Category Archives: MARTA

When you are kicking the competition’s butt, don’t stop kicking… part 2

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In my last post I discussed an article by Pat Fox of the Atlanta Journal Constitution which highlighted Alpharetta’s tremendous success attracting lucrative technology jobs. There was also another article in the AJC about Alpharetta but unfortunately that one is not posted online so I contacted the writer, Rachel Tobin. Ms. Tobin graciously said that I could reprint the article here as long as I give the newspaper credit.

It is an excellent article so I am going to try something different today by posting the whole article with certain key phrases highlighted. After the article you can read my comments.

The big money still heads to Alpharetta
Top industries flock to hot office submarket.Besides company HQs, call and data centers also move into area.
Rachel Tobin / Staff

Thirty years after striking out to attract the executive set by building grand homes around bucolic golf courses and horse farms, Alpharetta has succeeded in its mission of also luring the companies that employ those executives. The result: Alpharetta is no longer just an enclave for well-heeled executives. It’s become a hub of call and data centers for Fortune 100s like Coca-Cola, as well as regional corporate offices for other companies with household names. Think Motorola, Philips, Comcast Cable, health care services firm McKesson Provider Technologies and information service Lexis-Nexis.

Despite the 40-minute-plus drive from Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport — and sometimes choking traffic — Alpharetta remains one of metro Atlanta’s most competitive office submarkets. It’s successfully been attracting — and keeping — some
of the nation’s hottest industries, from technology to health care. The city was anointed the country’s No. 1 “reloville” by Forbes in 2009. Rival office markets like Central Perimeter have lost big tenants to Alpharetta, which boasts office rental prices that are up to 10 to 15 percent lower.

With housing stock that goes from $85,000 starter homes to multimillion-dollar mansions, Alpharetta is not just for CEOs anymore. Alpharetta’s daily workforce now includes lower- to mid-level staffers at data and call centers as well as regional headquarters for internationally known companies.

Holder Properties has developed 20 to 30 data facilities in north Fulton, said Tim Bright, an executive vice president.
“Because so many data centers have gone there, others are going because of the critical mass of talent, intellectual expertise and vendors that service them, ” he said. “It’s the cool place to be.”

Sarah LaDart, a project manager for the North Fulton Chamber of Commerce and Progress Partners, an economic development group, said the area has “been very aware that not every job created in Alpharetta is a $200,000-a-year job. A stone’s throw from the chamber, we have homes that are $100,000.”

Adam Viente with Jones Lang LaSalle describes what he tells potential office tenants at Sanctuary  Park in Alpharetta: “We have million-dollar-plus homes and golf course communities, as well as entry-level housing. And every amenity you could imagine.”

One of those continues to be Alpharetta’s serene setting. On a recent day, traffic was stopped in Sanctuary Park as geese crossed the
road. One of the most popular features at the office park is its softball field, where 16 teams of tenants battle it out for the coveted end-of-season trophy. There’s also a foot path to Verizon Amphitheatre.

Still, “call center” is not exactly what some want the area branded for. “I hate the term because of the connotation that comes with it, ”
Viente said. What Alpharetta has are not sweat shops, where office workers in headsets are corralled into rooms handling difficult customers, then huddle at the exits for 10-minute cigarette breaks, he said. These are sophisticated call centers, he said, handling inside sales calls for companies like Coca-Cola.

Some, for example, are longtime engineers who help restaurants fix beverage machines, added Clint Howell, also with Jones Lang LaSalle, who manages Sanctuary  Park. Many are mid-career and high-paid, he said. “Coca-Cola’s isn’t a call center in the traditional sense of the word, ” Howell said.

One of Alpharetta’s strengths, said Chris Macke, a Washington-based senior real estate strategist with CoStar Group, is its ability to attract companies up Ga. 400 from the Central Perimeter, especially technology firms like Verizon, E-Trade Financial and AT&T that have built campuses in north Fulton.

Many of these businesses will fuel the economy for years, if not decades, to come, Macke said. The result is a stabilization on the north Fulton market, which was hurt when financial service and real estate firms, battered by the recession, shed staff and offices.

Estimates for north Fulton’s overall office vacancy rate vary. CoStar says it was 17 percent in the first quarter, compared to 12.7 percent at the end of 2007. Jones Lang LaSalle reported 19.6 percent for the first quarter, compared to Cushman & Wakefield’s 18.9 percent.

Only the Central Perimeter area and northwest Atlanta have more Class A office space than north Fulton, but North Fulton’s vacancy rate is 15.8 percent, which beats metro Atlanta’s Class A average by more than three points. Central Perimeter’s Class A vacancy
is 18.7 percent, while northwest Atlanta’s is 15.8 percent, according to CoStar.

