The same people working behind the scenes to bring the Atlanta BeltLine project to life are also working in communities across Atlanta – sometimes in unexpected ways – to be good neighbors and make the project as inclusive as possible. This post is part of a series called BeltLine Connections, which features timely stories of service by Atlanta BeltLine, Inc. staff that highlight important issues facing Atlanta communities.

Atlanta’s legacy of diversity and civil rights leadership have long set it apart among Southern cities. Local officials first adopted the “City Too Busy to Hate” slogan in the 1960s, largely in an effort to market Atlanta’s business environment as relatively insulated from civil unrest. While the nickname remains more of an aspiration than fulfilled reality, it does hint at the city’s undeniably rich makeup of identities and cultures.

One big part of this history is Atlanta’s vibrant LGBTQ community. In 2005 – the same year Atlanta formally adopted the Atlanta BeltLine Redevelopment Plan and created a tax district to finance the 25-year project – gay, lesbian, and bisexual residents made up 12.8% of Atlanta’s population, the third-highest percentage among major U.S. cities.

The city’s LGBTQ pride festival, Atlanta Pride, dates back to 1971, just one year after the Stonewall Uprising in New York City, reportedly making it one of the oldest in the country. Today, Atlanta Pride attracts about 300,000 attendees each year. The week’s flagship event, the Pride Parade, charts a path up Peachtree Street through Downtown and Midtown Atlanta. The parade culminates with a festival at Piedmont Park, across the street from one of the busiest access points to the BeltLine’s Eastside Trail at Monroe Drive and 10^th Street NE.

Given this geographic proximity, and the central role of BeltLine neighborhoods like Midtown and Little Five Points in Atlanta’s LGBTQ heritage, it became clear that Atlanta BeltLine, Inc. needed to play a part in Atlanta Pride. A staff-led effort to have ABI participate in the event finally made it happen this October. Under dreary skies and sporadic rain, an enthusiastic group of ABI team members (together with spouses, partners, and friends) showed their support for Atlanta’s LGBTQ community by marching in the 49^th annual Atlanta Pride Parade.

ABI Director of Design Kevin Burke piloted the BeltLine “float,” one of the two Ford F-150s that comprise the agency fleet – much more festively decorated than it typically is when out on the construction site or doing routine trail maintenance. Following close behind were members of the Arts and Culture, Community Planning and Engagement, Real Estate, Design and Construction, and Executive Team departments. They waved flags, danced, gave hugs and high-fives, and tried to express their appreciation to the dedicated spectators who had braved the elements long enough to see ABI, positioned near the back of the parade, pass by their spot on the route.

“It was an honor to represent the BeltLine for the first time at Atlanta Pride,” said Chris Langley, ABI’s Arts & Culture Program Coordinator, who led the organization’s first-ever involvement in Pride. “We felt this was the perfect opportunity to affirm our organization’s support for the LGBTQ+ community and emphasize that the Atlanta BeltLine is designed to bring people together through more than just physical infrastructure.”

“This organization has made a steadfast commitment to promoting equity and inclusion in everything that we do – both in the workplace and out in the diverse communities that the Atlanta BeltLine serves,” said Nonet Sykes, ABI’s Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer. “To that end, participating in Atlanta Pride is just one small gesture in a larger effort, but it’s one of the many ways we’re working to keep that promise,” she added.

ABI staff have already begun making plans to ramp up their presence at the 50th annual Atlanta Pride. Their top priority? Getting local partners in Atlanta’s arts community, particularly queer artists and allies who have participated in the Art on the Atlanta BeltLine program, to join them on the parade route.

The Atlanta BeltLine may be one of the largest, most wide-ranging urban redevelopment programs in the United States, but make no mistake: behind the mission, the core values, and the program goals, it’s about the people—the people in the 45 communities that will be connected by the 22-mile loop, the people who live in or pass through Atlanta, and the people working hard to implement this ambition vision.

With this in mind, the staff at Atlanta BeltLine, Inc. (ABI) came together on November 21^st to give back to the community and volunteer at the Atlanta Community Food Bank. Founded in 1979, the Atlanta Community Food Bank works with more than 600 nonprofit partners to distribute over 60 million healthy meals to more than 755,000 people in 29 counties across metro Atlanta and north Georgia. According to a study mapping out hunger by Feeding America, more than one in every five kids in Georgia live in a food insecure household, meaning they do not know from where their next meal will come. In metro Atlanta, roughly 13.2% of the population is faced with food insecurity during the year. The Atlanta Community Food Bank helps address this need by procuring and distributing both dry grocery goods and fresh produce to its network of partner agencies with food assistance programs. Additional programs include Benefits Outreach, hunger and poverty Education and Outreach, and Hunger Walk Run fundraisers.

Designed as the first of many corporate social responsibility and teambuilding initiatives, ABI staff were thrilled to invest their time and energy in a project that so profoundly impacts our community. Working alongside other corporate volunteers at the Food Bank’s Product Rescue Center, adjacent to the future Westside BeltLine Connector, ABI staff sorted dry goods and prepared boxes of food for delivery to the Food Bank’s nonprofit partners. In one morning, representing just a few hours of time, the volunteers sorted 11,817 pounds of food and boxed the equivalent of 8,970 meals, thereby saving some 1,052 pounds of trash.

Following their volunteer shift, the ABI team met with the Atlanta Community Food Bank President and CEO, Kyle Waide and learned more about the organization’s work in fighting hunger through engaging, educating and empowering our community.

