Atlanta’s Beltline: here to stay, expanding, and looking pretty cool

I don’t know enough about Atlanta’s geography or the particulars of the Beltline to say anything original about the project to create a ring of trails around the city.

But my fellow blogger Ed at Peach Pundit says: “At the risk of sounding slightly hyperbolic, this and the Savannah Port deepening are probably the single most important pieces of infrastructure in the works for Atlanta and the state. Also having a strategic plan for smart growth that is nearly two-decades long is a really refreshing change for Atlanta.”

I’m guessing the Beltline ends up being far more important than the port deepening.

In the post, Ed references this piece in Creative Loafing: Beltline board OKs 17-year plan outlining what gets built and when – and it’s worth a read. It begins:

When will the Atlanta Beltline start construction on the massive Westside park and lake centered around an abandoned quarry? Will the smart-growth project’s southeast trail linking Glenwood Park to Adair Park be built in our lifetime? And what about the transit component circling the city’s core, potentially connecting more than 45 neighborhoods?

You now have an easy place to find the answers to these questions. And see how it’s envisioned to evolve over the next 17 years.

Atlanta Beltline Inc., the nonprofit tasked with planning and developing the 22-mile loop of parks, trails, and transit, has officially released its “strategic implementation plan,” or SIP, a 140-page document that outlines how the project will progress from now until 2030. ABI’s board of directors unanimously approved the plan this morning.

From the conclusion of that report, which I will embed below:

The first seven years the Atlanta BeltLine implementation have set the City of Atlanta’s future on a positive trajectory. The strong community response to the planning process, and especially the completed projects, has demonstrated that the public’s appetite is not yet satisfied. Likewise, private real estate development has responded in a dramatic fashion to the Atlanta BeltLine, even through the Great Recession.

New private real estate development completed or un-derway within a half-mile of the Eastside Trail alone has approached $775 million, and more than $1 billion within the TAD. The Atlanta BeltLine is now a tangible reality and is already fulfilling some of its promise. The SIP will guide ABI and its partners through the year 2030 with a thoughtful, flexible approach that will help secure all of the necessary funding and achieve the program’s objectives.

Atlanta Beltline Strategic Implementation by thomaswheatley

I’m impressed by this whole project.