To be sure, Viente said Class A suburban office buildings aren’t the same as the glittering skyscrapers from downtown to Buckhead. Most Alpharetta office buildings are four to six stories, surrounded by ample parking in manicured settings complete with lakes and waterfalls.

But the office parks and nearby lifestyle continue to be a draw.

“I’m happy where I am right now, ” said Dave Burr, who is consulting business leader for E-Trade Corporate Services, which has a campus on Windward Parkway. He started with E-Trade about two years ago and he loves the campus. “They keep remodeling it and adding more trees and scenery, ” Burr said. “It’s a really pretty office park to come to every morning.” Across the street, there are 10 restaurants, with dozens more a short drive away.

And he raves about another feature: a running group that meets after work Thursdays to take advantage of a nearby 14-mile path that winds through woods. Burr lives in Sandy Springs with his wife, a Midtown lawyer, and their three dogs. He said his commute is a breeze, though he admits his wife’s commute is not.

Clifton Camp, who owns MarketingCamp, a marketing and branding firm, often works from his five-bedroom home in north Fulton.
A Michigan transplant, Camp is on his fifth home since moving here in 2004, continually buying and selling homes after starting with a foreclosure in Country Club of the South. A major plus, he said, is the excellent school system for his three school-aged
kids. By not paying for private school, he said, “I can funnel those funds back into the household so we can have a few of the finer things in life. That is a plus.”

Still, all interviewed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution for this story said that the lack of a rail system is north Fulton’s biggest challenge for both future growth and quality of life.

For Viente, that means a competitive disadvantage for Sanctuary Park. “Central Perimeter has four MARTA stops. We have zero. I think that is the biggest thing this submarket is facing, ” he said. He’d like to see a MARTA stop near North Point Mall.

One of the main jobs of Ann Hanlon, chief operating officer of the North Fulton Community Improvement District, is improving transportation. “The north Fulton area is pretty easy to get around within it, but it’s difficult to get to and from it from somewhere else in the region, ” she said. “It’s a challenge, especially when more and more of our leases are going to call centers, which is pulling employees from other parts of the region.” She said when gas prices skyrocketed a few years ago, she saw people walking
long distances from bus stops in hot temperatures. “It’d be 105 degrees outside and people were walking all over Alpharetta
from the bus stations, ” he said. “We said it’s just not practical.” Her organization, with the help of other groups, is studying transit options. “We’re trying to show the suburbs are ready for transit and make the business case for it and that we can’t live without it anymore, ” she said.

About our series
Metro Atlanta has been a master of reinventing itself ever since the Civil War. In the process, the region has become the undisputed capital of the South, a hub for Fortune 500 companies, with an airport that is the envy of the region. Through it all, landmarks have risen, some have fallen, others were saved and new ones were built. As Atlanta’s ambitions grew, so did unique areas with their own flavor and style, attractions and problems. This year, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution will embark on an occasional series to check on the skyline. We aim to examine the opportunities and challenges in business districts metrowide.

To send us your ideas for the series, please e-mail Rachel Tobin at rtobin@ajc.com.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Main Edition
Sunday, 4/24/2011, Business, D1

The article is filled with interviews and data that show Alpharetta is kicking the Perimeter area’s butt in attracting technology jobs and corporate headquarters. Alpharetta has higher office occupancy rates and people that have relocated their businesses and families here applaud our quality of life, serene setting and outstanding public schools.

Yet somehow the article concludes that Alpharetta needs to be more like Perimeter Center because, “Central Perimeter has four MARTA stops. We have zero.”

It makes sense that the commercial property owners of the Northpoint CID covet the higher rents of the Perimeter area and it is clear they are pressuring our city council to allow more condos and apartments to accomodate MARTA trains.

But Alpharetta is not like Perimeter Center. That is the key to our success. In the words of Ms. Tobin:

“Thirty years after striking out to attract the executive set by building grand homes around bucolic golf courses and horse farms, Alpharetta has succeeded in its mission of also luring the companies that employ those executives”

Alpharetta’s strategy is working. We are kicking the Perimeter area’s butt. Why should we stop kicking to copy them?

When you are kicking the competition’s butt… don’t stop kicking.

***A special thank you to Rachel Tobin of the AJC for writing an excellent article and allowing me to use it here.***

We don’t need no stinkin’ Windward

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A commenter on an earlier post cited a study used to justify the transit system’s expansion of train service into my neighborhood. The study was paid for by MARTA and conducted as part of the North Line Transit Oriented Study which was presented in 2006.

