Developers of Atlantic Station suddenly find themselves facing several groups battling to change -- and even stop -- the mega-development that also is to be home to the new Georgia Aquarium.
An upstart group has hired lawyers to persuade the city to make some streets dead ends before they enter into the 138-acre Atlantic Station. That would cripple the project's vision of improving connectivity in Midtown. But some residents say it's the only way to protect their neighborhood from flow-through traffic.
Federal and state health officials are reviewing the site for public health concerns. Although the state has said the site of a former steel mill is safe, a lawyer who wants to terminate construction requested the reviews. The federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry found enough reason to suspect that hazardous substances may have been released from the former industrial facilities.
Even a friendly group of neighbors has started making demands. A proposed master plan for the Home Park community, which encompasses Atlantic Station, calls on the project to provide park space. Eleven acres of open space, four more than required by the city, already are part of the project and developers say the public has a standing invitation to come and enjoy.
All this commotion baffles the developers.
"We had perceived ourselves to be user friendly," said Hilburn Hillestad, Atlantic Station's senior vice president for environmental affairs. "Not withstanding that, we are going to increase our interaction with the neighborhood."
Hillestad, sitting in a 16th-floor conference room with a panoramic view of Atlantic Station, whipped out three posters to make his point that the project is a vast improvement over what was there before.
First was an attractive rendering of the site that showed streets winding past buildings, a pond and parks and on to a little-mentioned new bridge over railroad tracks that will provide Atlantic Station direct access to Northside Drive.
Then came a detailed rendering that Hillestad used to explain some intentionally placed barriers on the new 16th Street, landscaped medians that are designed to protect Home Park from cut-through traffic.
The last poster Hillestad produced was an enlarged snapshot of the working steel mill -- an industrial complex with spewing smokestacks and grungy buildings.
"The development is an enormous improvement over what the site used to be," Hillestad said. "And the message we got from the neighborhood at the outset of the project was, 'We'd like to not live by a steel mill.'"
But the steel mill was a quiet neighbor.
Toxic and smelly as it was, it didn't generate traffic anywhere near the expected scale of Atlantic Station. The finished project is to have more than 3,500 homes, two retail complexes at big as Lenox Square, two hotels and at least 6 million square feet of office space.
The question of how to live with the new gorilla in the living room is dividing some residents of Home Park, a community once home to Georgia Tech professors that now serves lots of students who rent houses and has a vibrant sector of neighborhood-oriented shops and restaurants.
The Home Park Community Improvement Association is the major group of home and business owners in the area. It takes the position that Atlantic Station will happen and that the best approach is to negotiate with developers to reach the best possible solutions to the potential downside of growth.
"The reality is the only way we can influence the development is to work with the developers," says Timothy State, the group's president. "They do not have to work with us. So the community has to be open to engage in positive conversation."
The association has worked with the developers to address many concerns. Hillestad says the configuration of medians on 16th Street was designed to address neighborhood concerns about cut-through traffic. They will ensure that vehicles exiting the southbound Downtown Connector onto 16th Street won't be able to make a legal left turn into a side street until they reach State Street, which is a mutually agreed upon major access to Atlantic Station.
Other plans include the creation of a linear park that will provide Home Park with nearby green space, Hillestad said. The lighting will be soft and inviting, yet still bright enough to create a sense of security, he says.
Community friction
However, State says the developers have not been as responsive as some residents would prefer. And at times developers behaved like bullies.
"People have been living in a dust bowl for over a year," he says. "And it's unacceptable that some residents wake up in the morning to be greeted by construction workers saying they had to move the car because they were about to tear up the street."
Hillestad, incidentally, said developers did the best they could to mitigate disruption caused by work on streets and pipes beneath them.
The final straw that prompted some residents to hire lawyers to engage the city is a disagreement over whether streets leading into the project should be made into dead ends, or cul-de-sacs. They are vastly unpopular among advocates of new urbanism because of the disconnect they create in road systems.
And it is precisely the disconnect that some residents want.
"Cul-de-sacs are the only option to keep Atlantic Station from killing our residential streets," says Cole Cowden, a spokesman for a newly formed group called the North Home Park Residents Coalition Inc. The coalition was incorporated June 3 and announced the hiring of lawyers three weeks later.
Cowden can recite chapter and verse of the zoning restrictions imposed on Atlantic Station, particularly in regard to traffic calming measures. He frequently cites a zoning condition, which he says can be enforced by a federal judge because of the way the deal was assembled, that allows for cul-de-sacs.
"Look at condition four," he says of the zoning amendment. "It says the developer will work with Home Park and the city to limit cut-through traffic . . . by means of cul-de-sacs, speed humps, gates, control arms and other traffic calming devices.
"We're not going to war with anyone," Cowden says. "We do expect the city to work with our attorney to protect the special zoning conditions that were put in place and create a solution that works well for everyone."
Hillestad says cul-de-sacs would ruin the connectivity that Atlantic Station is creating. The new 17th Street bridge, now being built, will jump the gulch created when the Connector was started in the late 1950s. And cul-de-sacs would restrict access to the shuttle that will link Atlantic Station with MARTA's Arts Center Station, he says.
Likewise, city planning officials frown on cul-de-sacs.
Cowden is concerned that the aquarium will create enough traffic to push the neighborhood over the traffic edge. Officials of the aquarium, designed as a $200 million gift from retired Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus, are working on a traffic study.
Byproducts concern
The environmental review stems from a request filed by Smyrna lawyer Marie Harkins, who says she wants to stop construction until she is satisfied all the dangerous byproducts of steel construction are removed. She represents a client who claims he fell ill after working to remove dangerous substances from the site of the old steel mill.
Harkins requested a public health review of the site. In May, the federal Department of Health and Human Services said it would conduct the review and that the state Department of Human Resources was doing a consultation for lead in the Northside Drive area near Atlantic Station.
The state report is due this month, and the federal review is to be prepared by December, the agency for toxic substances says. If any public health recommendations are in order, they will be included in the reports.
From his catbird seat in an office tower across the Connector from Atlantic Station, Hillestad remains visibly excited about the development. He realizes he is helping to build a minicity in a city, one that he thinks can set the standard for urban development.
But he's not taking anything for granted. He met with city officials days after learning that lawyers were hired to demand cul-de-sacs be created. He attempted to meet with the lawyers, but they were on vacation. He arranged a meeting with State to improve communication. He suggested the company's public relations company start issuing routine updates to the media.
"What we have here could be a model for the city," he says in all sincerity.
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