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What seemed like a pipe dream just a couple of years ago is now being touted by a nationally respected conservation group as the next great vision for the city of Atlanta.

A report by the Trust for Public Land, which will be released Monday, knits together a nascent proposal for a 22-mile transit loop through 46 historic Atlanta neighborhoods with an ambitious blueprint for a 23-mile bike trail, 1,400 acres of new parks and billions of dollars’ worth of development reaching into the city’s most economically starved areas. All that and a big, new lake are included in the Trust’s vision for the loop’s potential.

Although the report frankly acknowledges that accomplishing all it lays out will require a lengthy, widespread and coordinated campaign, the trust’s steering committee unearthed much to be encouraged by in its findings. The availability of land, the escalating market for intown development and the official quest for new transit opportunities have the potential to overcome steep financial, geographic and legal obstacles, the report says.

Calling the circular development of transit and green space an “emerald necklace” for the city, the report states: “Indeed, the challenges encountered are overshadowed by the single, grand opportunity.”

“There is an awesome opportunity here to reshape the face of Atlanta,” said Ed McBrayer, who served on the steering committee. “Everything is going to follow these parks. Everything is going to follow this transit.”

McBrayer, executive director of the PATH Foundation, a non-profit organization devoted to creating more bicycle and pedestrian trails in metro Atlanta, said the report’s ambitious proposals could set the stage for the city’s future.

James Langford, state director of the Trust, said the study’s broad scope became a logical conclusion as more and more encouraging information became available from the study team.

“We felt like it was important for us to create an idea, create a vision,” Langford said.

The study provides a section-by-section analysis of a transit thoroughfare and a bicycle/pedestrian trail that frequently parallel and occasionally diverge. They wind south from the Lindbergh MARTA station toward Inman Park on the east, West End on the west and as far south as Peoplestown and Pittsburgh.

Along the way, the report identifies four potential new parks and nine significant existing-park expansions, in addition to linking those with 11 other current parks. And that system, the report predicts, will “stimulate a sustained and widespread private market reaction” to build new homes, offices and businesses nearby.

“In short, the Beltline will reorient Atlanta from a city framed by highways to a city framed by a magnificent public realm,” the report says.

Advocates said the Beltline has the potential to give Atlanta the unifying identity it has long sought, and one that produces measurable economic benefits.

“Even though we’ve been growing like crazy, there’s been all this [population] influx, but there hasn’t really been this vision for the future of Atlanta,” said McBrayer, whose PATH foundation has raised $45 million since 1991 to build 90 miles of trails throughout the metro region. “We’ve been ‘cul-de-sacked’ to death, and this is going to knit it all back together.”

Daunting costs
The report says some of the obstacles facing the Beltline will be difficult to overcome. The transit portion alone could cost as much as $1.2 billion, according to the report. McBrayer estimated improvements on the trail portions will cost between $12 million and $15 million in addition to the cost of buying the right-of-way, which he said he cannot estimate. The report projects the cost of the proposed new MARTA stations at $45 million to $100 million.

But a mix of funding is proposed to jumpstart development of the loop. Langford and McBrayer said the report is a crucial first step in attracting private funding that can begin to build the bike path even before 2006, when transit funding might be available.

“We’ve got one of the most generous foundation communities in the world,” McBrayer said. “It seems like if we bring them a great new project, they will look favorably on us.”

Some of the largest impediments to the Beltline, as outlined in the report, include:

• The relocation of CSX Railroad’s 87-acre Hulsey Freight Yard in southeast Atlanta near Cabbagetown. The report recommends moving the yard’s truck-to-train transfer activity to a newer CSX facility near Fairburn. The freight rail line through that corridor would be rebuilt into a below-grade trench.

Forty acres of the site would be converted to parkland and a new MARTA station, and the rest would be sold for homes, offices and retail space.

But Ralph Pressley, regional real estate manager for CSX, said the Hulsey Yard is a busy, important hub of the CSX freight system.

“It would already be moved if we didn’t need it,” Pressley said. “It’s part of our operation, we need it, and we’re not going anywhere.”

• Creation of a 700-acre swath of green with a lake in northwest Atlanta.

Bellwood Quarry, the only active quarry inside I-285, has 29 years yet to operate under a lease between Fulton County, which owns the land, and Vulcan Materials, which extracts the rock for sale to contractors and builders. The report recommends a possible buyout of the lease that would shorten the wait.

The report envisions the quarry filled with water to become a serene lake set in a continuous swath of green stretching out from an expanded Maddox Park. At just over 50 acres now, Maddox Park would add more than 100 acres to stretch into the new, 579-acre Bellwood Lake Park, encompassing more than 700 acres. If realized, the park would be bigger than Piedmont Park (185 acres), Grant Park (127 acres) and Freedom Park (197 acres) combined.

“It would definitely be the largest park in the city,” said George Dusenbury, executive director of Park Pride, a local park advocacy organization.

• Construction of three bridges, one of which the report calls “long and expensive”: a 500- to 700-foot bridge over Marietta Street and the nearby railroad gulch in northwest Atlanta. New bridges also will be needed over I-20 in southeast Atlanta between Memorial Drive and Glenwood Avenue, and over Simpson Road in northwest Atlanta. Langford said the Trust report will become “infrastructure” in the Beltline’s creation by quantifying its potential for private investors. The Trust’s study is the first of three surveys of the Beltline to issue findings. A MARTA study is looking at transit’s possibilities in the proposed path and a city of Atlanta study is assessing whether a special tax district can generate enough money to build it. Both will issue their findings next month.

Tapping future users
The special tax district the city is considering depends on rapidly increasing property values driven by development around the Beltline. As proposed, new property taxes generated by the development would be applied exclusively to paying for the line’s construction.

“The Beltline’s future users are an attractive market,” the report says. “Early word of the project has already accelerated real estate activity and increased property values in northeast Atlanta. The existence of an entire Emerald Necklace will attract far more activity that will spill over into other areas.”

Widely considered a certain catalyst for new development, the Beltline has garnered advocates from many constituencies. Mayor Shirley Franklin has made the loop one of the central initiatives of her new economic development plan.

The Trust study, said Greg Giornelli, president of the Atlanta Development Authority, “clearly paints a picture of a one-of-a-kind opportunity, not just for Atlanta but for the country. It’s a spectacular opportunity.”

MARTA Assistant General Manager Laura Ray, who is guiding the MARTA Inner Core study, said the addition of the new stations proposed in the Trust report could provide the troubled urban transit system with new riders and wider public support. The stations as outlined in the report would be more spartanthan stations currently in the system and could be built economically through Beltline funding.

Report author Alexander Garvin, a nationally noted urban planner from New York City, called the construction of the new MARTA stations key to the Beltline’s success.

Ray said she is excited about the opportunities the Beltline represents. MARTA’s first report on the Beltline’s possibilities will be made public in January and will be followed with a more intensive $2.6 million examination of routing and technologies for the transit.

“It will change the way people think of public transportation in Atlanta,” Ray said. “It’s no longer ‘them’ and ‘us.’ It becomes a ‘we.’”