooftops, courtyards, and so on which can be solely accessible to workplace staff or house advanced residents or by ticketed admission.

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