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Atlantic Steel

Atlantic Steel: Minutes from Public Meeting

ATANTIC STEEL REDEVELOPMENT
"XL" PROJECT PUBLIC HEARING

June 30, 1999

Local 2401
365 14th Street
Atlanta, Georgia

Elizabeth Gallo, CCR-B-1997

BROWN REPORTING, INC.
1740 PEACHTREE STREET, N.W.
ATLANTA, GEORGIA 30309
(404) 876-8979

On behalf of CRB Realty: CHARLES BROWN
BRIAN LEARY

On behalf of EPA Region 4 Air Division:

JIM KUTZMAN

On behalf of the EPA:

MICHELLE GLENN - Atlanta
TIM TORMA - Washington

CHARLES BROWN: This is Charles Brown. I'm with CRB Realty. We have been acting as the consultants for the Jacoby Development in their predevelopment planning and master plan phase of the redevelopment of Atlantic Steel. They have an option to purchase the Atlantic Steel property and redevelop it as the Brownfield site relative to 27 different conditions relative to the city of Atlanta; but two of those are very important, and one of those is the connection across 75-85. The other is the remediation of the property so that it is safe for the use in which the city has intended. There are other conditions relative to landscaping and bypass, and another is connection to transportation. Some of you may remember two years ago in the summer we started talking about this process particularly relative to zoning and bringing residential and commercial development on to the Atlantic Steel site. As a part of the development process, that zoning was approved. Now we are in the process with EPA relative to what is called Project XL. So I would like to welcome you to the meeting and thank you for coming. We look forward to trying to give you the information about the project that you need, hear your comments, and the meeting will be held now or moderated by Mr. Jim Kutzman who is with the US Environmental Protection Agency. Let me turn it over to you.

JIM KUTZMAN: Thank you for coming out tonight. I'm Jim Kutzman with the EPA. I have been helping facilitate these efforts. I have a couple of people who are going to give background. Let me introduce them. Michelle Glenn will introduce the purpose of the meeting. Tim Torma, who is the project manager for EPA Washington for the project, will give an overview of the final project agreement which is why we are here tonight. Brian Leary, he will give the site plan, redesign, which has undergone several changes. Michelle Glenn, she will explain the next steps in this process. Then at that point, there are several statements that will be read for the record. Then we will have a question-and-answer session. Without further adieu, Michelle.

MICHELLE GLENN: As he mentioned, I'm Michelle Glenn. I'm the regional XL coordinator for the Atlantic Steel project. The public comment period on the draft Final Project Agrement opened on June 17th and was announced in the Federal Register on June 17th. I don't know many people who have read that or even have access to the web site, so we have come here tonight to explain to you what is in that draft agreement and ask for your comments and questions so that we could be sure to address those before the document is signed. The comment period will end on July 19th. You are welcomed to send written comments or e-mail or call over the phone. We will try to do the best we can. We will put those together and respond to those and incorporate them into the document to address those concerns. XL stands for Excellence and Leadership. The program is one of the EPA's reinvention programs and explores the idea that a project sponsor will provide superior environmental performance. We will consider giving specific regulatory flexibility. Tonight's meeting is one of a number of meetings we have had to solicit public input on the process. In the past we presented the XL process, how it works, why we are doing XL at this particular project, and we also have given you an introduction to the TCM process. What we would like to do tonight, since those meetings have been attended by many of you, is give you a brief overview of what is in the Final Project Agreement and to give you an opportunity to make questions or comments. Tim Torma, my counterpart in Washington, is going to give you the overview on how the agreement is structured and what is in it.

TIM TORMA: Thank you, Michelle. Now, this is about the fifth large public meeting we have had for Atlantic Steel. I think there are probably a lot of new faces I don't recognize. Like Michelle mentioned, we made a conscious decision tonight not to go over what is XL, why is Atlantic Steel participating in it. I'm going to apologize in advance because some of my presentation may look new to you. If you have not been to the past four or so meetings, we have been talking about what is XL, why is Atlantic Steel participating in it, et cetera. Rest assured, if there is something you don't understand in the presentation, I will be available during the question-and-answer session to try to explain it.

My name is Tim Torma. I work for the EPA in Washington D.C. The office of reinvention is the home of Project XL. My job tonight basically is to explain to you what the Final Project Agreement is and what it is not and to give you an overview, a brief overview of the document. The Atlanta region has gotten a lot of negative attention in the national press in the last year or so for reasons related to its growth and the economic, environmental and community problems that that causes. Of late, though, I would say in the last seven months, the tone of the commentary has changed, at least from what I have noticed, because the business leaders, community leaders, and elected officials have gotten together to try to find solutions to the growth problems that Atlanta is facing. The EPA believes that the Atlantic Steel Final Project Agreement represents a significant step towards finding better ways to address the growth that is going to come to the Atlanta region.

So what is the Atlantic Steel Final Project Agreement, or FPA? Well, for one thing, it is a draft, as Michelle mentioned, and that means that it is available for comment and we encourage everyone to either pick it up here tonight, get it off the web site, and to let us know what you think. It outlines the overall XL project, explains what EPA and Jacoby is committing to and describes how it meets the EPA criteria. There are also several things that the Final Project Agreement is not, and they are worth noting. The Atlantic Steel redevelopment is a very large and complex project. The XL Final Project Agreement addresses the Project XL aspects of the redevelopment. There are other regulatory requirements that it is not getting flexibility from. Those include the State Implementation Plan and the National Environmental Policy Act approval processes. Both the NEPA and the SIP processes have built in opportunity for public comment, and we have outlined future opportunities for public comment that are associated with the NEPA analysis and the SIP approval process and are contained in one of our handouts on the back table. Let me tell you a couple of things the FPA is not. It is not a legally binding document. The commitments contained in the agreement would be contained in some other legal mechanism, in this case, something like the city of Atlanta zoning conditions; or the SIP, State Implementation Plan; TCM, Transportation Control Measure.

The Final Project Agreement is not permission to violate any existing rules or regulations and it is not a shortcut to avoid other regulatory processes. I hope most of you are aware of this, but because of the complexity of the project, EPA and Jacoby developed two phases to this agreement. There was a phase one agreement which was presented at a public meeting like this one in March of this year. We got a lot of comments from the phase one agreement and incorporated some changes into the agreement and it was signed as final in April. The phase one agreement contained a lot of information and details about the project, but there was other information and details that were not available at that time. The Final Project Agreement replaces the phase one agreement and fills in that additional information that was not available when the phase one agreement was made final. This is the final agreement. There is not a plan for a third or fourth or anything like that. The Final Project Agreement is intended indeed to be final.

We want to try to highlight some of the information in the final agreement that is new and was not contained in the phase one agreement. One thing new, which is of particular interest to a lot of folks, is the description of the redesigned site plan and an appendix or graphic. There is also an updated and final version of the environmental modeling study. It contains several new or revised items from the phase one agreement voluntary and enforcement commitments. So what are some of the new commitments? It contained more specific commitments which really built on some of the ideas mentioned in the phase one agreement. Some of the new commitments are highlighted above, having to do with what EPA would need to see in the TCM before we would approve it, including things like capacity on the bride to allow a future upgrade to light rail, pedestrian walkway, bike lanes within the redevelopment.

WOMAN SPEAKER: What does light rail mean?

