Community leaders from the neighborhoods surrounding Turner Field in downtown Atlanta continue to push back against Georgia State’s plans to redevelop the stadium and surrounding lots. Their chief worry – that the deal will lead to increased gentrification that will hurt longtime denizens of the surrounding neighborhoods, is one that they have worked to bring up with both city officials and Georgia State developers.
This week those attempts finally began to pay dividends as both sides sat down to discuss the wants and needs from both sides. Leaders from the Turner Field Community Benefits Coalition met with Atlanta City Councilwoman Carla Smith, City Council President Ceasar Mitchell, and members of Carter, (the development firm working with GA State) where they put together details for a ‘community investment plan,’ or CIP. The CIP would include pledges to provide job training, rent stabilization promises, and other benefits to aid locals concerned that they may be displaced by a wave of development. Community leaders were nonplussed.
Tim Franzen, one of the more prominent community leaders, argued that the CIP was nearly useless because it was non-binding, and pointed to the community benefits agreement that they have been trying to get Carter to sign ever since the Turner redevelopment was announced. Franzen told Creative Loafing, “[The CIP] is not binding at all. If [developers] are afraid of signing [a CBA], they are unaccountable to the community they seek to extract wealth from.”
Carter executives though, appear unwilling to budge. “We have always said that we are not willing to sign a community benefits agreement for a number of reasons,” said CEO Scott Taylor, “But we are willing to discuss different versions of that going forward.”
With construction already underway and no legally binding deal anywhere on the horizon, it seems unlikely that the Turner Field Community Benefits Coalition will get the concessions they are pushing for. The Atlanta City Council may have given the neighborhoods around Turner a seat at the table, but without much of a voice they will be subject to the same effects of gentrification that have swept through intown Atlanta in recent years.
