The world's most amazing. We're all watching and we're all watching things agencies that they hire here. We appreciate you and welcome you. Now I'm going to be a little bit about finding the buyer for his time, so I hit 5k is an internationally recognized leader and implementation of complex infrastructure strategies. He was recently recognized by the Atlanta Business Chronicle as a most admired CEO honoree. Georgia trained magazine also recognized Claude at one of the 100 most influential influential Georgians known for his servant leadership style. He currently serves as president and chief operating officer CEO of the award winning Atlanta belt might be arguably the nation's largest 5 billion infrastructure redevelopment project. When completed, the Beltline will provide a contiguous network of 7500 acres of public parks multi use trail in transit along the story 22 mile formal railroad corridor in the city of Atlanta. This award winning project has created over 24,000 jobs, 8 billion in external real estate investment and 4100 units of workforce in affordable housing. Your entire tenure as CEO they have raised over 350 million to support and build out the project. Prior to joining the Beltline in 2014. Clyde served as the executive vice president of a disruptive billion dollar revitalization efforts led by the real estate developer castle in the state of North Carolina. Their hidden roots ultimately have the entire p&l responsibility for the project, North Carolina Research Campus and CRC which include a real estate development, industry recruitment, community engagement, government affairs and public finance, the NCRC along with a focus on walkability. The NCRC was one of the first innovation districts to have multiple universities as anchor tenant along with the focus on chi phrase dialogue governance experience in high school versa. We need government leaders. He was appointed by the governor of North Carolina Beverly gridview to the coveted State Board of Trustees of the North Carolina Community College System and Rayleigh where he was vice chair and a member of the audit and accountability committee. Before coming back from North Carolina 5 million higher education executive. It was appointed to a high profile board ETF by the Governor Rick Perry. The Emerging Technology Fund was a 400 billion investment program to finance Texas based startup companies. And today I can see Mr. Foster his commitment to equitable infrastructure development and improving the overall quality of life for residents. So everyone please help me give a warm welcome to welcome.
My slides come up. Can we stop and live a mess and Morrison a round of applause
for the International Economic Development Council, and she is perhaps the best advocate for for Oklahoma. She's like, Oh, you got to come to Oklahoma and you got to talk about the Beltline. So So Vanessa, thank you for the invitation and also on to Rebecca and Raman, thank you for receiving today as well. So I'm going to talk to you a little bit about the bellpine but from a focus perspective and so oftentimes you will hear the Beltline astronauts huge infrastructure project, and are all the numbers that Vanessa talked about, but it's really about people. At the end of the day, it's all about one amazing opportunity. To remix infrastructure for the benefit. Because we all know that, unfortunately, infrastructure has had an unfortunate history in our country where they actually divided communities. And so now in the BeltLine, we actually had an opportunity to connect and that's really why I get excited about this. And so there's a teacher in me, so I love being on university campuses. So I got a question for review or who knows the original name for Atlanta? Any takers? All right, here's a chat over there. Talking about where we're at tab, any integrals in Lanza was known first as determinants
and that's where the reason for disparate railroad companies converge into this landscape as Tony so I want to talk to you a little bit more about this can also help me because this is not a fancy gotcha. Gotcha. Perfect, perfect. All right. Who is for a High Line in New York City? Right on well, just so you know that the High Line is this amazing infrastructure project is rails to trails and burgeoned project in New York City. One of my good friends is the founder of the highlands name is Bobby and and Robbie, great guy, obviously found with this terrific project. But you know what he said about the hunt. He said the highline was a spectacular failure. Yes, I see the Yes. We all know we enjoy the Highline. But what he really meant by that is that they really focused specifically on infrastructure. And they weren't thinking about the spillover effects to to commute. And that's where we get really high marks from a beltline perspective, is that we think about this project as a community economic development initiative. We just happen to use infrastructure as a way to create these these outcomes. Because if you think about the highline they enjoy millions and millions of visitors on an annual basis, but who's really benefited from that? And so when he looks back and look at the High Times and go fly, you know, when we first started this project, it was very affordable. You could live in the Meatpacking District. But one of the challenges