TIM TORMA: A trolley. Based on the last public meeting, I know a lot of people in particular are interested in site design and what will this site look like. Brian Leary is next on the agenda. He is going to talk to you and show you a redesigned site plan and describe the changes made. I want to make some points about how the site plan is handled in the Final Project Agreement. The EPA has a great interest in the environmental performance of the site. Site design affects the way people choose to travel. In order to be able to approve this development we need a Transportation Control Measure, a measure which reduces the amount of emissions in the long term. The EPA needed some way to ensure that it would, in fact, be transit oriented and pedestrian oriented when it was built. On the other hand, with the complexity of the development and the size, there needed to be some flexibility over time. The site plan will change, and Jacoby and the builders would need an opportunity to make occasional changes if necessary to the site design. So the EPA wanted to ensure it would have environmental performance and Jacoby wanted flexibility to make occasional changes.

The Final Project Agreement, the Atlanta zoning conditions, and the Transportation Control Measures' application don't require that a specific site plan be built. Rather they all three place conditions on how the site should be developed. The FPA, Final Project Agreement, and TCM, Transportation Control Measure, include site design targets for certain criteria. The criteria include overall density or the number of people on the site; transit-oriented density, or the average number of people near transit stops; activity diversity or different uses within a given block; and external street connectivity, which is another fancy way of saying how many ways in and out of the site. Well, I kind of highlighted some of the particularly important or new areas of the Final Project Agreement. Again, I feel like there are new faces here who are not familiar with XL or some of the acronyms used in this presentation now.

If you have questions, feel free to ask them. We encourage you to review the agreement and send us your comments. Remember the comment period closes July 19th. We have in the back of the room a more extensive contact list on the back table. I think that is it for me. Brian Leary is going to speak next. He represents Jacoby Development and will talk about the redesigned site plan.

BRIAN LEARY: When we started this EPA process, I know you can't see this from the back, so I'll discuss it with you afterwards. Basically let me go over with the way we began the site. There are a lot of people who have not been here before. This is the 138-acre Atlantic Steel site. They were operating up until December 31st of last year. They organized a site basically by two ways. The historical operations of the mill, which requires us to do certain remediation measures; and the access, specifically the connector.

The eastern end of the site, where my hand is here, is going to be the highest density of mixes of uses: Office retail, street level retail, sidewalk cafes, residential above retail and offices. That is where the greatest number of operations took place of the mill up until last year. Because of that, it has the most of what are called PIA, potentially impacted areas, which will be removed. Atlantic Steel industries is responsible for the remediation of the site. Here is where our highest density is. If you move to the west towards Northside Drive, the middle of the site here in yellow bears a residential village surrounded by a man-made lake, which is an aesthetic asset but serves as a storm water treatment facility underneath. It collects all the storm water and settles out the sediment and takes off the top floating debris and what have you. That way we could use it for landscaping, watering native plants. We are going to try to keep to a minimum the amount of storm water that comes off of that. Post Properties is our partner to do the residential village. If anyone has been up to Riverside Drive, if you have not been there to see it, that is the type of product they are going to bring. They are not going to bring a garden-style apartment. It will be an urban model with four, three stories on top of each other, balconies, parking hidden behind that they are bringing right to the street with sidewalk activity, cafes in the corners. That is here in the middle. In this plan, which was our first before the EPA process, we envisioned a high-tech park. Atlanta leads the southeast. Georgia leads as almost No. 3 in the nation in job creation, so it is an emerging market. When we first did the site design we came out to discuss the rezoning in the neighborhood and the city. I think there are certain conditions in the zoning ordinance that we have to abide by. Specifically they have to do a lot with streets, sidewalks. It also talks about density. One thing in the agreement was according to the city and Home Park's community vision center, any streets that they thought that had too much cut-through traffic could be closed. That was at the discretion of the city. That was in our zoning conditions as well. I was lucky enough to be a part of Home Park's community vision center. That was basically a three or four month process that culminated before Thanksgiving where they brought in people from all over the US, experts, to Atlanta to sit down with people over three days and come up with a community envision plan, which is the blueprint which was produced. I think a saw a copy last week. At first view, Home Park is one thing and Atlantic Steel is to the north. Through this community process, we said Home Park can become a stronger neighbor and Atlantic Steel would be a stronger redevelopment if they come together and did something consistent. What they kind of surmised and wanted out of that was to connect the streets. They were to connect to our park. We have a park in the middle. In this plan, since there are over 700 homes in Home Park, they envisioned maybe an urban neighborhood center at 14th and State. They wanted to know how we could connect these two, how we could bring the streets in. Part of the EPA project was a design. They brought in Andreas Duany. If you have seen The Truman Show, the movie, that is Seaside, Florida. That is one of his developments. He is the architect for that. It is basically small block size communities with mixes of uses so you could walk and live close to your neighbor. Everything is in a quarter of a mile from where you live or what we call it, live, work, or play. We had people from Home Park. This was after the Home Park blueprint had their cgarette. We had a good number of ideas to take into that. From that process got a revised site plan from Andreas Duany. Then EPA took that site plan and modeled it. You might have heard about the air quality model. The document is back there on the table. Basically they put this plan through a computer and said if people want this, this is how big the blocks are, gave us certain measurements. They compared that to the Duany redesign, and it identified certain areas that were stronger. This is not my area of expertise, but it showed pedestrian connectivity, external street connectivity, activity diversity, basically mixes of uses, walkable distances. We went back and looked at our site plan and said how could we improve on these aspects that were identified through the charette and through the Home Park process. From that we came up with this plan. Again, I apologize for the size. I'll be happy to talk it through with you. What we did is opened up this street for Home Park that was blocked off with a bigger block size. The revised plan broke down the block sizes here to create more of a village. Everything is now within a quarter of a mile. We have great mix of uses here. Yellow and red is residential above retail. Orange and red is office above retail. The village here has not changed too much. Post Properties, the stuff they did at Riverside, they will do mixes of uses. That is a good model in terms of air quality analysis that scored really well. The biggest change is what I talked about, this high-tech park on the west. What we initially designed here is somewhat of a campus style. What we came to realize is we are doing this great urban project, why not do a village centered around technology. That is what we redesigned the western end for. The high-tech village, where we envisioned maybe almost human scale chess figures to play in the middle, retail shops around the outside, parking towards the railroad and the back, bringing the buildings to the front. That is basically, within the design, how we changed some things. What we wanted to do is connect it to Home Park so we could have a greater consistency and community. To do that, we envisioned a linear park down State Street on property that is part of this parcel to connect in with the new urban neighbor of 14th Street and State Street. Andreas Duany drew that in where we did not have the property rights. We are not in control of that. The Georgia Tech foundation was. We tried to put it here down the middle. To make it short, the residential area here from Home Park, you see, is broken up into smaller block sizes. We envisioned those as two-, three-story residential units for ownership, maybe three to four stories so that you have progression from Home Park into this development so that it is not Home Park looking at the back of a parking deck. What we plan on doing is to slide in residential units on the slab into the back of the parking deck so we have a residential front to Home Park. That way we maintain a consistency between the two areas. Let's move on to the next part, which is Michelle Glenn talking about Next Steps. I'll be happy to discuss these plans with you afterwards. I'm sure there are a lot of details. Michelle will talk about the comment period, how to access the document, and other processes.

MICHELLE GLENN: There are a couple of people that were not on the agenda that we gave out that I think will be helpful to you. I'll introduce them to you in a second. They will give you an overview. I just want to be clear that when the Final Project Agreement is signed, implementation can't occur until these other processes have happened. This is not an instantaneous activity. There will be other environmental requirements that have to be completed. Dan Cohen is here, and I have asked him to speak or he offered to speak about the Transportation Control Measure and the State Implementation Plan and where we are in the process and what you should expect, how that works.

