From the website for the micro-housing initiative by the Savannah College of Art and Design:

SCADpad embraces and advances the universityâ€s deeply rooted commitment to adaptive reuse by utilizing a parking structure at SCAD Atlanta to create an inspirational and sustainable community that proposes an answer to the growing urban housing challenges cities are facing around the world.

An interdisciplinary group of SCAD students, faculty, and alumni worked for 10 months to design and develop SCADpad—from its architectural footprint to custom furniture to remote home control—to fit in the mere 135-square-feet of a standard parking space.

Each of the three SCADpad units has a unique theme and visual identity, reflecting SCADâ€s global footprint. A common green space extends the living area, creating a community environment.

My friend Jerome Elder is actually living right now at SCADpad in Atlanta. Here’s the video he posted to YouTube, presumably the first of many:

You can click on through this tweet to see what Architectural Record has to say:

And SCADpad is not just in the U.S.:

We’ll check in again soon.

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 Atlantaâ€s future on a positive trajectory. The strong community response to the planning process, and especially the completed projects, has demonstrated that the publicâ€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 programâ€s objectives.

Atlanta Beltline Strategic Implementation by thomaswheatley

I’m impressed by this whole project.

From the article:

As demographics changed and development migrated to the largely white suburbs, the team remained a proud anchor of an increasingly black city.

But now, as the team makes plans to head a dozen miles northwest to a new $672 million baseball stadium in Cobb County, a regional civic conversation has begun: Is the move a blow to a city beginning to enjoy a post-recession urban renaissance, or is it a signal of a new era in which traditional assumptions about the divide between city and suburb no long apply?

Mayor Kasim Reed of Atlanta, who recently brokered a deal to build a $1.2 billion downtown stadium for the Atlanta Falcons, spent the week taking hits for letting the Braves go.

His critics, he said, are shortsighted.

“Weâ€ve got to make a decision — either weâ€re going to be a region or weâ€re not,” he said at a packed news briefing the day after the Braves†announcement.

Severson also notes the increasing diversity both in Atlanta and in Cobb County:

Places like Gwinnett and Cobb Counties north of Atlanta have become much more racially diverse in the last decade. The number of black residents in Cobb County grew by 47 percent from 2000 to 2010.

On the other hand, Atlanta, long a majority black city, is becoming whiter. During the last decade, the white population has grown by 17 percent, although black residents still make up just over half the population.

These are demographic trends that we’ve been seeing in other areas, including here in Savannah, where almost every neighborhood is more diverse today than in previous decades. More blacks and Latinos have been moving into predominantly white areas, and more whites have been moving into predominantly black neighborhoods.

Putting forward a reason for optimism about the move, Severson cites Chris Leinberger, a professor at the George Washington University School of Business:

The area around the stadium could be a distinct walkable urban place, Mr. Leinberger said, describing a kind of guided development designed to deliver the feel of urban living in a smaller community.

I still have my doubts, however, about some of the socioeconomic and racial issues involved in the Braves’ move to the suburbs. From what I know of the site and of the Braves’ plans for an entertainment district, I’d say the odds are even at best for the area to become what is envisioned by Leinberger.

It’s certainly going to be interesting to see it all play out.

So I don’t have a dog in this hunt. At the end of the day, I don’t have any emotional stake in where the Braves play baseball.

As a columnist and as a journalism teacher, however, I’m fascinated by the story of the Braves’ planned 2017 move to a new stadium in Cobb County.

I love baseball on some levels. When I was a kid growing up in Kentucky, my dad and I routinely traveled up to Cincinnati for Reds games. For a few years there, I could recite Big Red Machine stats off the top of my head — and there are still a few in my brain to this day. Like George Foster’s 52 home runs in 1977 — in the pre-steroid days, that was a shit ton of homers. I actually saw Game 5 of the 1975 World Series against the Boston Red Sox — that’s the game when Tony Perez hit two homers.

Riverfront Stadium was a pretty soulless place compared to stadiums built both before and after it, but those trips to Cincinnati branded baseball games as  urban experiences for me.

For most Americans, professional baseball is something of an urban experience. (I have really fond memories of seeing games at Fenway Park and Camden Yards too.)

Yes, baseball fans might largely be suburbanites these days — communities with enough room for Little League ball fields — but that doesn’t mean that those attending professional games want to watch them in the suburbs. There’s a grittiness, a toughness, a smudged quality to baseball that tells many of us that it belongs in the city.

But the Braves’ move makes business sense, right? They’re moving into the heart of their biggest fan base, aren’t they? There are many factors that contribute to fan support, and there’s a paradoxical but fairly obvious counter-argument that I haven’t heard yet from any Braves’ detractors. If the team already has strong support from Atlanta’s northern suburbs, how much larger of a fan base can be cultivated in those neighborhoods? And if the supporters in Fulton County, Atlanta, and points south are less committed, how much of that marginal support will be lost when the team moves?

And how many more comments will we hear that echo this one from Cobb GOP Chairman Joe Dendy?:

It is absolutely necessary the solution is all about moving cars in and around Cobb and surrounding counties from our north and east where most Braves fans travel from, and not moving people into Cobb by rail from Atlanta. 

The emphasis is Dendy’s, by the way.

Um, wow. Is this a bias against transit? Against urban centers? Or is it just a bias against the bulk of the residents of Atlanta — the people who actually live there? Ironically, the Braves cite “lack of consistent mass transit options” as a key reason for abandoning Turner Field.

A few more public statements like that, and it’s possible that Atlanta residents, especially those who have generally taken MARTA to games, will give up on the Braves en masse.