“Positive output and impact for the greater good requires vision, teamwork and collaboration. And so, teambuilding activities like this are essential to ensuring the success of our mission,” said Chief Operating Officer Ruben Brooks. “By strengthening our bond internally, engaging together with the community, and starting meaningful conversations that lead to effective problem-solving-that’s what it’s going to take to get us to the finish line.”

For the small group charged with bringing transformative public infrastructure that enhances mobility, fosters culture and improves connections to economic opportunity, the experience was fun and refreshing and they look forward to future opportunities to come together for other worthy causes that positively impact our city.

The same people working behind the scenes to bring the Atlanta BeltLine project to life are also working in communities across Atlanta – sometimes in unexpected ways – to be good neighbors and make the project as inclusive as possible. This post is the first in a new series called BeltLine Connections, which will feature timely stories of service by Atlanta BeltLine, Inc. staff that highlight important issues facing Atlanta communities.

Atlanta’s schools are an integral part of the Atlanta BeltLine, as their students represent the diverse local communities who will inherit and shape the project in the years to come. Last school year, Atlanta Public Schools served nearly 52,000 students in 89 schools across the city. One in four of these schools are within the BeltLine Planning Area, a roughly half-mile zone on either side of the Atlanta BeltLine corridor that encompasses everything within walking distance of mainline trails and transit.

These schools influence the project at the neighborhood-level through the subarea master planning process, guiding decision-making about where to enhance parks and green spaces, where to focus most on pedestrian safety, and where to encourage mixed-income housing so that kids can safely walk to school. While this kind of long-range strategic planning is important, the immediate experiences of Atlanta school children today – in 2019 – are also critical to the future success of a BeltLine that is equitable, inclusive, and benefits all Atlantans.

Story Highlights

• Atlanta Public Schools (APS) served over 50,000 students in 89 schools in 2018-19
• One in four APS schools are located within the BeltLine Planning Area
• The “summer slide” can cost students two months’ worth of learning and disproportionately affects children from low-income families
• Atlanta BeltLine, Inc. sponsored the end-of-summer cookout for the Freedom School program at Emmaus House in Peoplestown
• ABI staff served lunch to K-5 students – along with their families and teachers – to celebrate their achievements at the end of a six-week, reading-focused curriculum

In Atlanta and across the nation, one of the biggest challenges facing today’s students, parents, and educators is the “summer slide.” The annual phenomenon can claim up to two months’ worth of material learned during the school year, and it accounts for over half of the achievement gap between students from lower- and higher-income households. For this reason, addressing the summer slide is essential for pursuing equity in the City of Atlanta, which has the three highest-poverty rate schools in the state at every grade level – elementary, middle, and high. And looking beyond city limits to the state of Georgia, where 66% of fourth-graders are not proficient in reading, underscores the need for summer learning that focuses on reading skills in particular.

One summer program trying to do exactly that can be found in the heart of the BeltLine geography in the historic Peoplestown neighborhood. There, Emmaus House, a faith-based non-profit organization serving the neighborhood since 1967, operates a six-week reading program for Atlanta students from kindergarten to fifth grade who may have limited access to books and other learning opportunities during the summer. The program is based on the Children’s Defense Fund’s Freedom Schools model, a literacy and cultural enrichment program rooted in the Civil Rights Movement and nonviolent community activism in 1960s Mississippi. Last year, Emmaus House was one of 183 program sites serving nearly 12,000 students in 28 states across the country through the summer curriculum, which emphasizes small class size, culturally relevant reading material, cooperative learning, and hands-on activities like music and dance. The program shows promising results: according to Emmaus House, on average 85% of their Freedom School scholars maintain or advance their reading level after six weeks.

Because the Emmaus House program is based at Barack and Michelle Obama Academy, an elementary school is just two blocks from DH Stanton Park and the future Southside Trail, it made perfect sense for Atlanta BeltLine, Inc. (ABI) to get involved. But the partnership initially grew out of another Freedom School program 700 miles away in Cleveland, Ohio, where ABI Community Engagement Advocate Kathrine Morris had volunteered while working at a community development corporation focused on affordable housing. Kathrine joined ABI in September 2018, the same month ABI’s Planning and Community Engagement team kicked off a half-year campaign to update the Master Plan for Subarea 2, which includes Peoplestown. When developing such significant documents – the first plan had been in place for almost a decade – ABI strives to enlist as many community voices as possible through its public meetings in order to make the process accessible, inclusive, and participatory. Still, knowing that conventional public meetings are only one piece of the equation when building relationships and visibility in local communities, Kathrine looked for ways to get involved with a major non-profit and elementary school serving the subarea.

Last month, the community engagement team at Atlanta BeltLine, Inc. was honored to receive an invitation from Emmaus House Executive Director Greg Cole to participate in one of the program’s morning “Read Aloud” sessions. Read Aloud guests are people with a unique connection, interest, or background in the local community who visit to read an engaging story of their choice – typically a favorite children’s book – to Freedom School scholars. ABI Vice President of Planning, Engagement and Art Beth McMilian jumped at the opportunity. Her selection? “This Jazz Man” by Karen Ehrhardt, a colorful and rhythmic reinterpretation of the old nursey rhyme “This Old Man” that introduces kids to legendary African-American jazz musicians.

The following week, ABI sponsored a cookout for the Emmaus House Freedom School end-of-summer celebration. The event capped off six weeks of programming with a full-class presentation and performance for scholars’ families to showcase everything they’d learned, read, and accomplished during the summer. Staff from ABI’s Planning, Engagement and Art team (and one very gracious spouse) hauled in a grill and hundreds of hot dogs, prepared plates, and served students and their families. Most importantly, they had an opportunity to connect with community members in a new way, outside of the standard public meeting – and to build a foundation for deeper partnership with future generations of BeltLine neighbors.