DAN COHEN: I'm Dan Cohen, the principal planner for transportation and environment of the City of Atlanta Planning Department. I have been involved with the Atlantic Steel project two years, it seems like. The Transportation Control Measure comes down to a transportation project that allows for some sort of air quality benefit. The TCM that is drafted which is here has been submitted to the ARC as a part of the transportation program which was adopted a week ago, as a matter of fact. The funding for the bridge and the funding for the on-ramp and off-ramp to the sides are already in place there and approved by the Regional Commission Board. The TCM is rather unique all across the country, and it is a model for everything that is going to happen. There are really two elements. That bridge is a link from the Atlantic Steel site property to the MARTA station, then there is the site design itself which we alluded to before. One of the things that is going to happen with respect to the bridge, the bridge is going to have the capacity for light rail. The bridge is going to have the capacity for bicycle lanes and sidewalks as well, but the bridge does not get built right away. At the moment it is difficult to envision exactly how the rail component is going to happen. I'm sure you will realize in getting the funding it does not happen like that. It is going to take a while, so initially there are several rubber-tire vehicles going to the Atlantic Steel site over the bridge to the MARTA Art Station. That is what is going to happen as soon as the bridge opens. The other part is the site design. One of the things I think the EPA believes in here and the city does, too -- and some of you have been to pre-automobile developed cities -- is that people tend to walk and bike in cities where you can, where you could see things and do things. I think a lot of the people in the room are betting on the fact that the design of this project is going to allow people to walk, allow people to bike, and allow people to use transit. I guess in the Atlanta region people don't do that very much. That is what the hope is. The TCM provides for an evaluation mechanism. It is very difficult. I mean, I have to be honest with you. I'm partially responsible for this document here trying to figure out what and anticipate what is going to happen five, seven years from now. In writing a document, when you write conditions, I don't know. I can only make really educated guesses. What the document does do is leave some flexibility for things to happen. For example, if we discover there is an issue with respect to design, there will be discussions between the developer and the city as to what changes might happen. We are going to evaluate the benefits of the transit. It may be we need greater frequency for the shuttle, but again it is hard to know at the moment. The document has an infinite longevity at the moment and is also legally binding. That is why this document is key. What happens to this document as of probably the end of this week is it gets formally submitted to the Georgia Environment Protection Division for review and inclusion as an amendment to the state implementation plan. The long and short is so the state can figure out whether or not it has air quality benefits to it or not. Can you translate what we are doing on the ground to what happens in the air? Once it goes through that process, then it goes through the National Environmental Policy Act and comes out the other side six months later hopefully in some form that looks like this. There will be, correct me if I'm wrong, a comment period on the TCM as well. There will be discussions and a public comment period around that as well. There is sufficient time. Not everything is cast in stone, but, of course, we are moving towards trying to complete this. Lastly, let me say it is hard. I realize that even as a planner and as a citizen living in my own neighborhood, sometimes it is really important to have a document that says this is exactly what we are going to do, this is exactly what you are going to expect. You can't really have that. We can't predict the future. We don't know what things are going to happen in the real estate market. We don't know, for example, if there will be available funding in conjunction with MARTA to build a light rail. It is hard to predict. Certainly things seem to be moving in that general area to have light rail over there. That is really what is important. That is pretty much all I have to say. I also want to say I am the administrative representative from the city. There is a meeting next Wednesday night, also a public meeting, to get more information as well. The developer and EPA have been invited to that meeting as well. It is more of an intimate setting. We will take only twenty minutes to talk about it. Also, I'll leave my number up some place. If you have any specific questions, you could call me. Thank you for your time.

MALE SPEAKER: Have you considered what happens if light rail doesn't work out there and you can't get it for whatever the reason? What is the alternative?

DAN COHEN: It is going to be a bus, a shuttle bus. To be honest, from a straight costs benefit analysis and efficiency, there are a lot of transportation planners that think buses are more appropriate rail. Light rail is sexy and expensive on a dollar-to-dollar basis to do. From a city's perspective, the most important thing is getting you out of your cars and into alternative forms of transportation. It should not matter if it is removed by a light rail car or shuttle bus. The goal is to get you on it.

MICHELLE GLENN: I want to let you know one more process that will be another opportunity for your input. We will take your questions and do our best to answer them, and the ones we can't, we will take home and work on and do what we can to make changes if that is necessary. I do want you to ask questions, but I was hoping that Heinz Mueller from our regional office of EPA can state a few words about what he does and Jim Kutzman is going to moderate for us, and everybody will get a chance to ask questions.

HEINZ MUELLER: I'm Heinz Mueller as has been alluded to. With almost the completion of the XL process, our office is working really with the Federal Highway Administration, who certainly have a part in this thing, federal transit, and closely cooperating with the Georgia Department of Transportation and MARTA. We are really going to do an independent assessment of what has been done to date. I think an awful lot of good work has been done, but we feel like because of the multiple federal and state actions and decisions that need to be made here, that really the wise thing to do is to do an independent assessment. This assessment, which is starting I think this month, will provide a lot of additional opportunities for public input. We will be coming back to you. There will be a public hearing, a formal public hearing probably, later this fall; and also with this assessment we are going to do a pretty broad brush look at all the alternatives. We feel like we have a good proposal here, as Dan and others have said. There is maybe some room for improvement, but we want to take a look at the most positive and, if there are any, negative impacts on the various communities. We want to identify those. We want to look at scenarios under the bus scenario and light rail scenario, which we hope will happen over the long run, and we also want to look at really the development of how it fits into the community. Again, it is going to be a pretty broad based assessment being done under the National Environmental Policy Act. The EPA is taking this on as a voluntary endeavor. We feel it is the wise thing to do. Again, all of you here tonight, we certainly would encourage you to get involved in that process. We will be very open and want to hear from you and to the degree possible, we want to make every attempt to address your issues.

MICHELLE GLENN: I have a request to have three speakers read statements in the record. We have a court reporter who is recording everything, so I would ask the speakers to come up and speak loudly for the group but especially for the court reporter to record everything. Let me ask Kris Holland, who is chair of the traffic committee, to come speak.

KRIS HOLLAND: Thank you. I'm speaking on behalf of the board of the civic association for Ansley Park. There are several representatives from the board here tonight and many, many residents who attended tonight. Thank you. We are looking forward to a successful intown project. In fact, Ansley Park is a successful intown pedestrian-oriented neighborhood, but the fact is that this document does not address the impact the bridge will have on our neighborhood. We are a major stakeholder in this project because the bridge is projected to end at Peachtree Street, the entrance to our neighborhood. We need to protect our neighborhood as well, so we feel like we are looking down the barrel of a loaded cannon right now. We really want to be a part of this process and work with everyone to make it happen. We would like to be consulted on the design and location of the bridge. Once the bridge has been located, we want funding for a transportation study that will encompass the entire area from 10th Street to Lindbergh, from Piedmont all the way to Northside Drive. This area is all affected by this project. Thank you.