now trying to live near the High Line you're gonna have to pay in probably $20 million for a condom. So who was really project forward? And if you think about the businesses that are donating around the eyeline it probably wasn't the mom and pop businesses had that you had 40 or 50 years ago, but completely change and now it's all high flying expensive brands. And that's what he meant. Now of course, we all love the island. He didn't really mean that literally the vapor of failure, but that was the challenge for them. And so we learned from that from a beltline perspective, making sure that it is not just an infrastructure project. And I shared this with Vanessa and Hans and prod, Rebecca, that the days of developing green space and isolation are gone. They're gone and you have to think about the spillover effect to to your community. And that means housing affordability, that means commercial affordability, you have to take care of those residents. That have been in those communities for for a long time. So that is really the context of this discussion today. If the Beltline is more than that place that you walk on, you walk your dog, walk with your family. Sure we love that, but it's really about the community at the end of the day. And so I gotta give you the story of Atlanta and kind of how why? Why is the Beltline successful? And Atlanta has gone through this this incredible change this metamorphosis if you will starting really during the Olympics in the night. But in look at our city right now. It is just high flying. We have the world's busiest airport. We have over 100 million people that fly through Hartsfield Jackson airport in Atlanta on an annual basis. Were probably one of the top places for high tech companies to locate. So we have movement, we have Microsoft, we have Airbnb. All of these big companies are located just like other Fortune 500 companies that were assigned to our university. We have Emory. We have Georgia Tech, we have normal state. We have the AUC, which is collected a number of HBCUs in the city. And so we really have all these things going on around us. And but it's not a perfect city. It's not a perfect city. So when I talk about Atlanta and read Money Magazine last year, it suggested that Atlanta was the best city in the country and I love it. I did great, but again, it's not perfect. So all of you all have probably heard of Atlanta and perhaps have been there. But the what is the one change in our armor, one of the weaknesses of Atlanta.
graphic that is the bane of our existence is traffic. And so if you're interested that the Beltline is actually a graduate school thesis of mine So he had this vision to create this loop around the city where people can get around without having to get in a personal vehicle to deal with this. And that was really the basic thesis of how do we get around the city? Without having to get in a personal car. And what we're really trying to do is create what we describe as whole communities where you can ride a bike to a grocery store, you can ride a bike to your kids school, you can ride a bike to a restaurant, you can ride a bike or walk to a medical facility without having to get in the vehicle. And that's really what we're trying to do with the Beltline project. And this This is interesting here. So we have a front page article in The New York Times which is a very famous publication and they call the shell mine headlines.
Still consulting actually look at the article I want the wall to get a chance to Google this check it out. The article was actually very complimentary of what we do. So it really pale back and did this kind of comparative analysis to the hype and actually gave us credit for being this comprehensive redevelopment project. And what I mean by that is, it's more than the trail. So we're also responsible for a number of things that people don't think about with regards to to the belt. So guess the trail that we're responsible for that it's going to be a 22 mile decidedly in the middle of the city. So this is not the suburbs. This is right in the middle of the city that we've completed about 10 miles of that to date, but we're also responsible for a number of other community that responsibility, affordable housing, job creation, economic impact, green space, arts, environmental cleanup, and we also have an arts option from the Beltline as well. So it really is comprehensive. And so if you don't remember any of the novel do that I'm talking about today, no bad days of developing the green space and ice isolation, that for golf. You have to do this in a very comprehensive manner. So if you don't remember anything about the BeltLine, it's comprehensive. And I have to give a big shout out to the visionaries behind this. Obviously, Brian for them. But then Mayor Sherman Franklin, who really made sure that we were thinking about community impact and it's interesting when I first came to Atlanta, I landed in a middle of a firestorm. So our then the CEO or many was under pressure because unfortunately the Beltline was the poster child for gentrification, which is a word that that I don't particularly love. We can talk about that later. But also buy in Atlanta was becoming so expensive. It was so common. And unfortunately, he got the blame for that, which was really unfair. But it was really