Midtown, downtown get ARC grants to spruce up transit stations, study parking

• Joeff Davis/CL File
• Central Atlanta Progress wants to get better idea of downtown’s parking spaces and lots

The Atlanta Regional Commission awarded both Central Atlanta Progress and Midtown Alliance with $80,000 grants last week to help make Midtown transit stations more appealing and help CAP better understand downtown’s parking situation.

Jennifer Ball, CAP’s vice president of planning and economic development, says the downtown civic group’s grant, which is backed by $40,000 from the Atlanta Downtown Improvement District, will:
- Review and update assessments of Downtown parking supply and utilization, first established in 2006 and identify specific solutions to meet needs (more about the 2006 effort here)
- Establish a strategy and various tools to educate the public on Downtown’s parking and transportation assets and the importance of parking management on our community’s quality of life and economic livelihood.
- Evaluate and make recommendation to current City parking regulations and policies, and explore ways by which the City can establish greater influence in the management and provision of parking assets.
- Explore parking revenue concepts and make recommendation for models and mechanisms that should be advanced.

Midtown Alliance will use its grant to improve the areas surrounding the Arts Center, Midtown, and North Avenue MARTA stations. The Transit Station Area Enhancement project will focus on “station impact areas” with an emphasis on roads, sidewalks, and path connections to each station. The idea is to identify a team for each station to design the “best set of solutions.” The group’s project is expected to be finished this September.

“We need to make people feel more comfortable with riding transit,” said Dan Hourigan, the Midtown Alliance’s director of transportation & sustainability.