12 years after funding, 7 years after service began, blight still surrounds too much of the Atlanta Streetcar.
In 2010 the in-development Atlanta Streetcar project received $47 million in federal funding. That sum would help to pay for over half the $90 million cost of constructing the line. This happened almost 12 years ago.
Passenger service for the streetcar began on December 30, 2014, over seven years ago.
Yet despite that enormous investment, and the elapsed time (which doesn’t even include the operations costs that are thought to be somewhere between $1million to $2 million annually), there are still several empty properties and surface parking lots blighting the route, particularly on Auburn Avenue.
To better understand the situation, check out a recent AJC article titled Once the ‘richest Negro street,’ Sweet Auburn tries to hold on. Here’s a passage from it:
“On the thoroughfare that was described in a 1956 magazine article as “the richest Negro street in the world,” there are now dozens of buildings that are vacant, boarded up or unusable. It’s a far cry from the days when the corridor nurtured a rising Black middle class, including the family of civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., as well as a concentration of Black-owned businesses, a Black-run daily newspaper and branches of several major social justice organizations.”
Some things have improved along the tracks for sure, and I don’t mean to disrespect the new businesses that have opened. I also don’t mean to undermine the good work done by organizations such as Sweet Auburn Works which are making progress in moving the needle towards better land-use here.
But the patchy sections of investment, as wonderful and appreciated as they are, struggle too much to compete with lingering blighted properties. After seven years, we shouldn’t still be seeing this, and local businesses shouldn’t be continually surrounded by these challenges.
This is an important lesson as the city talks about putting either light rail or Bus Rapid Transit on Campbellton Road as a community investment. Street rail does not automatically bring investment in itself. The city has to work at it, and support rail with initiatives that improve land-use.
