The Gulch Hell Hole

Bill Torpy’s article “A visit to ‘holy hell’ also known as downtown, south of Five Points” AJC 10/18/18 Metro page B1 is a great piece of actual journalism.

Torpy reports that the area around the “Gulch” railroad yard is full of crime, drugs and homeless urban campers. It looks like the City of Atlanta should activate the Police Precinct there, tell judges not to keep releasing criminals and get public health to schedule regular addiction abatement treatments from a mobile trailer like they do in West Virginia’s poor areas. While they are at it, they could get a nearby church to offer a homeless shelter. Atlanta needs to take the Rudy Giuliani approach to cleaning up the city.

I know the Mercedes Stadium operators were hoping for more up-scale development with hotels and entertainment areas.  After all, developers have always run the City of Atlanta.  They overbuild very expensive offices, malls and other facilities. The only reason Atlanta would want to go upscale in bad areas is to gentrify the city completely and push up living costs to chase out the poor and working class residents. The problem is the roads and highways are inadequate and it’s a pain to drive anywhere in the city. This could change if politicians took a realistic view of the MARTA sacred cow and gave up their hope of turning Atlanta into London, where no cars are allowed.

Too many politically inspired developments in Atlanta have failed to maintain economic viability for long. The new developments are short-lived fads designed to distract voters from the real problems and look at the new shiny thing. Claiming that these developments will take root and succeed for the long term is a false hope. Democrats run the city and they specialize in hope and change.

I watched the City of St. Louis deal with abandoned factories and warehouses downtown near the river for decades. They had them boarded up and police patrolled and waited for the owners to find buyers to redevelop these properties on their own. These old facilities had functioned for over 100 years through the Industrial Revolution and eventually the businesses moved their factory and warehouses operations out of the city. It took 30 years to liquidate this section of St. Louis, but it was done completely by the private sector. Some buildings were torn down and became parking lots that were sold later for development. Other buildings were transformed into loft apartments. Some were given to universities to expand their campuses for a tax write-off by owners. Missouri had strong private property laws that protected property owners from government abuse.

St. Louis County MO occupies 523 square miles and the City of St. Louis occupies 66 square miles. There is no gridlock.

DeKalb County GA occupies 271 square miles and Fulton County GA occupies 534 square miles. Together, these counties occupy 805 square miles. The City of Atlanta occupies 134 square miles of land in DeKalb and Fulton.

North Fulton includes suburban cities like Sandy Springs with 38.53 square miles, Roswell with 42.01 square miles, Alpharetta with 27.3 square miles and Milton with 39.15 square miles. Together, these cities occupy 146.99 square miles and could stand alone as Milton County as it once did. If this occurred, Fulton County would occupy 387 square miles. If it merged with DeKalb County it would have 658 square miles.

The northern suburban cities In Fulton County bordering Metro Atlanta have little to do with Fulton County or City of Atlanta development.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader