Turning Peachtree into Peachtree Boulevard
(April 13, 2006) The Story in Buckhead

The first of a two-part series

Decades of involvement in politicsﾗfrom student body president in high school, to being a campaign consultant for candidates, a lobbyist for a city, to holding local public officeﾗpossibly positioned Scotty Greene to be the perfect candidate to become executive director of the Buckhead Community Improvement District (CID) in early 2000.

The Buckhead CID had been formed in September, 1999, primarily to improve mobility in the core of Buckheadﾗpedestrian movement, car movement and transit access because of Buckheadﾒs growth.

ﾓOur primary mission was to leverage property tax dollars for capital improvements where the city did not have a local match available,ﾔ Greene explained. ﾓWe leverage our money and our political influence.ﾔ

Greene said the Buckhead Coalition and community had done a series of planning exercises over the years. In 1994-95, $200,000 was spent on developing a Buckhead Blueprint, which was led by world renowned planning firm, EDAW. The results of that study, Greene said, were ﾓwe want trees, want the area to be more pedestrian friendly, more diversity, more buildings that meet the street, more retail and more mixed-use development.ﾔ

The Buckhead Coalition followed that study in 1998 by hiring the Urban Land Institute, which did a comparable study of the Peachtree Road section of Buckhead, with comparable results. The main conclusion of that study was Peachtree Road needed to be transformed into a Peachtree Boulevardﾗﾓurban rather than suburban, a greenway rather than a state route,ﾔ he stated.

ﾓPeachtree has a world-class reputation,ﾔ Greene said, ﾓBut when you come to the street itself, it not what you read about.ﾔ

So, by 2000 when Greene came to the Buckhead CID, the Peachtree Corridor was the primary project. He said 55,000 cars a day were on it and the present development curve was very apparent in 2000. (Greene points out that the density of development had already been allocated and that the new development today is actually down-zoned from what had been allocated.) ﾓThere was no grid system in Buckhead, no where to send extra traffic and no where to build roads,ﾔ he added.

Greene said there were only two options: improve the efficiency of the roadway and cut down on its access to move cars a little better and make it more friendlyﾗpedestrian and transitﾗto the coming land uses.

The big question, Greene said, was: How do you do all that in one project?

ﾓYou do something really audacious. You put a median in to move traffic past the driveways up to the intersections,ﾔ he explained. ﾓBut, you donﾒt make it a GDOT (Georgia Department of Transportation) median. You make it a Michigan Avenue median or a Park Avenue median. Plant it. Irrigate it. You put a bike lane on it. You widen the sidewalks and so shade where it is nice to walk on. You do better crossing pieces, synchronize the signals. And, you do it on the most expensive real estate in the Southeast,ﾔ he added.

Continuing that thought, Greene explained, ﾓYou get buy-in from everybody in the community and then you lobby for the money. That is what we did.ﾔ

He said the CID worked with former U.S. Sen. Max Cleland, with former Gov. George Barnes, with Gov. Sonny Perdue, with Mayor Shirley Franklin, with the Atlanta Regional Commission and the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority ﾓand cobbled together funding and grants. We have multiple federal sources for this project, multiple local sources and we put in 25-30 percent from our own money,ﾔ he explained.

The CID sponsored a big public charrette at the Atlanta History Center in June 200 which attracted close to 300 people who made comments and reviewed drawings of the proposed project.

ﾓWe kept the driving lanes at 10 feet instead of widening them to 11 feet, got bike lanes and trees,ﾔ Greene said, ﾓall breaking the mold for urban content-sensitive design.ﾔ

Phase I of the Peachtree Boulevard project is actually under way at this time. It runs from Maple Drive to the Georgia 400 bridge and will take 18 months to complete, with a projected finish of July 2007. Its total cost, including purchase of right-of-way is $14.5 million, but Greene said the CID managed to get $2.5 million of the right-of-way donated by property owners. The last piece of right-of-way for Phase I was closed Nov. 1, 2005, he said.

He said the original easement appraisal for Phase I was $8.5 million. ﾓWe asked the owners to give us the value of the sidewalk width and landscape buffer as it would enhance the value of their properties,ﾔ he explained. ﾓIt wasnﾒt like asking Joe who owns his house. It was asking investment committees, pension funds and such.ﾔ

Phase II, which will run from the Georgia 400 bridge to Roxboro Road, will begin when Phase I is completed and will also take about 18 months to complete. The estimated cost of Phase II, including construction, right-of-way and utilities, is $27 million, but Greene says it likely will cost less.

There is a Phase III, which runs from Maple Drive to Shadowlawn, which is still in the preliminary design stage at this time. Shadowlawn was the old boundary of the CID, he said, but that has now been extended down to The Peach shopping center in The Village.

Greene explained that the character of Peachtree Road changes at Shadowlawn. ﾓWe have an infrastructure plan for The Village that is in design right now,ﾔ he said. ﾓYou will see features of this big project continue on into The Village without the median treatment, because of the tightness of the buildings to the street.ﾔ But he said sidewalks, street furniture, pedestrian lighting, better pedestrian crossings and those sort of things will continue into The Village. ﾓWhat you wonﾒt see is a 6 to 20-foot widening,ﾔ he added.

The CID has allocated $500,000 and has a design process underway. It is anticipated it will cost another $5 million to carry the work down into The Village area.

As for some of the basic facts about the CID and the Peachtree Boulevard project:

There are over 300 property owners of commercial real estate in central commercial in Atlantaﾒs Buckhead area with an assessed value of over $2 billion.
The transformation of Peachtree covers 1.5 miles through the heart of Buckhead.
There will be 11,500 linear feet of new 11-foot-wide sidewalks.
There will be 186 willow oak trees and 50,000 square feet of green space added.
The plan adds 83 modern benches, 188 modern light posts and 48 newly painted crosswalks.
Bike lanes and enhanced transit stops will be added, as well as a 6-foot-wide tree-lined median with flowering plantings.