nice things that I talked about earlier, and that's why I'm gonna share that slide about why I plan what's happening in the city of Atlanta, right. It's just a very attractive place to be. Companies want to come there. We don't even have to give incentives to the companies that are located in the city of Atlanta. But if they want to be because they know if you're a Microsoft, all of a sudden, you can drop some space in Microsoft or in Atlanta and get access to a very diverse workforce. And so it makes it a very attractive place to be. And so all of these things combined with our airport, our culture is really creating those pressures in Atlanta, and not just the Belmont, but that but that was the perception of the community at the time that hey, this, this little stretch of green space and trail is just somehow making the city very expensive to live. And I want to suggest that the Beltline was not contributing to that. But it wasn't the only the only factor. And so that's why we actually have this responsibility to create or preserve 5600 units of affordable housing along the Atlanta BeltLine, which is definitely I think challenging. But in the city of Atlanta, we probably have a need of about 20,000 affordable units by the end of 2013. And our mayor is very focused on that. So again, you can't do these things in isolation. This is the Beltline today so you can see what we have in green. That's actually what we've completed so far from the belt. So if you think about this as a 22 mile loop, eventually a 22 mile loop. You can see in green what we've accomplished, completed so far. The famous part of the bell mine is if you look at this as a dial right there at three o'clock, where it says city streetscapes that is the most famous farmerville. We enjoy over 2 million people that walk on just that stretch my annual basis. It is incredible to see when you're out there on a weekend, on a good day it's teeming with. And so one of the things that we have changed the narrative on is that this is not just about recreation for us, but it's also about economic development and economic impact. So just to give you an example. So Atlanta BeltLine is the organization we have about a seven person team architects, landscape architects, engineers, urban planners and real estate professionals, economic developers. We've invested about $800 million into the Beltline today, public money, which was seems like a big number. But what we found is that after that, we've seen almost $2 billion of private investment that's cloud wise. Think about that $800 million in almost $10 billion that the private sector has put in there. And that's not a multiplier effect that's actually direct investment in the ground. So that's one of the things that we're super proud of. But it creates challenges, because now the Beltline is the place to be so we got companies like Microsoft, black box Blackbaud Yahoo, just just a number of high line fortune 500 companies that want to locate on the Beltline. It's the cool place to be because I know that they create an office somewhere on the Beltline. What can they do? They can create a place that you want to work. So they're trying to recruit young people. So we got to look at an office on the Beltline that makes you want to work. So it's really kind of the workforce development strategy over those companies. On the left, I'm just going to get us before and after pictures here on the left. This is what the Beltline looked like before. abandoned railroad. This is actually a nice shot. It used to be covered with kudzu. He didn't want to be here during those days. And now you see on the right. That's what the Beltline on the inside trail looks like today. It is always teeming with people that just a number of small businesses that have popped up. It is truly the place to be and this building right here on the left one more question in the teacher it'd be it's anybody know what this building is? It's pot city marble. City Market actually used to be an old Sears and Roebuck building in the 1920s it is beautiful. So you go there today is teeming with small businesses. It has apartments to become to Atlanta and I'm gonna invite you in this presentation. Check out lots of the market. And just a little more about Atlanta. So if you think about Atlanta world are based on a spot on pastry is by little trivia. There's over 70 pastry streets in Atlanta. But at the top, you have a bucket, which is kind of our Beverly Hills district very affluent. Then you have Midtown, which is popular, great place to be bars and restaurants, high density and then you have downtown. So that's the traditional spine of our city is Buckhead midtown and downtown. But now we have the Beltline is this bowing out of a new business district, not based on Buckhead Midtown or downtown. But now you have these new business nodes to the east and to the west. And just to get a for those who are real estate inclined constantly Barkat is getting $72 a square foot or per space even in this so we all talk about how office its challenge. Mountain about $72 a square foot for more space there. That creates problems. I'll share that link. On the left is another picture about mine and what it used to look like. And you can see this is a picture of the Beltline and oh four more park that's been developed balance.