KATHERINE BROKAW: My name is Katherine Brokaw. I chair the zoning committee. Many of you here in the room know me or met me. I want to thank all the Ansley Park residents who turned out tonight. As Kris Holland said, we are excited about this Atlantic Steel project. We think the concept is a wonderful one. As Kris indicated, Ansley Park is a neighborhood that is committed to intown living. Ansley Park is filled with residents who reclaimed that neighborhood when Ansley Park was not a fashionable place to live, when many of the houses were not in good condition. There are many long time residents of Ansley Park who love that neighborhood and who have fought many battles on its behalf. This, we hope, will not have to be a battle. We would like to work in the process with the developers with all the various agencies involved to make this a success story for everybody. Ansley Park is an existing success story. It is a livable, walkable, workable neighborhod. It has offices all along one border. Many people in the neighborhood work in those offices. They walk to work. Many of us walk back and forth to religious institutions from Ansley Park. We walk with our children, bike with our children. It is a success story that Atlanta already has in midtown. So what we don't want to see happen is to have the success story of the Atlantic Steel project negatively affect the existence that Ansley Park is for Atlanta. The 17th Street bridge is our greatest concern. 17th Street, as the Ansley Park residents know, cuts through the heart of the Ansley Park neighborhood, and any connection to a major transportation project has the potential to dump a lot of excess traffic right into our very quiet, very residential neighborhood with some very narrow streets including 17th Street itself and others that are broad, winding roads. Therefore, we want to be included in the process of the design and planning and location of the bridge. We wish to be helpful participants in that process, as Kris mentioned. We hope and expect that adequate studies and planning will be done to minimize the impact on Ansley Park and to implement traffic calming measures to protect Ansley Park. We are surrounded by new developments and proposals for new developments. Millions of square feet, not even including the several million square feet in the Atlantic Steel project, are going up or are planned all around the neighborhood, including a new office tower at 14th Street, two new office towers there. At Peachtree there are new high-rise apartment buildings on 14th Street: The Peachtree Point Development which is already under construction; the Equifax headquarters which is near completion; and several other projects on the very borders of the neighborhood. This does not include the Brookwood Development on the side of the former Jewish Community Center and the Lincoln Apartments which add, again, hundreds of thousands of square feet of development. These are exciting times for development in midtown and in the city of Atlanta, but let's not kill the goose that laid the golden egg. Ansley Park is a big part of why midtown is a desirable location, and we would like to keep it that way. Thank you.

ROGERS BARRY: I'm Rogers Barry, a member of the Ansley Park Civil Association and fortunate to represent them, and I'm the vice chair of NPUB, which, for the last year and a half, there has been an incredible series of developments in our neighborhoods. There have been an unending series of development proposals that have been put forward. The problem that we have in in-town Atlanta is that we have a historical deficit of infrastructure. We have in some places a main sewer line that is a hundred years old. It is a very questionable sewer line running through this property, and unfortunately, many years ago, the wisdom of the community was to commit us to a combined sewer overflow system, which was nineteenth century technology. Coupled with the lack of that type of infrastructure planning has also been a lack of transportation planning. I can only applaud the job that Dan Cohen has done in the conditions that he has drafted and are a part of the rezoning action of this problem. This property is moving forward and will be planned and examined in a state of the art fashion; however, there is a problem because everything in this agreement stops east of the expressway and when we build for more transportation in the form of this bridge, a great many of the impacts will be absorbed on the eastside of this development on the expressway. So this is a great opportunity for us to move forward; however, there has not been any talk about where the funds are going to come to fill the breach of the lack of transportation planning that we experienced throughout the community outside this development. In Florida, two decades ago when they had similar problems that Georgia is experiencing now, actually in the mid eighties, they came up with a very tough act. At the core of that was a concept where you build the infrastructure before the development or at least at the same time. I think we need to find out where the dollars are going to come from to do the additional planning and implementation that would be necessary to create the largest urban redevelopment project in the United States with all of the surrounding, actually quite successful neighborhoods. Thank you.

CHARLES BROWN: Does anybody else want to make a statement as opposed to asking questions, a short statement for the record?

JOE GRIMANO: I would like to make a statement.

CHARLES BROWN: Please introduce yourself and who you might be representing

JOE GRIMANO: I am Joe Grimano on the Public Safety Committee for the Home Park Community Association. When we started this project with Mr. Brown and Jacoby a few years ago, I don't remember seeing most of your faces at that time. We worked hard with Jacoby to try to come up with some sort of plan to mitigate the traffic in our neighborhoods because it is very bad right now. That is for two reasons. One is because of the expansion, which recently has doubled in size, and another is because of the traffic involved with the Georgia Institute of Technology. Over 90 percent of whose permanent staff don't live in the city of Atlanta and commute every day. We considered their site to be a major traffic problem in our neighborhood. When we went to the city and we worked with Mr. Brown and with Jacoby to try to develop some sort of plan to allow us to get in and out of our neighborhood. The bridge was an alternative. The reason for the bridge was because traffic studies done showed it would be a complete traffic jam at 14th Street and the interstate right there. So there would be no way for us to get in and out of our houses. The 17th Street bridge was one of the alternatives presented and seemed to be the only practical alternative at that time. When this traffic transportation plan was brought up, our understanding was it would be connected to West Peachtree Street, not Peachtree Street, and to Spring Street, which is closer to the interstate. Those two streets provide the major traffic arteries up and down Atlanta from the eastside of 75. Now, what is the impact of that traffic? The IBM Tower, which sits on the corner of West Peachtree and 14th Street has one million square feet of space. It has access on both streets. One goes south, the other north. There is a tremendous amount of traffic going up and down those streets from downtown Atlanta. The maximum total development of this is planned by the city of Atlanta is twelve times that much because they have twelve million square feet of commercial space. What I ask you is this: If the IBM Tower is one small part, I don't know how many millions of square feet are able to be built in midtown. I think it is a hundred million square feet of commercial space. What we are talking about is adding 12 percent of the total commercial addition to be added there in this one area. That seems to me to be an insignificant amount, 12 percent compared to what is developed here, and allow the city to have something. So all we ask is that we get some sort of transportation alleviation. Now, if you really wish -- and I'll shut up quickly. If you wish to do something about the traffic plans in the city of Atlanta to fix them, then you are talking about tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars. Is the automobile going to be part of our city or not? Well, I will say this. The wheel has been part of our civilization for three to five thousand years and the automobile only part of our civilization for a hundred years. The problems with the city is about the fact that we have our street runoff and our sewers in the same place. They don't go back a hundred years to when the city started. They go back to before the Romans. That is where it really started. I don't want the city of Atlanta to be an uninhabitable place as Rome was at the time of the Caesars. I would like it to be a nicer, cleaner place to live and not cost a ton of money. This development is not going to make the city better or in my opinion very much worse. I think it is a good thing for the city. I live in Home Park and I would like to see it happen. To do it, you need a bridge. That is all.

