The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Invest Atlanta quizzed on dearth of grocery stores
Agency says bid to attract more retail not yet successful.
Atlanta City Council mem- bers pleaded Wednesday with Invest Atlanta to do more to bring grocery stores, coffee shops and other retailers into south- west Atlanta.
District 10 Councilwoman Andrea L. Boone was among those who pressed Invest Atlanta officials at the fiscal year 2025 budget hearing. She said that neither District 10 nor 11 had a breakfast spot like an IHOP or even a Star- bucks, and that it was “dis- heartening to sit here year after year after year, and our districts look exactly the same.”
Invest Atlanta is the city’s economic development arm. Council members are in the process of hearing from lead- ers in each city department as they get ready to approve a new budget for fiscal year 2025 in June.
“Southwest Atlanta deserves more,” Boone said. “And as long as we sit in these seats, we’re going to fight for our neighborhoods. We’re not going to be silent because it’s not fair. They pay taxes, and they deserve something from Invest Atlanta.”
Invest Atlanta president and CEO Eloisa Klementich, Noah Downer, senior vice president of economic devel- opment, and chief finan- cial officer Nino Chiappetta attended the briefing.
Addressing the council members’ concerns, Kle- mentich said Invest Atlanta targets trade conferences to market underserved areas to grocery stores and retailers but some of them are still resistant.
“We are asking grocers to make decisions to come, and they’re not there yet,” she said.
She cited a partnership with Nourish + Bloom Mar- ket, which was the recipient of an $600,000 Economic Opportunity Fund for container grocery stores in Pitts- burgh Yards, and another location in District 11. But she acknowledged more could be done.
In recent years, the city has taken action to reduce food insecurity and food deserts. In 2015, just over half of the city’s residents lived within one half-mile of gro- cery stores offering fresh food, but that rose to 75% of residents in 2020, accord- ing to the city’s Fresh Food Access Report.
During their presentation, Invest Atlanta officials said one of their priorities for the 2025 fiscal year was to attract major supermarket and grocery store chains.
“We will continue to focus on attracting grocery stores, driving enhancements for our neighborhood markets and supporting innovative models,” Downer said.
But District 11 Councilwoman Marci Collier Overstreet echoed other officials when she said it wasn’t clear to her from the presentation how much investment would end up her district. She said this was the seventh year in a row that she had tried to secure funding in southwest Atlanta, specifically for a grocery store.
“I know you’re highlighting that you’re prioritizing grocery, but this is year seven,” she said. “We still don’t have one.”
During the presentation, officials recounted some of the agency’s achievements. Those included $9 million of direct investment in small-business programs and assistance to 843 small businesses.
Invest Atlanta said it secured $20 millionin grant funding from Wells Fargo and awarded $6.2 million in loans and grants to small businesses. It said 80% of the businesses it funded were Black-owned and 73% were woman-owned.
CFO Chiappetta said the authority’s proposed budget trend for the Department of Economic Development was $3.5 million with an overall budget increase of $500,000 for fiscal year 2025.
The Georgia Department of Transportation’s plan to widen Highway 9 through Milton threatens the green space and yards of residents along the roadway. A 2018 plan was supposedly revised to save as much of the green space as possible. Now, GDOT is back at it, planning to take our yards and trees — after promising not to.
In 2018, I led a coalition of homeowners associations in Milton opposed to the destruction of our berms, landscaping and trees during the widening of Highway 9. The HOAs included Park at Windward Village, Centennial Village, Regency at Windward Square (my subdivision), Haywood Commons and Orchards of Windward. We engaged with the Milton mayor and City Council, state legislators, the Georgia State Transportation Board and others.
The highway-widening plans at that time would have completely eliminated most of the mature landscaping and berms along Highway 9. The highway would have come very close to our back patios.
At one meeting, attended by GDOT officials, then-Milton Mayor Joe Lockwood, Milton City Manager Steve Krokoff and the members of our coalition, GDOT agreed to a redesign that would greatly minimize the impact of the widening. The coalition of homeowners associations was shown drawings of a redesigned plan that would minimize the impact of the widening on our landscaping and yards.
GDOT recently began approaching homeowners in these subdivisions with offers to purchase rights of way, so we began to take another look to make sure that GDOT was keeping to its plans.
We first took a look at Centennial Village plans and were appalled by what seemed to be a leap backward to the old plans. We then examined the plans for my subdivision, Regency at Windward Square. Same appalling situation.
At that point, we cranked up our old coalition, with the exception of Crooked Creek, which has a laundry list of problems it is trying to work out separately with GDOT.
We asked for stakes to be put out to mark the new lines. It was all bad news. At Haywood Commons, the stakes were inside the berm and inside the landscaping and trees. The highway would be at their back patios, and they would be totally exposed to the highway. Their yard will not be safe places for kids to be out playing.
We have since been conducting a very active campaign trying to get attention to this issue and to get GDOT to use an approach that doesn’t ruin our quality of life, destroy our property values and subject us to a four-lane highway in our backyards.
What are we facing? Think for a moment about the effect on property values. A rough estimate of the total value of the houses in the five subdivisions in our group, which does not include Crooked Creek, is at least $350 million.
If the loss of property values is 10%, a conservative estimate would be a loss of $35 million of Milton’s tax base.
With traffic literally in our backyards, our quality of life will go to pot.
The damage to the environment would be monstrous. We would destroying thousands of square feet of mature landscaping and trees and replace it with thousands of square feet of paving and, incredibly, thousands of square feet of eight-foot-wide sidewalks. Who the heck ever thought that eight-foot-wide sidewalks were a good idea?
Was any real environmental impact study ever conducted?
Reducing those sidewalks from eight feet to four feet, the standard size, would reduce the width of the highway by eight feet (four feet on each side) and give us some breathing room. This was one of the promises in the 2018 agreement. When we ask about it now, it is like we are asking for the most impossible thing.
We are told that the location of the stakes is being verified. We are being told that engineers are trying to figure out some way to narrow the highway. They make it sound like it is some sort of impossible dream.
GDOT decision-makers owe us a meeting to explain the changes from the 2018 agreement. We want to preserve the great majority of our trees, landscaping and berms. We want GDOT to keep its word.