Shirley Franklin on the Beltline: Plans change

Former Mayor Shirley Franklin recounts the start of the Beltline project before a Trolley Barn audience.

Back in the day, Mayor Shirley Franklin approached the Atlanta Beltline with characteristic pragmatism and skepticism.

“The question for us was not, ‘What is the biggest boldest idea?’” Franklin recalled during a forum last week. “The question for us was, ‘What could we implement, within our resources, in order to accomplish our basic goal [to connect neighborhoods]?’”

More than 200 intown residents descended on the Inman Park Trolley Barn to hear the former mayor and two other longtime civic leaders discuss the Beltline and the proposed Beltline streetcar. Franklin contributed an intimate history.

As mayor from 2002 to 2010, she eventually oversaw adoption of the Beltline Redevelopment Plan, creation of Atlanta Beltline Inc. and the first steps toward making the Beltline a reality. But, early on, she was skeptical.

During Franklin’s first two years in office, Council President Cathy Woolard – an early champion for developing the 22-mile loop of abandoned rail lines – dogged the mayor every week to hop onto the bandwagon. Each time, Franklin responded by saying she already had too much on her plate.

Then, in 2004, Woolard forced the mayor’s hand. The Council president was leaving her city post to run for Congress: “It was our last meeting together. And she said, ‘Well I’m giving you the Beltline.’ And I’m like, ‘Wait a minute. I don’t want the Beltline.’”

But Woolard’s persistence – and the fact that Woolard and Ryan Gravel had built so much grassroots enthusiasm for the project – made the Beltline difficult to just drop. So the mayor did what she often did when presented with a complicated matter: Appointed a study committee.

Last week’s Trolley Barn meeting was organized by Ron Martin, an Inman Park resident who told the crowd he hadn’t thought much about plans to extend the streetcar until he read a critical opinion column last year by Georgia Tech Professor Hans Klein.

“It became clear to me that there are serious implications of fixed rail on the Beltline,” Martin told the audience. “And it also seemed to me that those concerns were not being discussed.”

So he gathered up 55 fellow intown residents to serve as co-hosts and managed to get three well-known leaders to offer their insights: Franklin, former Atlanta Housing Authority CEO Renee Glover and Atlanta Community Food Bank founder Bill Bolling. (Glover and Bolling are Better Atlanta Transit Advisory Board members.)

Part of the idea was to set a tone of civility.

“If we disagree with each other, it doesn’t mean the other person’s a bad person,” Bolling, who served as moderator, said as the forum began. “The purpose of tonight’s gathering is to better understand the critical moment we are in as it relates to the future of the Beltline as a linear park, as a connector, as a community builder and an economic generator.”

All three speakers shied away taking an explicit position on the controversial streetcar. But the common theme was that plans for public projects should be open to change.

“It is not unusual to have a good plan and make it better,” Franklin said. “I know we’re all nervous about changing course. And I am not advocating changing course, or not changing course. But I’ve had enough experience to know that sometimes modifications can get you something that you really didn’t plan for that’s actually better.”

In the early days, Franklin said, the vision for the transformative project was fluid. Some advocated for rail transit as the centerpiece. Others prioritized the multi-use path.

Her committee reported that the Beltline was feasible and proposed how to finance it. By that time, agencies and nonprofits were putting their own spins on the vision. The Trust for Public Land hired renowned urban planner Alex Garvin to analyze the “greenspace challenges and opportunities” that the Beltline presented, and he offered a new part of the vision: Garvin and company showed that the Beltline could be leveraged to string together an “Emerald Necklace” of parks.

Later, a special city panel of transit experts raised questions about the viability of the proposed rail line.

In her workwoman-like way, Franklin followed up by tasking the Atlanta Development Authority to come up with a detailed 25-year plan. And the 2005 “Atlanta Beltline Redevelopment Plan” has been guiding progress ever since.

The plan proposed a new independent agency (Atlanta Beltline Inc.), included most of the Emerald Necklace parks, and kicked transit down the road. It called for ABI to concentrate on land-use planning, land acquisition, and parks and trail development, before finally tackling transit some time in the future.

“For the first time in a long time, maybe even decades, Atlanta had a plan to connect neighborhoods using public infrastructure other than roads,” Franklin recalled. “ … It wasn’t that we were rejecting transit, but rather that we did not see our way clearly to actually having the financing or the mechanisms that would make that work.”

At last week’s meeting, Glover was the most candid in calling for Beltline rail to be reconsidered. Her point was that the Beltline is already doing what was hoped.

“People love it. They don’t just like it — they love it. What I think they love about it is that it really connects all of the communities. And you see everyone out there – all ages, all cultures, all colors,” she said, adding later: “Looking strictly through an equity lens …the last thing that is needed along that strip from Irwin [Avenue] up to Ponce City Market is something that’s going to incent economic development, because we have done that, accomplished that.”

“As opposed to spending a quarter billion dollars or more [on the first stretch of the Beltline streetcar], why not step back and say, ‘Let’s do the things that are needed to make the transit system [better].’”

Franklin echoed that last point: “Sometimes, you have to stop where you are, step back, look around. It might mean you do exactly what you were planning, and it might mean you enhance it and it might mean you don’t.”

The morning after the event, there were signs that the current mayor might be thinking along similar lines.  

“I have always been supportive of some transit on the Beltline, but I’m also sober and aware enough to know that our 20-year vision from when Ryan Gravel and company came up with it, now 20 years later, we’ve got to look at how real is it?” Mayor Andre Dickens told AJC columnist Bill Torpy. “If we find that that’s not viable, (there’s) no reason to build something that’s not going to be used.”