Kanye is here, Casino's in Georgia?, Centennial Yards master plans, and a new podcast
The Update - July 22nd
Welcome to my freemium newsletter by me, King Williams. A documentary filmmaker, journalist, podcast host, and author based in Atlanta, Georgia. This is a newsletter covering the hidden connections of Atlanta to everything else.
1906 Atlanta Race Riot walking tour
After feedback from yesterday’s book club, I want to make sure that for those of you who want to attend a downtown walking tour, you do. So I created a brief survey that you can fill out below to let me know your availability!
1906 Atlanta Race Riot tour survey
The tour is open to anyone, please be advised that it’s Georgia, so it’s very hot and we will be walking downtown, so wear comfortable shoes!
The 25th anniversary of the 1996 Olympics
Monday, July 19th marked the 25th anniversary of the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games. The Atlanta History Center is hosting a retrospective exhibit on the games now at their Buckhead location until September 5th. The AJC is also doing a 25-year retrospective content push including both articles from the past and new works.
What I’m reading:
What am I listening to
The Atlanta Story E6 - Maurice Cherry
Peachpod Podcast - Athens Passes Georgia's Most Progressive Local Budget
New Podcast Alert: Allison Arieff
In this episode, I talk to west coast journalist Allison Arieff (@aarieff). Allison is the new Director of Communications for urban tech platform Replica. Allison is a former contributing writer at The New York Times, former editor at The City Journal, and former lecturer at the Berklee College of Environmental Design.
In this interview, we talk about an article of her’s in The New Statesman entitled ‘What Ford’s new headquarters tells us about the future of transport’ on how legendary automobile manufacturer Ford was adapting its headquarters for a future where no one owns a car. We also talk about NIMBYism, the San Francisco school reopening controversy, and more!
This interview can also be heard here on Substack but is also available on Apple Podcasts, also Spotify, and SoundCloud as well.
1. Red Clay News
The Atlanta Regional Commission’s Marian Liou wants to hear your story on Atlanta, for her series ‘Who’s Atlanta?’.
The Atlanta Dream are the 2021 Sports Humanitarian Team of the Year.
The Center for Civic Innovation is hosting Building While Black on July 29th from 11am-1pm
Two Atlanta students have become the first-ever Black female duo to win the Harvard International Debate Competition.
The Buckhead Condo Association are fighting plans for a Ritz Carlton Tower…
The city of Atlanta is seeking a $1 million dollar grant to study how to feasibly cap the downtown connector
A proposal has been submitted for a historic renovation of the former AJC office downtown.
A. Georgia Insurance Commissioner Jim Beck is on trial
The trial of currently suspended Insurance Commissioner Jim Beck took the stand yesterday in his fraud case. Beck and his cousin are accused of taking funneling taxpayer money into cash payments to a mysterious vendor named ‘Jerry Jordan’. The trial should wrap up in the next few days.
B. Casino Gambling is trying to make a comeback in Georgia
A coalition of large gaming companies is launching a new push ahead of the 2022 legislative session to get casino gambling in the state of Georgia. It was back during the 2021 legislative session this past spring that saw the failure of both casino gambling and horse racing. This is all while the Georgia Lottery reported a record $1.54 billion dollars in profits for the last fiscal year. Over the last few years, several proposals have been submitted for casinos in Georgia including several in Atlanta, one in Gwinnett, another of the Savannah coast, and new a potential casino project on 500 acres of land alongside Lake Hatwell.
C. Kanye is coming to Mercedes-Benz Stadium today
Kanye West is at Mercedes-Benz Stadium today for a special listening party for his latest album DONDA, named after his mother, the late Donda West. From the Twitter rumor mill alone, people have purchased tickets and began immediately started scalping them. The Kanye West redemption tour is strategically taking place in Atlanta, a place that technically never closed in both practice and public opinion. As well as the epicenter for both Black culture and hip hop, so starting his public comeback here makes the most sense for West who is looking to jumpstart his career once again.