Part of the research was conducted through telephone surveys of nearby residents and the report states:

The telephone survey sample was selected to include residents near each of the 4 proposed TOD sites: Holcomb Bridge Road and GA 400, Haynes Bridge Road and GA 400, Old Milton Parkway and GA 400, and Windward Parkway and GA 400.

So let us take a look at the map showing the areas surveyed. You can click on the picture below to enlarge it.

Many of the dots above indicate where people work in addition to where they live but do you notice anything unusual in the top, right area of the survey map? I do because that is where I live. A tiny little neighborhood called Windward with more than 2,400 homes. Notice how not a single one of the surveys conducted was of a Windward resident? Odd isn’t it? Not one of the thousands of people interviewed lived or worked in the largest neighborhood in North Fulton county.

So what are the odds that a legitimate, random survey would completely avoid an entire geographic area that contained about 1/6th of a city’s population? It’s been a couple of decades since my statistics classes but I’d say the probability of that happening accidentally would have to be less than 1%. If any of you are well versed in probabilities and take issue with my WAG please feel free to correct me.

But regardless of the actual probability, the point is that a survey which is used to justify putting a MARTA train station in my neighborhood did not ask one single person out of the thousands most affected for their opinion. Alpharetta’s elected officials are making decisions based on a survey that completely ignored 1/6th of their constituents and that should be unacceptable whether or not it occurred by design or chance.

Johns Creek Mayor and Councilmen want MARTA trains… in Alpharetta

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There is a very interesting article in the Johns Creek Herald. Apparently on April 11 the Johns Creek City Council discussed the issue of how little money MARTA spends in North Fulton County. They also talked about the fact that if Johns Creek residents will be expected to pay an additional transportation tax then MARTA should provide their residents nearby access to trains.

The catch is that they don’t want the MARTA trains to come into the city of Johns Creek. They just want the trains to be extended into my neighborhood of Windward in Alpharetta.

As Mayor Bodker says:

Bodker said the North Fulton cities need to look at their land-use policies to see whether they even want transit, and if they do, how they would support it. He said Johns Creek does not lend itself to trains, however, buses could connect the city to train lines extending northward via the 400 Corridor or Gwinnett County.

“These are all long-term plans that won’t happen overnight,” he said.

However, plans need to be made and land-use policies changed in the meantime. He said even those who do not use transit benefit from it, because taking cars off the road makes it easier for those who continue driving. He also said continued development is unsustainable if people continue relying on cars.

So the man who didn’t honor his word when it came to charging Alpharetta residents higher recreation fees would like us to change the complexion of our city for the good of his constituents? Right. We’ll get right on that.

And Mayor Bodker wasn’t the only one suggesting Alpharetta should change for the sake of its North Fulton neighbors.  Johns Creek City Councilman Randall Johnson said:

…something he would like to see happen is for the train line to extend all the way to Windward Parkway.

“I think you would see more people from North Fulton utilize it,” he said.

This doesn’t surprise me. I have watched as politicians and developers from Johns Creek lobbied for the urbanization of Alpharetta. And I have watched as Alpharetta City Council has acquiesced every time.

I can see how Johns Creek, Milton, Forsyth County, Cherokee County and every other person outside of Alpharetta might enjoy the convenience of having trains in someone else’s backyard. It is much less obvious how the destruction of our quality of life benefits me and my family. I will have more on this subject… a lot more… but for now I am so furious I can’t see straight.

You can read the whole article here.

I hope you all enjoy a wonderful Good Friday and Easter weekend.

Update on the transportation tax increase

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Today’s AJC includes an update on the wish list being compiled to sell voters on the sales tax increase proposed by the state of Georgia. The additional sales tax is expected to cost Atlanta metro area residents 8 Billion Dollars over ten years and the referendum will include examples of the projects that the money could be spent on.

So far municipalities around Atlanta have submitted over 29 Billion Dollars worth of projects that they want to include so there is going to be a lot of horse trading over the next few months as politicians are forced to give up on 21 Billion Dollars worth of projects. This should be fun to watch.

Below is the paragraph about North Fulton:

Notable no-show

All those north metro drivers who motor down to MARTA’s North Springs Station have spurred talk of extending the train line further up Ga. 400. But no one requested such a project for the referendum, according to the ARC. (At least not yet, as the state DOT has yet to weigh in.)

Since the President and CEO of the Greater North Fulton Chamber of Commerce, Brandon Beach, is also the North Fulton representative on the Georgia Department of Transportation Board it will be interesting to see what is included after the DOT “weighs in”. You can read the whole thing here.

