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The
City of Chamblee is using its LCI grant to build 242 loft-style apartments
directly across the street from its MARTA station. |
By Dan Reuter
To help promote greater livability in towns and employment centers, the Atlanta
Regional Com-mission (ARC) launched the Livable Centers Initiative (LCI) program
in 1999. LCI provides seed money to communities with bold visions of a more
livable future and enough implementation money to see these visions turn into
reality.
ARC has awarded 51 planning grants totaling $5 million in the five years since the inception of the program. In addition, eight communities have been “grandfathered,” qualifying them for implementation funding. To date, the LCI communities have leveraged their seed money into more than $108 million to implement their plans.
ARC recently added $150 million to the program, bringing the total investment in the program to just over $500 million. The LCI program will continue to focus on town and activity centers, but will now also include corridors and emerging centers.
Although the completed LCI studies show a range of ideas and ways to achieve livability, all demonstrate the fundamental concepts of:
In the LCI communities that have finished their plans, there is a greater concentration of development in places that already have services and amenities, thus reversing the region’s sprawling patterns. There are 361 new projects that are either planned, completed or under construction. The results of these projects include:
Taking Advantage
of TODs
The Atlanta region is served by the Metropolitan Atlanta Regional Transportation
Authority (MARTA). It has 38 stations and carries almost 450,000 passengers
per day. Other transit systems have begun service recently, and more still are
on the way.
To date, however, the region has done a relatively poor job of taking advantage of the unique development opportunities that transit stations offer. LCI has been a catalyst in promoting and helping communities build transit-oriented developments (TODs).
The City of Chamblee, east of downtown Atlanta, received an LCI grant in 2000 to develop plans to take advantage of a MARTA heavy rail station. Chamblee rezoned 87 acres next to the station into a mixed-use district. This allowed the city to lure a $20 million private investment that includes 242 luxury, loft-style apartments in The Lofts at 5300 Peachtree, directly across the street from the MARTA station.
The City of Morrow, south of downtown Atlanta, used its $75,000 LCI grant in 2000 to create a more livable, walkable environment near the state and national archives. It has since leveraged the study money with nearly $3.6 million to help implement this plan. This includes a new commuter rail station on the Atlanta-to-Lovejoy line and new pedestrian paths that will connect to Gateway Village, a planned 165-acre mixed-use development, and nearby student housing for Clayton College and State University.
The City of Decatur is partnering with the Decatur Housing Authority and MARTA (along with a private developer) to build a mixed-use, mixed-income development at the Avondale MARTA station that resides in an area characterized mostly by low-intensity industrial buildings. The surface lot will be used for the development and a parking deck will replace the spaces lost to the mixed-use development.
The intent of the LCI program — to promote greater livability in the region’s town and activity centers — is already coming to fruition, and the future looks brighter still.
Dan Reuter is chief of the Atlanta Regional Commission’s Land Use Division.