showed people from the West End and
Adair Park what could be in store for them
when the Westside Trail opens.
Even coming from New York,
Davidson was surprised by the level of
cynicism he encountered at early BeltLine
meetings. He says that people on the
South Side of Atlanta, in particular, had
grown accustomed to being passed over
for development projects and job cre-
ation. But now that a few portions of the
BeltLine have trails in place, and people
are using them and making them their
own, he sees “a level of hope and pride in
the city that wasn’t there before.”
The BeltLine, as Woolard puts it, “is
the one forum where it all comes together:
transportation, schools, affordable housing,
safety and how people feel about how things
are going.” In a city once divided by high-
ways and urban renewal projects designed
to separate white from black, wealthy from
low income, development from homeless, a
project explicitly designed to connect us is
about as transformative as it gets.
Rebecca Serna is the executive director of the
Atlanta Bicycle Coalition, a bicycle advocacy non-
profit in Atlanta,Ga.The Atlanta Bicycle Coalition
supports the work of the Atlanta BeltLine, Inc.
and BeltLine Partnership through public involve-
ment, awareness and bike tours of the BeltLine.
solved as the project gained official status,
but many feel the BeltLine’s grassroots
relit the spirit of citizen involvement at
the neighborhood level.
Angel Poventud, a community activ-
ist perhaps best known regionally for his
enthusiasm, and occasional critique, of
the BeltLine, notes, “Before the BeltLine,
neighborhoods were concerned only about
what was happening in their neighbor-
hood. The BeltLine allowed communities
to think on a grander scale about vision
for not only their community but all of
Atlanta’s communities. They’re beyond
excited; they’re engaged. They’re not only
going to meetings, but creating meetings.”
He cited a recent presentation given by
four Southwest neighborhoods to BeltLine
officials. In a reversal of the planning
process norm, the residents laid out their
vision for the project to officials, rather
than reacting to a plan being presented to
them. It was a neat shift that captured the
renewed sense of citizen involvement in
what’s happening in the city.
Davidson first heard about the project
on a visit from New York, when he was
serving in Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s
administration and with the David
Rockefeller Fellows Program for the
Partnership for New York City. “The
BeltLine seemed like the issue I wanted to
be part of. It was clear to me that this did
have the potential to completely reshape
and redefine [Atlanta]. I had no doubt it
was going to change the city forever.”
He cites the most recent Atlanta Streets
Alive in the historic West End as an indi-
cation of the cultural shift that may be just
as important as the infrastructure improve-
ments. In a city fragmented into quadrants
by social convention and social networks,
the event not only showcased a little-
known neighborhood gem to those who’d
never been south of Interstate 20, but also
perhaps using a car-share program like
Zipcar—have extra income for housing.
And one of the project’s more ambitious
goals is to build more than 5,600 new
units of affordable workforce housing.
But in low-income communities,
notes Gravel, “The answer isn’t not giving
them trails. It’s about using existing tools
to solve the economic equation.”
On the BeltLine, the Westside and
Eastside trails are fundamentally dif-
ferent. The city won a federal TIGER
(
Transportation Investment Generating
Economic Recovery) grant last year
to move construction forward on the
Westside Trail, but little exists in the way
of private development there. The Eastside
is built on a generation of investment
and has led to an estimated $775 million
in private investment, according to the
city, while the Westside has survived 40
years of disinvestment. The development
impact on the Westside will not be as
immediate or at the same magnitude.
Some aren’t too concerned about
that—quite the opposite. “Our part of
the BeltLine is very rustic, and I hope it
stays that way,” says West End resident
and local historian Robert Thompson.
“
It’s below street level, and in the sum-
mertime when the trees and vegetation fill
in, you don’t even know you’re in the city.
It’s a tremendous asset, not just in terms
of transportation but in terms of being a
serenity amenity for the neighborhood.”
The number one reason Thompson
chose his current residence in the West
End? Proximity to the BeltLine.
Big Picture
Community engagement has also under-
gone a shift since the early, heady days of
the BeltLine. Friends of the BeltLine, a
group started by Ryan Gravel and other
advocates in the early 2000s, was dis-
Did you know?
As RTC’s southern organizer in the late
1980
s and early 1990s, 2014 Doppelt
Family Rail-Trail Champion Marianne
Wesley Fowler was responsible for
the early identification of the Atlanta
BeltLine as a potential rail-with trail, as
outlined in her 1991 “Abandoned Rail
Corridor Assessment Report” of the
Atlanta Metropolitan Area.
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