For 33 years, the Council for Quality Growth has worked at the intersection of public policy and private investment in the metro Atlanta region.
This important role – creating and maintaining a regulatory environment that allows economic development to flourish – has given us the opportunity to to build public-private collaboration throughout metro Atlanta and the state.
What will be true soon as the Atlanta City Council considers a vote on “The Gulch”, and what has remained true for the entirety of our 33 years of work in the region: Metro Atlanta has nurtured and sustained quality growth and economic development by investing in infrastructure and, in turn, attracting capital investment. In particular, the City of Atlanta has a proven track record of making the necessary, strategic investments in roads, bridges, environmental remediation, and other infrastructure projects to attract and retain the inflow of private dollars, all while minimizing the amount of cash pledged by the City.
The creation of Tax Allocation Districts (“TADs”) in the City have emerged as indispensable drivers of Atlanta’s ability to attract major economic development projects while curtailing the public sector’s financial exposure. Perhaps best-known among these TADs is Atlantic Station, whereby public investment in environmental clean-up and a new foundation on the site of the shuttered Atlantic Steel Mill factory led to a 7,500-percent increase in assessed tax value – from $7 million to $538 million.
So to does public support of The Gulch afford the City another opportunity to transform an (perhaps the City’s most) under-utilized, under-producing site into both a standalone economic driver and tax revenue producer, and a catalyst for further revitalization efforts in historic downtown Atlanta.
Land developers, as do all entrepreneurs, take enormous risk when deciding where to dedicate their capital. Local governments and their citizens rely on this private risk-taking to enhance their quality of life. To attract and retain the private capital from these entrepreneurs, local governments must continue to cultivate public investments in infrastructure to create or return sites to a developable condition.
From Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport to the Port of Savannah, from Atlantic Station to the Beltline, we see and reap the benefits of the public and private sector working together to make Georgia and the metro Atlanta region an economic driver not just of the Southeast, but of the entire Country. The Council for Quality Growth encourages the City of Atlanta to green-light entrepreneurship, green-light public-private cooperation, and green-light The Gulch.
For further information on The Gulch from Council for Quality Growth Premier Member JLL, please READ HERE.
To learn more about this historic project, please visit “Greenlight the Gulch” HERE.
To learn how you can get involved with the Council for Quality Growth, please contact Rebekah Babovich, Director of Membership and Programs, at rb@councilforqualitygrowth.org or Taylor Morison, Interim Director of Policy & Government Affairs, at tm@councilforqualitygrowth.org.