BILL EISENHOUSER: I am Bill Eisenhouser, the president of STOPP, which is the organization of the Sewer Treatment of Piedmont Park of '91 and '92. I won't talk about transportation issues or air issues because water is my game. Let's say the concept of the XL project is great because it is supposed to achieve a superior environmental result. That is not going to happen with water issues according to the current design. I would hope that some changes might be made to improve it. One of the concepts we have in mind is there is a pretty good run through the property right now that is functioning. It is documented in historic records. We have maps showing 1864. But it is there and it needs to be recognized for its value and protected in some fashion. It does serve several functions. One is as a wetland. One of them is it's currently acting as something of a storm water retention area. It used to be until the dam was broken, and with the current plan as its designed here, they deal with storm water off their property. I think you might know the eastern part of it is the lowest area. All the water is running that way and then from the city down this way. It is one of the lower areas around here. That will be lost. The movement of the storm water will act -- I think someone used the concept of a cannon -- as a water cannon. The treating facility down there, which is already a potential failure, as we know, also adding to undercutting treatment and things like that, that needs to be looked into and also some way of maintaining the water retention capability of this site beyond the borders of the existing site. We are talking about superior environmental results. That is a minimum. I think another point that relates to the water issue is protecting the existing green spaces: The wetlands and lakes that we mentioned, and also the trees around the administration hall, the Georgia Tech women's softball field, and the Georgia Tech practice golf link there. They are contiguous and should be protected as one park serving the entire project where appropriate. As I see it and as I understand it, the green space is largely sort of up on the concrete table but sort of separated. Then, of course, some others have hit upon the disaster of the combined sewer system. I won't state much on that except it must allow for sewer separation. Whether the city chooses or not, we must not preclude the possibility of having sewer separation in this area. Eliminating the scent of human waste would be highly desirable in the summertime. There is also the National Lead Smelting site over here, which has nothing to do with this site except that there is a great deal of lead contaminated steel there that needs to be cleaned up before you responsibly invite people to come live on the site. Also the ground water is coming off that area. It would need to be retained in some way and ultimately probably put into the sewer system, not when it is raining, but with some way to retain it. Thinking beyond the border of the site, thinking all the way down the street to a whole series of residential neighborhoods down the Chattahoochee which has some of the worst water quality of any creek in the city of Atlanta according to the EPA. One document shows the conductivity rating of 413, four times what they experience in Yancy Creek. We have a 413 conductivity for Tanyard Creek. Part is the CSO. Some of it certainly is the runoff from the Lead Smelting site. Something about the ground water and pumping it into a sanitary place after the rain stops needs to be looked at. Well, I guess that sums it up.

ALAN SIMONS: I will be brief. I am Alan Simons. I would like to make a short statement not about the project in particular but about the bridge, which I think a lot of us are concerned about. First of all I would like to say the Midtown Alliance supports this project. I think this is an improvement over what we have here. I think everybody will be happy with that. As far as the siting of the bridge, we are glad it is going to be at Spring Street. It is going to land at Spring Street, and the roads they bring will continue up through Seventeenth street up to Peachtree Street. That is the main issue we are concerned with. But it will be a new section of road built between Spring Street, and the traffic will continue on 17th Street up to Peachtree Road. What do you do with the traffic at Peachtree Street? I'll talk about that in a minute. First of all, we don't want the bridge to get in the way with the pedestrian-friendly environment we are trying to create in Midtown. We are trying to make the streets walkable and safe for pedestrians. In order to do that we hope that the bridge is built on short-term transportation projections. That means having the size of the bridge as it lands to be six lanes: Two lane of traffic each way and two dedicated transit lanes. We want to keep it safe where it lands. We also want to limit the necessity to condemn property. We don't want to see a lot of cloverleaf intersections, like I mentioned before, wide turning. We want to keep it urban at that intersection. Another issue is being able to plant trees in Midtown. Right now the DOT maintains some of the sections of West Peachtree and Spring Street, and they are precluding us from planting right next to the street right-of-way. Well, the DOT is now setting up a committee to discuss pedestrian issues and we hope they further that process. Lastly, probably most important is there should be adequate funding in the project of the bridge to mitigate the impact of traffic on Peachtree and Ansley Park. This funding could include road improvements along 17th Street all the way to Peachtree Circle. We hope there is funding that will allow Ansley Park, the city of Atlanta, and Midtown Alliance to develop and the DOT to work together on a solution that everyone can accept, and we are willing to spend time and energy to forward that process. That is all.

PRESTON MASON: I'm Preston Mason. I'm district supervisor on the Fulton County Soil and Water Conservation District. I visited this site with Tony Chumley from our state partnership and we determined that this flowing streamline here that comes this way down the property is waters of the state, and by state definition, waters of the state should be protected and there should be an undisturbed buffer of 25 feet. This buffer that exists there now has some of the last remanences of native species in the area. This site plan totally ignores the state law. All of the vegetation around it completely encloses the last remaining open section of this stream in this part of the valley. That is a very bad assumption on the part of the designers because this has the function not only to do erosion control and storm water management, as Mr. Eisenhouser said, but it also serves to do one of the key things that this project is supposed to do, which is to mitigate air quality impacts of the neighborhood without those native trees intact. You will have far inferior results. This is supposed to be a superior project. In our private conversations about this piece of property, we find it abhorring, but we can't do anything about it in the position I sit in. We find it abhorring in this process of redeveloping this piece of property that on a daily basis all of the water that flows down this stream will continue to go into the combined sewers into the interceptor line and dilute the system. Further, because there is so much excess surface here that this will exacerbate the combined sewer overflow that occurs here, at a minimum this project should leave the stream undisturbed, protect the 25-foot buffer, and work it into the plan. This can remain as long as it is done carefully, but the overflow cannot go into the combined sewer and should bypass the CSO facility to feed the stream here that it belongs to. To begin with, it is not sewerage. It is fresh water and should be treated like that, and that should be incorporated in the development. Thank you.

CHARLES BROWN: Let me entertain some questions. I have people here that will try to answer them.

Q. (Peter Giordano) I would like to know what is a --

CHARLES BROWN: A couple things, please state your name for the record and speak loudly so she could hear you.

Q. (Peter Giordano) I'm Peter Giordano. I would like to know what the city is doing in order to do a comprehensive study on all the development that is occurring in the area that is having a tremendous impact on Northside Drive and how any changes made to the 17th Street bridge and 14th are going to impact Northside. Rather than pitting neighborhoods against each other, is there a comprehensive study for the development on Peachtree Street?

A. I'll be happy to answer the question. The city is not doing a comprehensive study. We get traffic studies on a case-by-case basis, on a project-by-project basis. They go upstairs to the Bureau of Transportation and they model in an overall scenario. The answer is no, we are not trying to pit neighborhood against neighborhood, but there is no overall traffic study that the city is undertaking at the present time. It is on a case-by-case basis. I can't answer that question. I don't know.

JOE PALLADI: I'm Joe Palladi for the Georgia Department of Transportation. As a part of the definition of the project, a traffic study has been performed. The traffic study starts at 10th Street and I-75/85 comes up to 14th Street over to Northside Drive up to I-75 at Northside Drive down the interstate to I-85 at Peachtree down Peachtree to 14th and back over to 10th Street. As a part of the traffic study, three scenarios were studied. Number one was what is the existing traffic count in the area. Two was what is the design of traffic of the year 2025 projected as if nothing would happen on the site. That would entail traffic roads in the area based on assumptions made in the traffic study. Then a third analysis was done in the year 2025 with the Atlantic Steel development. Those traffic studies and the outcome are included in the concept report which will be provided to my management, DOT, for review for approval or rejection. It is in the process of being submitted. There has been a traffic study done to look at the level of service, the intersections on Northside Drive, primarily on the state route, but also all the intersections have been looked at as it related to today's traffic and 2025 with Atlantic Steel. So, yes, there has been a study done; and yes, there are going to be traffic loads in the area even with additional MARTA usage, even with additional pedestrian usage, even with bike usage, skateboards, skates. You name it; it is in the study with assumptions that have been backed up from studies from EPA and other studies of mixed-use developments. Thank you.

If there are any questions to the department, again we could answer them here. I'm available. You have my number. I'll answer your calls. (404) 656-5446. Again, the name is Joe Palladi.