“High-speed rail is a fast track to government waste”

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I have been saying that for years but it is nice to see the Washington Post finally coming around to the truth in this editorial. The author, Robert J. Samuelson, does a great job of dismantling the false information used to justify the trains which are the darlings of the transportation crowd. I recommend you read the whole thing but I will give you a small sample:

Rail buffs argue that subsidies for passenger service simply offset the huge government support of highways and airways. The subsidies “level the playing field.” Wrong. In 2004, the Transportation Department evaluated federal transportation subsidies from 1990 to 2002. It found passenger rail service had the highest subsidy ($186.35 per thousand passenger-miles) followed by mass transit ($118.26 per thousand miles). By contrast, drivers received no net subsidy; their fuel taxes more than covered federal spending. Subsidies for airline passengers were about $5 per thousand miles traveled.

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The reasons passenger rail service doesn’t work in America are well-known: Interstate highways shorten many trip times; suburbanization has fragmented destination points; air travel is quicker and more flexible for long distances (if fewer people fly from Denver to Los Angeles and more go to Houston, flight schedules simply adjust).

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High-speed rail is not an “investment in the future”; it’s mostly a waste of money. Good government can’t solve all our problems, but it can at least not make them worse.

Commuter rail service is the least effective way for this country to address our transportation needs and I am amazed there are so many people that ignore this fact.

Thanks to Kyle Wingfield of the AJC for pointing this article out to me. If you aren’t reading Kyle regularly, you should be.

MARTA and the future of Alpharetta

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In 2007 I had a conversation with an employee of Alpharetta’s Community Development Department about the future of our city. At the time the city was planning to approve a 13 story condominium building in my children’s school district and there was a lot of opposition from my neighbors. At one point in that discussion I told her,”The only reason you are trying to force this down people’s throat is so you can justify bringing MARTA up to Windward. Now people can disagree whether that is a good thing or not but it will completely change the city of Alpharetta and the people who live here should know what you are doing and have some say in it. We should be holding hearings or something.” Stunned silence was her only response.

I was reminded of that conversation when I read Hatcher Hurd’s column “Future transportation still keys off Ga. 400” in the Alpharetta Revue Thursday. In the column Mr. Hurd recalls his own epiphany about MARTA and how Alpharetta would be forced to change in order to accommodate heavy rail expansion.

 “Like a patient father, the MARTA exec told me that the Beltline would have the density of development that would make the MARTA service fiscally tenable. Windward or Roswell just don’t have the numbers – yet.”

I find it very peculiar that Mr. Hurd would liken a MARTA bureaucrat to a father figure but I do appreciate him pointing out what has been going on behind the scenes in Alpharetta for years now. It is about time that a local media outlet shed some light on the transformation that is taking place in the shadows while Alpharettans are too busy raising their families and struggling to keep their heads above water to notice. The timing of Mr. Hurd’s revelation is also fortunate that because it comes as the city is looking to choose a new mayor that will to guide us in this process.

If you doubt that this transformation is actually taking place I refer you to the MARTA North Line Transit Oriented Development Study which was developed in 2006 with the cooperation of Diana Wheeler, the director of Alpharetta’s Community Development Department. You can find the report online and I suggest you start by reading the 22 page appendix here. I’d like to point out a few of the highlights:

“This is just a concept to help the local jurisdictions create more transit-friendly development. The density has to happen before transit service can be extended. The next step is for the local jurisdictions to create the environment to support the MARTA expansion.”

“We know that higher density development leads to traffic and most officials won’t zone for higher density in order to prevent more traffic.”

“More than just carrots; developers should be incentivised to concentrate development and create higher densities.”

So as the fatherly MARTA exec said, Alpharetta may not “have the numbers-yet” but the city has been trying to change that for 5 years now. Too bad they didn’t include the citizens of Alpharetta in the conversation. Neither the mayor nor a single city councilperson has dared tell us what they are doing.

It is time for the residents of Alpharetta to finally join that conversation and there could be no better time to get their attention than during this year’s mayoral race.

Things I learned from Atlanta Progressive News

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You may recall that last year the Clayton County Commission eliminated that county’s public transportation network, C-Tran. At the time you could hear the ululating of the transit advocates (the fact that people identify themselves as advocates for a mode of transportation amazes me) as they mourned the loss of a public transportation system regardless of the fiscal justification.  

So I tried to find evidence that Clayton County has suffered a negative economic consequence from a lack of public transportation. I can’t find a single shred of evidence that the county did the wrong thing. If any of you have evidence one way or another I would love to see it. I have no doubt that it was inconvenient for some people to arrange for their own transportation needs without government subsidies but I can’t find any empirical evidence which proves that eliminating C-Tran was a bad economic decision for the county.