And there’s also the bizarre (to me, at least) fact that Braves management and Cobb County officials have been largely mum about how the county will come up with the $400-450 million in public financing apparently needed for the $672 million new stadium, which will be surrounded with a huge new mixed-use development.

Ongoing road projects are already costing Georgia taxpayers over a billion dollars in Cobb and nearby counties and now officials are floating even more plans, like  a new bridge for pedestrians and a fan shuttle that will cross over I-285.

At the same time that they’re preparing for some big spending, Cobb County officials might be banking on revenue projections that are far, far, far too optimistic. For example, Commissioner Bob Ott predicts “about 400,000 new hotel stays per year.”

Say what?

So there are going to be 5,000 hotel stays in Cobb for every Braves home game? Consider this contradictory data from a recent economic impact study, as cited by the Saporta Report:

Visiting Braves fans stay 110,000 nights each year in local hotels and motels (averaging about 2.5 nights per out-of-town fan).

That means that some of those fans see one game while they are in town for longer stays. Will a large number of fans really stay in Cobb County hotels for an average of 2.5 nights while just seeing one game? Really? Or will they just, you know, get a hotel in downtown Atlanta for a couple nights and drive out to Cobb to catch a game?

And how many hotel stays in Cobb will be lost when would-be visitors realize their plans conflict with Braves’ home games and all that additional traffic?

I could go on and on. Maybe all of this will work out fine for the Braves and for Cobb too.

But I think it has trouble written all over it, and I’m shocked that the famously tax-averse citizens of the Cobb County aren’t up in arms about the move.

The post has a variety of links, especially within the comments. Peach Pundit editor Charlie Harper speculates that the move is aimed at keeping the Braves’ audience of suburbanites coming to games.

With the city of Atlanta working so hard to keep the Falcons in town with a promised new stadium, this news would seem to throw a number of different narratives up in the air.

From the AJC:

Braves executives John Schuerholz, Mike Plant and Derek Schiller, in a meeting with a small group of reporters, said the new ballpark will be built at the northwest intersection of I-75 and I-285 in the Galleria/Cumberland Mall area. They said the team has “secured” 60 acres of land for the project.

I’m going to be curious to see if Atlanta tries to recruit a 2nd MLB team to play at Turner. Atlanta would seem a large enough metro area to support two profitable teams.

And, wow.

Bookkeeper Antoinette Tuff was in the office when Michael Brandon Hill entered Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy in Atlanta Decatur Tuesday. And then she ended up talking to him for about an hour, according to the AJC’s She faced down the suspect.

That headline suggests some sort of contest of wills between Hill and Tuff, but the audio itself gives a very different impression. Tuff identified with the intruder and even shared some tough moments in her own life — her husband leaving her, a subsequent suicide attempt, having a son with multiple handicaps.

As it becomes clear that Hill is ready to give himself up, she even offers to walk out of the school with him. Eventually, they decide that he will disarm himself and the police will enter.

There’s some dead air in the opening moments here, and if you don’t want to listen to the whole recording, skip ahead to the 13:30 minute mark.

Talk about grace under pressure. The audio is embedded via the AJC piece linked above:

It’s also worth noting the efficiency and calm of the 911 dispatcher, whose name I have not seen.

The nationwide data, complied by Zillow at the end of last year, identified the worst 1 percent of ZIP codes in terms of the percentage of mortgage holders who owe more than their homes are worth. Georgia has nearly a quarter of those ZIP codes, most of them arrayed in a crescent around Atlantaâ€s southern flank. Michigan, the next hardest-hit state, has only half as many ZIP codes in the worst 1 percent.

The biggest losers, of course, are individual homeowners. But the consequences continue to ripple outward — even as home values are rebounding in other parts of the region. […]

Statewide, 42.1 percent of Georgia homeowners with mortgages are underwater. Nationally, itâ€s 27.5 percent.

Svenja Gudell, a senior economist at Zillow, said she expects Georgiaâ€s numbers to remain worse than the national average for some time. She noted that markets like Phoenix, which also was hammered in the recession, are seeing home prices recover more quickly than Atlanta.

The title of the piece should obviously be more precise. Many homes have no mortgage debt, so the 42.1 percent is only for those that do have mortgages.

Still, that’s frighteningly high.

Given transportation costs, infrastructure costs, and Atlanta’s legendary traffic, I’m guessing that prices might never truly recover in some of the metro areas far flung suburbs.

The project is already several months behind schedule and millions of dollars over the original budget. To avoid further delays, the three collaborators on the project — MARTA, the city of Atlanta and the Atlanta Downtown Improvement District — need to impose a clear chain of command and communicate better, said the Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm, Delon Hampton and Associates.

The consulting firm was hired to Federal Transit Administration to monitor the project, which is partly funded by federal grants.
But officials with the three parties involved said the massive undertaking is proceeding well, especially given the complexity of carving a streetcar route between Centennial Park and the King Center. They dispute allegations of discord between them.

Boosters hope the Atlanta streetcar will transform the cityâ€s downtown corridor and boost tourism, in-town transportation and economic development.

There frankly seems no doubt that those goals will be achieved. The slightly alarmist headline in the AJC piece is belied by the fundamentals of the project, which seem solid.

The conditions of the federal grant in 2010 required groups to cooperate, which obviously heightened the level of bureaucracy. From later in the piece:

The federal grant program for the streetcar is new, and winning the money required organizations such as the city, MARTA and the downtown improvement district to work together and combine their funds in a way they never have before.

The project is designed to connect Philips Arena, the Georgia Dome, the CNN Center, the Georgia Aquarium, the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site, the Sweet Auburn Historic District, Georgia State University, Grady Memorial Hospital and other landmarks.

Here’s a map of this great project, but click for a much more detailed version:
Streetcar Map with attractions.