One thing that was said earlier about the concern at 17th Street and the possible penetration to Peachtree Circle, I responded to the head of the neighborhood association that had written a letter to me. I responded back saying the NEPA process, which is really being kicked off shortly, is a part for the public input. We anticipated your comments and your concerns regarding that fear of penetration and I would also put in there an idea of cul-de-sacing 17th Street east of Peachtree between the residential and commercial community to also alleviate some of the cut-through traffic that you are looking at right now coming off of Peachtree in the development that exists west of your neighborhood. What needs to be decided is what happens to the Ansley Park neighborhood and the Midtown neighborhood. It has not been decided yet. The concept report and all the drawings that Joe was talking about are not final. The concerns of all your neighborhoods, and I want to reiterate this, still go through this process and will get heard and will be addressed; so nothing is done. It has not been decided. It is still being decided. That is what makes this hard. I can't say this is it, this is it. It is what is being considered at the moment as we address the issue of traffic, transportation, air quality and neighborhoods.

Q. I just wanted to ask a quick follow up. Isn't it correct, though, that the plan calls for cutting a new section of roadway where there isn't currently a stretch of 17th Street?

BRIAN LEARY: I don't remember, but I don't think so.

A. (Joe Palladi) The stretch between Spring and West Peachtree, there is an intersection at Spring with 17th Street that will be at West Peachtree. What we are trying to achieve is to distribute the traffic to the north-south pairs, which is one way southbound, and West Peachtree, which is one way northbound. Without that you will then distribute all traffic to Spring Street, which heads traffic to the south and not help alleviate the traffic problems that exist on 14th Street.

Q. I would like to know what the designed speed on the bridge will be. If this is going to be a bridge that invites pedestrians and cyclists, I would strongly recommend that to be 30 miles per hour or less.

A. (Joe Palladi) It is 30 miles per hour. There is a stretch between the bridge and West Peachtree that has a 25 miles per hour speed where we get into the urban walking environment. Yes, the bridge will have a pedestrians on it. Yes, the bridge will have bicycles on it. Yes, the bridge will have HOV or arterials for the operation of buses. Whether or not taxis are allowed in there -- again, while you are trying to reduce people bringing cars into the area, these people still need distribution at times. Some of those questions have not been answered but are on the table to be answered.

Q. (Knox Massey) I am Knox Massey. I would like to know -- I live on Beverly Road. What is going to happen to Beverly Road? You can't even back out on the street?

A. (Joe Palladi) You need to call me at the office. I'm not familiar with Beverly Road.

Q. (Charles Harrison) I'm Charles Harrison in Ansley Park. The traffic studies stopped at Peachtree. The biggest problem I see in Ansley, or one of the bigger problems, is the cut-through traffic getting to Piedmont. The access to Piedmont Road from Peachtree on this side of town is abysmal. You go to 14th Street, 10th Street or go way up Peachtree to get there. It is that cut-through traffic that creates a concern about 17th Street coming through where you get on Peachtree Circle. What I would like to see is for the traffic study to go all the way over to Piedmont.

A. (Joe Palladi) Then the people at Piedmont will want it to go over to Monroe. You have to find a line that is reasonable to study the traffic. I am not saying that you don't have justified concerns. The intersections on Peachtree, the existing and the future, will give you an idea of the projection of traffic. There is not a whole lot of vacant property at Ansley obviously, so the growth of traffic would either be cut through or because of changes in our society -- people have more than two cars these days; some people don't have any cars -- the changes would be induced by the opportunity for access from Peachtree to the neighborhoods as a direct cut-through. You need to look for the numbers and see any type of growth, any trends that may be about that. By cul-de-sacing 17th Street, you then would redistribute the traffic that is now neighborhood oriented, going into the neighborhood and coming out of the neighborhood, based in the neighborhood. That would then need to be redistributed to some of the other accesses because you want to get home eventually when you leave work, et cetera. Again, some of the number changes, while they are not there now, in the future if we look at cul-de-sacing 17th Street that would be a result of redistributing local traffic in and out of the neighborhood to the neighborhood, not to Piedmont and Ansley, et cetera.

Q. (Brian Hager) This question is for Mr. Palladi. Brian Hager with the Sierra Club. This is being called a transit-oriented development. Most people will still be accessing it by car, and, in fact, as far as the workers at the site, the vast majority will be driving it. Are we designing the site with preferential access for these people coming from other areas who are car-pooling or maybe riding some of the urban buses? Are we going to see HOV lanes into this site?

A. (Joe Palladi) Yes and no. The direct connection of HOV off of 75 and 85 is not totally feasible without totally rebuilding the Brookwood interchange. We are talking hundreds of millions of dollars. The reason is because of the distance under the bride, especially the 75 bridge, not primary for coming out of there and coming up to 17th Street, but for the movement back down underneath that bridge. What we looked at and what has been suggested and we are presently looking at is the conclusion of HOV arterial lanes on Northside Drive where you would come off 75 at Northside with the HOV interchange, make a right, come down that HOV lane, a dedicated, enforced HOV lane, with a jug handle to redirect traffic on to 17th Street, on to the HOV facility that is proposed on that facility, over to Spring, and eventually to the Art Center Station for that transit or the CCT buses and the other HOV traffic that is destined for Midtown.

Q. (Brian Hager) That obviously leaves out the northeast part.

A. (Joe Palladi) The northeast part is not feasible because of the closeness of the lanes of the interstate now. It is not feasible to place HOV exclusive interchanges at the 17th Street location or at the other locations along the park.

Q. (Brian Hager) It sounds like an interesting challenge?

A. (Joe Palladi) It is. We looked at it. The consultant has looked at it and will be glad to share that information with you.

Q. (Brian Hales) I'm Brian Hales. Let's leave aside the question of what happens in other neighborhoods. Let me get to the heart of the question as I see it. We heard at the beginning a very eloquent description of an integrated development. If you put a bridge over the interstate, you're immediately inviting a thoroughfare of a similar caliber and density to 10th Street and 14th Street. I heard lots of descriptions of pedestrian precincts, but I did not hear anyone talk about a major east-west thoroughfare. Now, was that omitted by accident? Deliberately? Did nobody think about it? With this plan you are putting a major east-west thoroughfare between whatever is on the east side of the interstate and Northside Drive. No one talked about that. What impact will that have on the design?

A. (Mr. Palladi) I'll address that one. The traffic analysis that was done distributed the traffic from anticipated locations. The majority of the traffic will be coming down I-85 and coming north on I-75/85. There is a local street component, which is about 20 percent, if I remember correctly. You are talking about around 60, 58 percent of the traffic or more coming from the interstate from the northwest and from the south. What is proposed for 17th Street is basically no real improvement to the I-85 off ramp. It will be shifted because of the geometry of the interchange. The I-85 traffic, which is one of the predominant movements, will continue down to 14th and 10th and into Midtown and distributed in the area. The I-75/85 northbound traffic is proposed as part of the design to have an additional off ramp at 17th Street to the 17th Street bridge. That will distribute traffic to the development and also help distribute some of the traffic that is now using 10th Street and 14th Street into upper Midtown, as you would call it. Again, the majority of the traffic that will be accessing the site will be dedicated to north Midtown, which is there on the surface streets, or would be going to Atlantic Steel. The traffic coming southbound on I-75 will be exited and have the distribution to both 17th Street and 14th Street and 10th Street so that the movement coming from the interstate -- I'm not going to say it is minimum, but sizably reduced by the geometry of what is proposed in the concept. .