What I did find was that after C-Tran was eliminated the Clayton County voters passed a non-binding resolution asking the county to join the MARTA system. I am sure there must have been some news coverage of the vote but I missed it and only learned of the referendum when I stumbled across an article on the Atlanta Progressive News website. The article says that the voters passed a resolution to raise the county’s sales tax by one percent and then use the money to buy into the MARTA system. Who knew? It is amazing what you can learn from the interwebs.

For example I also learned that Sonny Perdue served as governor for 10 years. I always thought the former governor served two 4 year terms but according to someone identified only as Biola, ” There’s been a complete lack of leadership for the last ten years under Perdue.” That rascally Perdue. Who knew he was neglecting transportation needs even during the last two years of the Roy Barnes administration?

But that’s not all. I also learned that Clayton County residents will be paying up to $35 million dollars in additional sales tax if the MARTA tax were passed. And that the voters have been lead to believe that $35 million dollars is enough to extend train service as well as buses into their county. That seems odd since Fulton County residents have paid billions of dollars into the MARTA system for 3 decades but the trains still don’t go into much of the county. But if transit advocates say so it must be true. Of course $35 million dollars would barely cover 10% of MARTA’s yearly operating deficit but why quibble over details.

Another thing I learned from APN is that even transit  advocates don’t expect the state’s proposed transportation tax increase to pass in 2012. The singularly named Biola reportedly also said, “he doubts the regional transportation sales tax is going to pass in 2012 in Metro Atlanta, given the difficulty of finding agreement on a project list between progressives in Atlanta and Tea Party elements in other counties.” I have to concede that Biola may have a point on that one. Those darn tea partiers just keep getting in the way every time some glorious government spending initiative comes up for an actual vote. That’s why SRTA had to pass the toll extension on GA 400 without one.

Well I think I’ve learned enough for one day but there is plenty more at AtlantaProgressiveNews.com if you want to check it out for yourself. And if you have that much time on your hands you may want to check out my previous blogposts regarding MARTA. They are listed under the MARTA category on the right side of the GA Jim home page.

Alpharetta faces the fork in the road

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Today there will be a very important meeting of the Alpharetta Planning Commission. The commission will review the request by MetLife to convert their property on Haynes Bridge Road from an office complex to a high density Mixed Use Development.

This will be the third such mega development to have been brought before the planning commission in the last few years. The first two projects were Prospect Park on Old Milton Parkway (the enormous dirt pile which serves as the entrance to our fair city) and the Windward Mill project which was approved on Windward Parkway. Neither of those projects complied with Alpharetta’s long term land use plan and neither one has yet to be completed. In fact it is extremely unlikely that they will ever be developed as proposed given the drastic changes in the commercial real estate market in the past two years. But that won’t stop the city’s Community Development Department from foisting another of these projects on the unsuspecting citizens of Alpharetta.

I hope that as the City of Alpharetta considers approving the MetLife project they will take the time to read this article which was originally published in the Atlanta Journal when MetLife first came to Alpharetta:

Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. held a grand opening this week for its headquarters in Alpharetta. The 81-acre campus, at Ga. 400 and Haynes Bridge Road in the Georgia 400 Center, is expected to hold some 800 employees in about two years. MetLife will occupy four of six floors and lease the rest. MetLife’s business in metro Atlanta includes pensions, brokerage, group insurance, real estate investments, disability insurance, securities and corporate investments. The company moved its corporate headquarters from Perimeter Center because of the increasing traffic problems there. MetLife sold Perimeter Center last year for $336 million.

The key section of the article says,”The company moved its corporate headquarters from Perimeter Center because of the increasing traffic problems there. MetLife sold Perimeter Center last year for $336 million.”

So in 1998 MetLife came to Alpharetta because they had developed the Perimeter Center of Sandy Springs into a concrete jungle with disastrous traffic. Now they would like to do the same here. The Atlanta Regional Commission’s review of the proposed MetLife project shows that it will take road improvements that cost 10’s of millions of dollars just to accommodate the extra 12,000 cars a day at that intersection.

I fully expect this project to be approved because influential business interests support it and our community development department is determined to cram enough people into Alpharetta to justify a billion dollar expansion of MARTA into this city. But it is sad to see this happening in my adopted hometown.

As a community we have come to a fork in the road. We can choose growth that compliments our attractiveness as a quiet place to raise families or we can choose growth that turns us into the next Perimeter Center.

I hope we choose the path less traveled but I’m not optimistic. Wonder how long it will be before we read an article notifying us that MetLife has sold their gridlocked property on Haynes Bridge Road and moved to Forsyth County?

If you care about this decision please contact city hall today 678 297-6000.