City Taps Weeks to Head $20B Beltline Enterprise

ATLANTA-Mayor Shirley Franklin has selected A. Ray Weeks Jr., a local developer of 30 million sf of industrial properties, to chair a committee that will plan a total nine million sf of industrial, office and retail space through some of the city's most blighted neighborhoods.

Weeks and Franklin couldn't be reached by GlobeSt.com's publication deadline but area industrial brokers and consultants familiar with the city's Beltline project tell GlobeSt.com the project will take at least 20 years to complete. Meanwhile, local developers are excited for the opportunity to penetrate the mostly undeveloped areas in the inner city, brokers who represent a few of the developers tell GlobeSt.com.

"You are going to see a lot of dirt changing hands over the next couple of years, even though this [project] isn't going to see daylight for many moons to come," a Gwinnett County developer who will be bidding, in time, for some of the inner city properties, tells GlobeSt.com.

Local real estate investor Wayne Mason has already completed a review with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources on his five-mile planned, mixed-use undertaking along railroad tracks. Mason, a former Gwinnett County commission chairman, bought 4.6 miles of track last December from Virginia-based Norfolk Southern Corp. for $25 million or $373,134 per acre, as GlobeSt.com previously reported.

At $8.57 per sf, the tract was considered an expensive buy at the time, local industrial brokers tell GlobeSt.com. The land encompasses a railroad track corridor running from DeKalb Avenue to Piedmont Park to Interstate 85. Mason hasn't disclosed what he will build on the site but brokers speculate high-rise condominium units would produce the best return for the speculator.

Sources in a position to know and brokers who have worked with Weeks in the past tell GlobeSt.com Weeks and Cousins do not plan to be involved in any of the future developments along the Beltline. Weeks Properties Group and Cousins are partners in several planned industrial projects. Ray Weeks is managing partner of Weeks Properties Group.

City hall sources confirm Weeks' committee will be charged with creating a special tax district to help underwrite the planned network of transit, parks and trails along a 22-mile circle of railroad tracks in intown Atlanta. The system of parks and transit, according to city projections, would then attract about $20 billion in private commercial investments and create about 40,000 new jobs, sources intimate with the venture tell GlobeSt.com.