This is another picture of boring after. So this is onto the market here in the background. And Old Fourth Ward park it used to flood and so we got a significant grant in the early 2000s to essentially help build this water detention pond. So instead of making it your typical utilitarian project, we turned it into the Old Fourth Ward party on the right. Again teeming with people bringing all of Atlanta together right there on the belt. And you can see how spars are plugged on the look at all the multifamily that's being developed right now. So over the last 10 years, there's been almost 14,000 housing units that have been developed along the Beltline. So this whole question about density and the need for it. The beltline is a shining example of that. And I think we're all said and done we'll have close to 30,000 units. Certainly the BeltLine, not only just on the east side trail, but through the entire title, and 20% of those are going to be an ADD is key. That's not only the right thing to do, but you don't want to make the Beltline or any other green space initiative, just the hybrid district because you're gonna price people out. This is a little bit about our affordable housing goals. 5600 units is is the is the goal we're roughly at about 4100 units as we speak, so we're making good progress from an affordability perspective. So how that works is if there's a developer that wants to create a mid rise or high lies facility, right there on the Beltline. First of all, they have to come to us we actually have our own design review committee. And so if you're a developer and you have to come to the BeltLine, get that approved, and we have the ability to give developers grants to create housing affordability in those in those units and those developments. And so we're give someone up to $5 million. If the numbers work out, right. And again, that's what's helping Atlanta to remain affordable. And it's unfortunate we were having this conversation with with my predecessors. I think the word affordability meant something negative to people. Because if we're being honest, if you've never heard that word before, what you probably think about you probably think about some person that doesn't want to work some person that that's lazy that just wants a once a handout. But once we put a real face on what we mean by affordability, we're talking about firemen, police workers, your teachers your restaurant workers, you want those people in their community. And how unfortunate is that is it for your child's teacher to have to live in an outskirt community and have to commute an hour and 15 minutes one way just to come and teach our kids and then at five o'clock and they have to leave and get on the interstate and go back out. Which gates those those traffic jams. So once we put a real face on what we mean by affordability is for the people that provide vital services to us in our communities, but they should be able to live there as well. And so that's what we've been focused on. From a housing affordability perspective. We've also created a fund. So for instance, let's say grandma has been living in the community for 40 years, and all of a sudden the Beltline or other major improvements that have come along and grandma's property taxes and all that will price people that's what we mean by by this gentrification so all of a sudden grandma's property taxes were $1,000 a year to $4,000. So what did you do to address that? And so we actually had fun, where we can actually pay the difference in those improvements from a basement. So we can actually cut Grandma a $3,000 check to to address that difference. Those are the type of programs and initiatives that really honor in our community and to make sure that they can stay and again, it's not just the right thing to do, but it makes the play the economic sense and form for for Atlanta because if we wash out in Atlanta, we become any other standout. We don't have that competitive edge. Atlanta is essentially Austin. If we don't protect our culture, hotel rooms in Austin
and just to wrap up with equipment of remarks by talking about that $72 a square foot of office space that's unattainable for for most businesses. So one of the things that we have done is create what we call our commercial affordability strategy. Because you want those really weird, fun businesses to populate specific areas because that's what people want to go to. They don't want to always just go to your standard big box restaurant, been there done that they want something that really feels like inlanta. And so what we've done is working with commercial developers, is that they've actually portion off part of their development specifically for commercial affordability. And so for instance, there's a developer, new city partners. They've dedicated about 10,000 square feet of their space to below market rents. And so they're charging the market $70. They can charge in this specific condo, if you will, about $15 A square. And that allows the small mom and pop businesses to grow. And we've also instituted a program called the Beltline marketplace, where we've actually set up containers, they've been refurbished. We put commercial kitchens in them, and we've allowed the small businesses to populate those
containers of shipping and we charge them $20 a month to operate. It's a real popular strategy around
with the call that they're charged $250 a month, but they grow they thrive and ultimately then they can afford the $70 a square foot space in Ponce City Market and other places. And so those are some of the things that we're doing. So if you think about my presentation, you heard very little about infrastructure, but you heard a lot about people community impact. That is really the goal for us. And then my final remark for you is that we're also responsible for what we describe as the largest public art exhibition in the southeast called Heart. So I want to invite you to come out May 11, may lead me to come out to Atlanta to witness what we describe as the Atlanta BeltLine Santa for right. In its heyday before the pandemic we had 70,000 people that would come at night. Handmade lanterns. It's a very think about like a family friendly body. So thank you very much for your attention, and I'll see you in May.
