Rails to Trails

A few years ago, the new "beachfront" property in Atlanta was along 22 miles of railway corridors that circled the city.

"Property values increased almost overnight," said Jim Langford, principal creator of Atlanta's Beltline initiative and president of MillionMile Greenway. "As soon as the Trust for Public Land announced where the new park were going to be, developers immediately began scouring locations around those parks.

"A market was created for property that previously had been old warehouses and abandoned lots. A lot of them were eyesores and had been on the market for 15 years," he said.

Langford was the featured speaker at ULI Memphis' Transformative Roles of Greenways event last night at CBU. Other panelists included Shelby Farms Conservancy's Laura Adams, the RDC's Benny Lendermon, and Kathleen Williams with Tennessee Parks and Greenways.

The Beltline project, which took abandoned railway corridors and transformed them into greenways and touches 47 neighborhoods, proves that green space adds economic value to a community. But that's not all.

"No matter what lens you look through," Langford said, "people see this as a success."

People who like green space were fans, people who wanted to use trails for walking and bicycling were fans, as were those interested in economic development and improving the quality of life for those in existing neighborhoods.

Langford hopes for a time when greenways are as ubiquitous as streets and are considered part of infrastructure, just like schools and sewers.

"At some point, you've tipped public expectations and a public ethic about parks and greenspace to the point where people say, this is a city of parks, and they're really happy," Langford said. "Then they very jealously guard the greenway and it's an integral part of what defines the city and the community."

And you never know what might happen if you put a large vision out there. When working on the initial plan for the Beltline project, they looked at the county-owned Bellwood Quarry. It was 400 acres of land, but the company using it had a lease that wasn't up until 2034.

Two weeks after the plan was announced, the company called and said that they actually wanted out of the lease. 18 months laster, the land was transferred to the city of Atlanta, which plans to spend $90 million on it over the next three years.

"That will be Atlanta's next big signature park," Langford said.

At the heart of Langford's message was people both need and expect greenspaces in their cities.

"You have to get control of parks and greenspaces before it's all gone," he says. "It's hard to retrofit those things. You need to find a way to preserve [land] while you're building."

MillonMile Greenway has four pilot projects underway, including a Coastal Georgia Greenway that links six counties.

The Power of Greenways

Here's an upcoming event that might interest some of you.

ULI Memphis will host "Exploring the Transformative Roles of Greenways," with Jim Langford, president of the Atlanta-based MillionMile Greenway.

The event is this Wednesday at Christian Brothers University. Registration is free and open to the public; you can either register online at memphis.uli.org or by calling 1-800-321-5011.

Panelists for the event include Laura Adams from the Shelby Farms Park Conservancy, Benny Lendermon, president of the RDC, which operates Mud Island, and Cindy Buchanan, director of the Memphis city parks division.

An infrastructured America ...

is a successful, strong America?

Former Indianapolis mayor Bill Hudnut spoke to the local chapter of the Urban Land Institute yesterday about ... of all things ... infrastructure.

"People think infrastructure is a dull subject, but it's not," said Hudnut. "We're facing a silent crisis that is really starting to make a lot of noise."

ULI's Infrastructure 2008: A Competitive Advantage report compared America's infrastructure with countries around the world and found that while some countries, such as India and China were growing and developing their infrastructure, the United States, along with Canada and Australia, are coasting.

And before you argue that China and India are building new infrastructure (so it's not a fair comparison), the UK, Germany, and Spain are retooling and revamping their current infrastructure.

Hudnut pointed to the fact that the country has NO high speed trains, countless levies and bridges that need to be improved, and only one of the world's largest ports.

"Revamping our infrastructure in the global economy will largely determine how successful America will be," he said.

In Memphis, our youngest rail bridge — and we have a lot of rail coming through — was built in 1916. Trains have to slow to 10 mph to cross the bridges, creating a national choke point for rail.

Our vehicle bridges are a little bit newer, built in 1949 and 1979.

There is a plan for a third bridge, but it will be 2012 at the earliest before construction can get started, IF there is funding.

"While we're looking for at the third bridge, we need to be planning for the fourth," said one of the local panelists, Metropolitan Planning Organization administrator Martha Lott.

The problem seems to be that we see these big dollar signs on projects that are needed but not at a critical point (yet) so we put them off. And then we they get critical — or worse, like last year's bridge collapse in Minneapolis — that's when we invest.