Q. (Brian Hales) I believe all your details, but is or is not 17th Street through this development going to be some major thoroughfare? That is a yes or no answer.

A. (Joe Palladi) Possibly. Again, Piedmont is a major thoroughfare. It starts at the Capital and goes to Buckhead. This road we are talking about is starting at Northside Drive and going to Spring, West Peachtree, possibly Peachtree, no further, so you have a limited lane.

Q. (Brian Hales) It goes straight through Ansley Park?

A. (Joe Palladi) I talked earlier about a possible concept of cutting it off in Ansley Park. I have to say the concept now does that. There is room for change. So again, where this stops, the length of the road will determine how much of a major arterial, minor arterial, whatever you want to call it, how it is used.

Q. (Brian Hales) But if it is major, won't this destroy the concept?

A. (Brian Leary) It is a minor artery.

Q. (Brian Hales) So less traffic than on 10th and 14th?

A. (Joe Palladi) That is what is anticipated because 14th and 10th have utilities much further beyond the street.

Q. (Bernadette Smith) Bernadette Smith, Home Park. This is a question for the developer. I noticed on your plan tonight that you have not integrated the Georgia Tech property any longer. My question is two-part. One is why? The second one is what is that going to do for the roads that you had designed, some of which were previously going over Tech property?

A. (Brian Leary) You cannot see from where you are sitting, but we designed our part to connect with whatever the Georgia Tech Foundation would like to do, a high-tech village, but we could not put buildings on their property. If you look at the red, orange, and yellow, you see the roads dashed in there. Hopefully we could go forward with them. The only difference is in the first plan we put buildings where we thought they could go on their property. We would like to work with them in terms of putting in the roads that are there on the plan.

Q. (Bernadette Smith) What about the east-west road, it was like a continuation on that property. Is that now north enough so it does not go on that property?

A. (Brian Leary) I'll show you afterwards if you want. What we did, the Georgia Tech Foundation property is abnormally shaped. It is like a puzzle piece. What we are trying to do with them is, where there is a big notch in their property, is switch that out in terms of a land swap so we get an even edge so that growth then runs to the edge of their property, which would be 16th Street. I'll show you on the map.

Q. What is the plan to tie in the development with the new Omni and Centennial Olympic Park as far as traffic, as far as trolley, and as far as interaction?

A. (Brian Leary) You might have read in the paper some months ago that we got together. What we were doing in terms of a transit-oriented development was bringing transit over from the Art Center Station. That will be a major activity center. Turner currently operates the shuttle buses at the Techwood campus and their Omni or Turner CNN campus. Coca-Cola operates shuttles between the North Avenue campus and parking lots at Midtown, and Georgia Tech has the Stinger. We said wait a minute; we are doing these separate transportation services. You look at the big activity center around the park, which it is exciting what is going on around there. Coca-Cola has plans to build 2 million square feet to the north of the park. The new Embassy Suites is opening. We got together and said how could we come up with a transportation solution? Right now it is purely conceptual. We have not drawn a line through anybody's neighborhood. One thing that Home Park did through their community visioning, they said, one, we would like transit; we understand it could really be a benefit to our neighborhood. How it accesses it or butts it, whatever, is an important aspect of that, and we need to work on that carefully. They said we need to identify some area where we think this will be a good idea to do. If it does come, great. Coca-Cola and Turner, we have been working together. It is called the Central Area Transportation study, or CAT, and it is headed by Central Atlanta Progress. We have hired a consultant, Dames & Moore. They are going to look at these activity centers, look at the possibility of transit, look at Techwood Drive, turn that into a two-way street. They are looking at all these things. One concept that could be seen in the future is you might have heard about the southwest rail line going into Lindbergh connecting Emory into Decatur. Maybe what if that continued for Lindbergh along the existing rail corridor, goes through the middle of our property and connects up these different activities centers. Then you have this loop. You are in the loop, out of the loop, whatever. We started bringing access to different people. That is where we are now. There is plenty of opportunity. That is very loose in terms of what we are trying to figure out.

MALE SPEAKER: I want to address the 17th Street bridge issue. I hear you talking about arteries, arteries that run from 75 to 14th. Deering falls in between that. Deering's traffic in the last three years increased by 150 percent. When we heard about this bridge, it is probably one of the greatest blessing we could see as an opening to the traffic problem. Of course, our concern is where that lets out, but if that bridge is not there, it is going to destroy the neighborhood, absolutely. I mean you might as well turn it into a highway. We are directly in front of the Peachtree traffic issue because Deering is a major artery at this point, and it is just like Beverly. It is not a major road. It is a neighborhood street. It is being traveled just like it was a highway because it connects to 75.

Q. (Fred Beasley) I'm Fred Beasley from Peachtree Circle. I want to know, 17th Street, is it going to be widened?

A. (Joe Palladi) Right now the proposed concept is not to widen it. It has enough room for three lanes of traffic or two lanes of traffic and parking on one side. Right now because you have to start construction on either side, we don't anticipate widening that portion.

Q. (Mike Brennan) I'm Mike Brennan. Can somebody provide an overview about where we are today, the steps that need to be gone through, and the point in time when construction can be done?

A. (Dan Cohen) The next process is the approval of the Transportation Control Measure by the EPD. I also want to make it clear again that it is the city that is the sponsor of the Transportation Control Measure. It is not the developer. It is the city's obligation actually to live up to all the things and all the conditions in that document even though some of the responsibility will then flow through the developer with respect to collection of information. It is the city. We are writing the document because it is our responsibility to do it.

Q. (Mike Brennan) How long will that take?

A. (Dan Cohen) 60 days, 30 to 60 days for the TCM approve.

JOE PALLADI: We are in the process of reviewing the submittal of the transportation proposal for our implementation plan. Hopefully within the next weeks we will be proposing that measure as a provision to the plan. There is a 30-day public comment period. After which we will consider an input. We will then pass that on as a SIP revision to the US Environmental Protection Agency. At that point, once it is approved by the Federal EPA, it become enforceable. All the design features that are in that plan become part and parcel of our State Implementation Plan, which have to be carried out.

DAN COHEN: Ben West, can you stand up for a second and talk.

BEN WEST: A lot of you are concerned tonight about the environmental impact or impact to the community. That is kind of the logical progression to this. We have the concept, if you want to call this entire thing a concept. You look at several alternatives. The next step is let's roll up our sleeves and get into the nitty-gritty, to the combined sewer, maybe the traffic did not go quite far enough, those types of issues. We are into the phase where we are hoping to interact more closely with our neighborhoods and try to provide a little bit more detailed information so that we could react to general diagrams with maybe some more detailed information. Typically a schedule -- we are anticipating going through that over the course of the summer, this fall, and we are doing an analysis of the alternatives, the resolution of the impacts, and hope to have that about the same time that the EPA approves the Transportation Control Measure. They go hand and hand as far as the timing of the approval. That is a general statement.

Q. Do you think it would be possible to set up a group of neighborhood associations, including Ansley and Home Park, instead of having to rely on you? I know it is a lot of time and you are going to run into issues. It would help alleviate that and speed this process.

A. Absolutely. I know we are partners Joe with GI and MARTA. We have not talked too much. MARTA is a partner at the local level. You guys could help with a neighborhood association. That is certainly something we can do.

CHARLES BROWN: Heinz is the section chief in charge of the NEPA Process. Do you want to say a few words?

