Sandy Springs has been awarded $200,000 by the Atlanta Regional Commission to conduct a planning study for the Peachtree Dunwoody Road Corridor. The Atlanta Regional Commission’s (ARC) Livable Centers Initiative (LCI) is a program that awards grants to cities in order to fund planning studies for various civic improvement projects. The grant program is available to help cities “across metro Atlanta reimagine their downtowns, create vibrant transit corridors and promote live-work-play environments. Upon completion of the studies, the grant recipients will be eligible to apply for federal transportation funding projects, such as corridor improvements and bike-ped infrastructure, to bring their visions to life.”
The ARC reported that the funding awarded to Sandy Springs will be used for a study that, “seeks to identify spaces for placemaking improvements that will facilitate future multimodal mobility and align with the Perimeter Center LCI and Perimeter Small Area Plan’s vision for Sandy Springs. This vision includes connecting two transit stations and the Perimeter employment district. The study will also incorporate a Transit Oriented Development (TOD) Plan for 13 acres of undeveloped land at the North Springs MARTA Station.”
We are interested to learn more about the vision for Transit Oriented Development on these 13 acres of land. Many cities have been able to create affordable housing in similar scenarios via federal funding provided for development projects close to transit stations. We would love to see similar plans for the Peachtree Dunwoody Road Corridor that include affordable housing developments as a component.