BeltLine founder’s class to focus on new vision for Buford Highway

By Dyana Bagby

Love is not a word one may associate with city planning, but for Ryan Gravel, the word and the emotion are crucial to creating places people want to live.

“I believe the challenges we are facing as a city, as a region, as a country ... that some answers are specific, but more broadly there is a cultural movement that has to take place where we love each other more,” the urban planner said from his office on the eighth floor of Ponce City Market.

“I know that sounds Pollyanna,” he added with a grin.

For Gravel, the visionary behind the Atlanta BeltLine, creating cities with such basics as public transit and parks that enable people from varying backgrounds to interact with each other, to get to know each other and, more fundamentally, see each other, will help create a social and cultural environment that will allow people to solve the bigger problems facing our world.

It’s an approach he outlined in his recent acclaimed book “Where We Want to Live,” and one he is putting into practice with Atlanta’s new “City Design Project,” an attempt to plan for explosive Intown growth in the coming decades.

And there’s nothing Pollyanna about that. “It’s not that we don’t know become more comfortable generating ideas, he said. They will research information needed to back up their ideas and to pitch them and also learn about the role of policy, politics and the press in finding ways to implement the ideas, he said.

“Some ideas will be realistic, civic proposals,” Gravel predicted. “But some might just be provocative, to get people thinking. It doesn’t really matter. This [Generator workshop] on Buford Highway is about finding a way of recognizing the cultural diversity and the need to preserve the cultural diversity.”

As Gravel explained, when people get in their cars in the morning to commute to work and are forced sit in traffic for hours on I-285, they do not even look at the other thousands of motorists surrounding them. Most likely, they have left a home where they live with people who look and think like them and drive to their job where they are most likely also surrounded by people who look and think like them, he said.

Finding ways to get people outside those bubbles to learn about their neighbors encourages empathy and creates spaces for national healing at a time communities are hurting due to a polarized political climate, he said.

“The only way we heal from this is that we get to know each other and make better decisions to support each other,” he said. “When you see people, that translates into the voting booth ... and you learn empathy for people different than you.”

Gravel, who grew up in Chamblee, and Liou and others recently wrapped up a Buford Highway Livable Centers Initiative (LCI) put together by the Atlanta Regional Commission for Chamblee and Doraville. Ideas from the LCI include everything from wider sidewalks and bus lanes to a night market, mixed-income residential units, and public art.

Liou said Gravel’s focus on Buford Highway could become “a model for suburban immigrant communities nationwide and beyond.” the answers,” he said. “It’s we’re not doing them.”

A major issue facing Buford Highway is affordable housing as people, many of whom are immigrants, are being displaced from inexpensive apartment complexes to make way for luxury housing. Affordable housing along the Atlanta BeltLine is currently a hot and controversial topic. Gravel resigned last year from the Atlanta BeltLine Partnership over concerns there is not enough emphasis on equity and affordability.

And how to “do them,” to find ways to implement the answers, means coming up with ideas.

Gravel recently created a new nonprofit called Generator, an “idea studio” that is “committed to the production of ideas about cities that nobody is asking for, but that just might change the world,” he said. Funding for Generator will come from a restaurant, named “Aftercar,” that he said will have an urban dystopian theme, recreating the vibe of movies such as a “Mad Max” or “Blade Runner.”

The restaurant, slated to open next summer on the BeltLine, will provide the revenue stream for the nonprofit Generator while also providing a specific place people can go to “break bread” and drink a few beers while discussing the future of their cities and what they want to see.

His first Generator workshop is a School of Design class at Georgia Tech that began Aug. 22 and is focusing on Buford Highway, the corridor that runs through Brookhaven, Chamblee and Doraville. Home to more than 1,000 immigrant-owned businesses, Buford Highway is a regional attraction in large part because of its ethnic and cultural diversity that many know because of its numerous restaurants.

Korean, Mexican, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian, Bangladeshi, Central American, Somali and Ethiopian goods and services are part of the fabric of Buford Highway’s “International Corridor.” But as metro Atlanta grows by an expected 2.5 million people in the next 20 years, the property values along the road will continue to increase. Gentrification and redevelopment threaten the corridor.

Gravel’s Generator is partnering with another nonprofit, We Love BuHi, founded by Brookhaven resident Marian Liou. The ideas they hope to be generated by Georgia Tech students will be ways to acknowledge the growth of the region while also finding ways to celebrate and preserve the diversity of the people who live and work on Buford Highway.

“I think lot of immigrant communities are more inventive because they have lived in different kinds of conditions, different places in the world and know different models of how people live,” Gravel said.

The main mission of the Generator class is to allow students to

“If our only aspiration for the BeltLine was new housing and jobs and green space, then we succeeded,” he said. But the vision that was created for the BeltLine included the people already living there and ensuring their success as well -- and “the jury is out if we’ve been successful or not” on that, he acknowledged.

“It’s not too late,” he said. “If we want to live up to the promise, we have to do things that are difficult. But if that [affordability] wasn’t even there, we wouldn’t be talking about it. The people are holding us accountable.”

It was a grassroots movement that made the BeltLine as successful as it is today and empowered political leaders to support it. It will take a similar grassroots movement of people speaking out on behalf of Buford Highway to ensure city and regional leaders make sure equity is part of an overall vision for the corridor, Gravel said.

“This is especially important in vulnerable communities,” he said. “At a regional level, people love Buford Highway. If people speak out and become more vocal, then elected officials will support that, or be replaced.”

Morris out as BeltLine CEO

After four years as President and CEO of the Atlanta BeltLine, Paul Morris will be stepping down from the position, effective Sept. 11, according to a statement from Mayor Kasim Reed’s office. While no reason was given for his departure, Morris had become embattled over the issue of affordable housing along the popular BeltLine. The ABI Board of Directors voted to elect Brian McGowan as the new President and CEO of the Atlanta BeltLine. McGowan, a principal with the global law firm Dentons, formerly served as the CEO of Invest Atlanta.

It has trees growing out of the roof and personifies dilapidation, but the historic Atlanta Constitution newspaper building near Underground Atlanta is about to get a new lease on life. Developer Pope & Land, in collaboration with Place Properties, is proposing a nearly $40-million overhaul of the historic newspaper building in Downtown. Plans call for the building to house 67,000 square feet of loft office space, 2,500 square feet of ground floor retail, and a rooftop restaurant. An adjoining residential building will be constructed, with 112 residential units and 142 parking spaces. The Atlanta Constitution only used the building for six years – from 1947 to 1953 – before merging with its former rival, The Atlanta Journal. The Georgia Power Company moved into the building, but it’s mostly languished for decades. The art moderne-style building was designed by Roberts & Company –the same architectural firm behind Grady Hospital and the Atlanta Civic Center.