MR. MUELLER: I'll say a few additional words. I think Ben said it well. It is an evolving process. This is the proposal. We think it is a good proposal, but evidently there is more work that needs to be done. Studies have been done by a lot of people, some the developers, some of the EPA, some of the Georgia Department of Transportation. What we are going to attempt to do is to take that and work with y'all and see what additional work needs to be done, and it is going to be an open process. Certainly the offer of participating with us, I think we will take you up on that for this to work. Obviously neighborhood can't be pitted against neighborhood. Some of these issues have to be addressed that may not be totally inside the development. We are looking at it broadly. Again, I think we are going to be coming back to you setting up meetings, setting up some groups to work through some of these issues.

CHARLES BROWN: It might be useful for the local neighborhood groups to make sure Mr. Heinz has your phone numbers and addresses.

JOE PALLADI: There is another piece of the puzzle. I heard of it as an IJR, or modification report. Because the development and proposed projects impact the interstate, we must get Federal Highway Administration approval, another partner in the process, and through the submission of the concept report, it is accepted with whatever condition is placed on it. Then the IJR will be prepared. The IJR can be approved conditionally upon the approval of NEPA and the other processes taking place. So if you could get approval from one, it is still conditional as to having the other approvals. There is sort of a checks and balances in here as it relates to that. Then if we get NEPA, if we get TCM, if we get IJR, we then get to preliminary plan process. We go into the final plan process, the right-away process. Again, the plan process, I'm going to guesstimate, is two years for a preliminary and right-away and final plan preparation. There is a period in there for right-of-way purchasing. Again I'm guessing two years. That will come after about a year of the plan process. Then there will be the construction time, which again I would estimate two, two and a half years. It won't happen tomorrow. No, the keys are not in the bulldozers. There are a lot of studies that have to be done.

Q. Again, while the NEPA study is still under way, the result of NEPA will have an impact on the reservation of what is going on here. IJR could also have an impact on the other study regarding the fleet. How can all of that be pulled together?

A. All those documents will have to be reevaluated because of NEPA to include any changes or improvements or any deletions in the project plan. All those documents have to agree. There could be changes as we go into design. Preferably they happen in the preliminary, the three dimensional, everything in one project. If at that point in time I cannot buy right-of-way, I cannot buy right-of-way without NEPA approval. Everything then has to be reevaluated before we go to construction to ensure that the project is within those plans and resembles the TCM the SIP the IJR and can be implemented within federal law.

Q. I have a question. I guess this is for Brian. I was at the workshop last November, the Home Park workshop, and as a result of some information that was given, I was under the impression that by the end of this year, Jacoby or CRB would acquire the Atlantic Steel Property. I think Charles Brown said tonight that CRB has an option to buy and the property is not owned by CRB yet. I was under the impression that the bridge needs to be approved. Yet you need to have a guarantee that the bridge could be done before this land can be purchased by CRB and that if the bridge is approved, the idea of the bridge, even if it is not a firm plan yet, the infrastructure work would start happening. The construction -- I don't know what it is, sewers or infrastructure -- would start maybe the first part of next year. It sounds like all of that has been moving back years and years, am I right?

A. (Charles Brown) I'm not sure I heard all the questions, but I think I heard the end. The schedule you are talking about was moved back. I think a lot of these things go in parallel. So the ability for Atlantic Steel to clean up the property for us to do the infrastructure can be going forward. Now, the actual final approval of the bridge, the concept of the bridge, is in that process. Now, once you go through that policy approval, then you have to go into the permanent approval, which is what Joe is talking about, the sidewalks and so forth. I don't think there is a big difference in the schedule we are talking about. A lot of these will move simultaneously.

Q. The way the plan or concept was presented to us, these buildings, even though they are not built the way they were designed, this is 15 years off?

A. (Charles Brown) The concept of the project is basically a high-density culmination of office retail and residential on this end, some mixed usage here, but primarily residential and the high-tech park initially, and then the high-tech buildings with the infamous chess pieces. The overall build-out of the project would certainly be more than ten years, not from today, but ten years from when it starts.

Q. (Chris McGehee) I'm Kris McGehee on Deering Road. As you know now, there are train tracks at the north end of that property which carries passengers and freight trains. Are there plans for that to continue?

A. (Charles Brown) Brookwood Station here

Q. (Chris McGehee) Right.

A. (Charles Brown) Those tracks will continue.

JOE PALLADI: Rail traffic will continue on that line. We have plans for downtown, near Spring Street. We are working and have gone out to find bids for a rail management company to manage the implementation of commuter rails, so yes, the rail station, Amtrak, intercity rail, et cetera could move down to the terminal. That is one of the major lines that will stay in service.

Q. (David Smith) I'm David Smith, Ansley Park. When we started this evening off with the 17th Street bridge, the thing was mass transit, the Art Center Station. I don't know how many of you use the Art Center Station, but is anybody here from MARTA?

A. (Joe McCannon) I'm here.

Q. (David Smith) The question is the capacity of the Art Center Station to handle the input, is there a survey being done with that?

A. (Joe McCannon) No. We feel there will be no problem because our stations have excess capacity of what they are using now. There will be no problem if this rail ever gets built across to the Art Center Station.

Q. (David Smith) You are going to be dumping off people at the Art Center. That can cause mass transit in the rail system now. I am thinking specifically about the rail platform, which is a very small platform at the Art Center Station?

A. (Joe McCannon) There should be no problem. What they will do is put eight-car trains on and get people off the platform. If we have those kinds of crowds, you will have eight-car trains rather than four-car trains and the people will get on and off the platform.

DAN COHEN: The final notion has not been decided yet. Tomorrow is going to begin with the series of meetings around how to design it. Some of the information is still forthcoming.

Q. (John Evans) I'm John Evans. I noticed there were some appendices that were referred to before, and are they available this evening?

A. (Jim Kutzman) Yes. Some are here. Some are not, but all of them are available on the web site. In fact, somebody approached me tonight and said they were having problems getting one of them, but they are all available. I think that problem might have been related to the specific computer. If you want, I'll put the web site on the overhead now so you could write it down. We could send it to you hardcopy.

Q. I have a question. I noted that we talked about the timeline a little bit for what realistically is going to happen. I notice there are some dismantling of some of the buildings on the Atlantic Steel site. Is that part of the remediation process or is that selling off some of the assets of Atlantic Steel?

A. (Brian Leary) Yes. They are moving it on their own schedule. That is not involved with us. I think they have plans to reconstruct it and reuse a lot of those materials.

CHARLES BROWN: Let me point out one comment. The purpose of tonight's meeting was to get comments on the XL agreement. If you do have any comments, contact, call us, write us, e-mail us any comments you may have. Copies are available. They are available on the web site. Any comments you have, we would appreciate. A lot of the discussion was on future steps tonight. There will be some different people involved in this project as this goes on. Nothing is etched in concrete. There will be changes. Certainly the NEPA process is the next thing in six months that will provide a forum for a lot of discussion. You could get you input in, and things could be modified as appropriate. With that, if there are no questions, I would end the meeting.(Meeting concluded at 9:00 p.m.)

C E R T I F I C A T E

STATE OF GEORGIA:

COUNTY OF FULTON:

I hereby certify that the foregoing proceedings were taken down, as stated in the caption, and reduced to typewriting under my direction, and that the foregoing pages 1 through 78 represent a true, complete, and correct transcript of said proceedings. This, the 12th day of July, 1999.

ELIZABETH GALLO, CCR-B-1997
My commission expires on the 16th day of June, 2001.


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