Key points:
• Atlanta City Council is investigating a 404 Day concert, an annual event held in Piedmont Park.
• Plans for an unhoused development on the Westside Beltline have been paused.
• Council accepts recommendations for the Neighborhood Reinvestment Initiative.
An increase in violence in Atlanta’s Piedmont Park has led elected officials, neighbors, and stakeholders to form an advisory group to review public events held in the city’s oldest public park.
An emergency study of the annual 404 Day celebrations comes just weeks after a shooting in Piedmont Park that wounded a 15-year-old girl and killed 16-year-old Tianah Robinson on Saturday, April 4, as a 404 Day was concluding.
Piedmont Park is home to large-scale events that draw thousands of people to Midtown including Atlanta Dogwood Festival, Atlanta Jazz Festival, Shaky Knees Music Festival, and Atlanta Pride.
The Atlanta City Council on Monday, May 4, unanimously passed the resolution to create a 19-member City of Atlanta Special Event Technical Advisory Group (SETAG) to review and recommend improvements to the special event permitting process for Piedmont Park, known to hold the largest number of outdoor permitted events in Atlanta.
The multi-stakeholder committee is charged with accessing the circumstances and consequences of the 404 Day event, examining public safety, traffic, permitting and economic and community impact.
Members of SETAG will include a representative from surrounding neighborhoods – Virginia Highland, Midtown, Ansley Park, Morningside/Lenox Park, and Piedmont Heights Park – as well as the Atlanta Botanical Gardens, Piedmont Park Conservancy, the Atlanta Beltline and others.
In other council news:
A proposal to create a hub for the unhoused community near the Westside Beltline Trail has been put on hold. Atlanta Mission, the city’s largest provider of services to the homeless, had planned to transform an old warehouse into a 900-unit residential facility including wrap-around services to support residents. The project was estimated to cost $200 million.
Council member Byron Amos said in a committee meeting that moving forward with the plan requires a conscious and moral effort.
The Atlanta Mission said they have not filed applications with the city to move forward, and instead plan to engage with stakeholders “spending time listening, gathering input, and exploring how the campus design can best reflect community priorities.”
The council also voted 13 to 1 to accept recommendations for the Neighborhood Reinvestment Initiative, a plan unveiled last fall by Mayor Andre Dickens to reinvest $10 billion in underserved communities in south and west Atlanta.
The initiative is designed to jumpstart development in specific areas by using existing tax allocation districts (TADs) to raise money for major investment projects, including affordable housing and public safety. The areas include the Beltline, Perry Bolton, Hollowell/MLK, Eastside, Westside, Stadium, Campbellton and Metropolitan.
The lone dissenter was Council member Kelsea Bond, who said she disagrees with “the creation of an independent nonprofit anchored by the Atlanta Committee for Progress,” claiming it is chaired by “multi-millionaires and billionaires.”
“I don’t understand why we are entrusting billionaires with a project that is meant to close Atlanta’s wealth gap,” Bond said.
Bond introduced a resolution to request an audit and analysis of the data collected through the City of Atlanta’s Housing Help Center to better inform city housing policy and eviction-prevention initiatives.
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