The Kanye West rollouts have been legendary
A Kanye West rollout has been the stuff of legend dating back to his first album The College Dropout in February of 2004. By the time of Late Registration in August of 2005 we got the all-time moment of “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people”, 2007 saw the end of the CD era when he and superstar 50 Cent released albums on the same day, becoming a Rolling Stone magazine cover level event. While 2008 saw the rise of emo Kanye, as well as West intersecting in some way with nearly all aspects music popular music including autotuned art sing-sung full albums, animation, aesthetics, and the accidental creation of the sound of Drake. This was before kicking off into an entirely new mode of music distribution, comeback tour (remember the whole Taylor Swift thing?), and marketing during his famed 2010-11 run of his universally acclaimed My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010) and the G.O.O.D. Friday’s mixtape series. Watch The Throne (2011) collaborative tour/album with rapper Jay Z saw the combination of secrecy as a marketing move and lavish ode to maximalism.
Since 2013, West has used arenas and attention-seeking venues to promote his albums. This includes the 2013 Yeezus promo run of public art projects around the world, the 2016 The Life of Pablo listening/fashion show at Madison Square Garden, plus attempting to launch the music streaming service Tidal.
As well as his unfortunate mental health crisis-riddled 2018 promo run included a listening party in Wyoming, an ill-fated appearance at the LA offices of TMZ, and concluding at a bizarre visit at The White House. While 2019 saw West perform with his choir Sunday Service at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia as part of his promo run for Jesus Is King album. The Kanye 2021 promo run is off with a pair of well-executed video teasers. The first video is from sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson and the second is a music video snippet from Atlanta rapper turned internet legend, Lil Nas X. For West, Atlanta, a place that technically never closed in both practice and public opinion makes the most sense for West who is looking to jumpstart his career once again. He needs both Black culture and hip hop to welcome him back.
Top Story:
Centennial Yards (aka The Gulch) has released new images and is finally underway
Centennial Yards (aka The Gulch) or the parking lot across from State Farm Arena.
Centennial Yards has been a lightning rod of controversy from the beginning. The highly contentious project was fast-tracked during the fall of 2017 as part of the state of Georgia’s ill-fated bid to attract Amazon HQ2. That process saw another even more contentious developer incentive of $1.9 billion dollars attached to subsidizing the $5 billion dollar development. A development that managed to siphon funds that were initially meant for the Atlanta Public School System (APS) and took over a year to get finalized.
The Atlanta Business Chronicle (1/4/2019):
Under the agreement, which was announced Friday and is subject to votes by the city council and the school board, APS would drop its legal objections to the validation of bonds due to be sold to help finance the $5 billion project. Also, the school district pledged to support the Gulch project by giving up property tax revenue it would otherwise receive from the Westside Tax Allocation District through 2038.
In return, the school system would receive $15 million from the city, $10 million in reimbursement of educational and infrastructure development costs incurred by APS on completed projects in the Westside TAD and an additional $1.25 million a year from 2020 to 2023.
But there is one other issue, which is by APS continuing in this TAD, it could be forgoing hundreds of millions of dollars:
The AJC (4/23/2019):
The January agreement between APS and the city ended what had been a tumultuous few months in negotiating the Gulch deal. The massive mixed-use development includes up to $1.9 billion in public money, including potentially more than $300 million in future school taxes.
The future of the $5 billion downtown development, supported by Bottoms, had been uncertain as APS officials objected to the use of the school tax money for it. APS wanted the city to renegotiate the school district's participation in multiple tax-allocation districts, TADs, before agreeing to Gulch incentives.
TADs are areas where property taxes are frozen for a period of time and future increases in tax collections, generated from rising property values as the area redevelops, are diverted to help pay for that development.
The January agreement restructured how Atlanta school taxes are used to pay for development projects throughout the city and cleared the way for APS tax money to help pay for the Gulch.
The Centennial Yards to a developer incentive package that was bad even by Atlanta standards.
The deal includes the same right to privatize streets as the Underground Atlanta deal, which would allow for the blockage of potential protests, the homeless, or any unwanted individuals from what would be seen commonly as a public street. In addition, there was a commitment of $125 million that was supposed to go to Westside communities that were cut down to $8 million. This holds a pale in comparison to the 8,000 vehicle private parking deck (think Atlantic Station), that city would not collect revenue from but is also holding up the site to the ‘street level’ of State Farm Arena. Which produces other problems: One, the actual street level is 30 feet below, Two, despite being downtown, the site does not connect to MARTA, and Three, this already produces car-based more traffic downtown, which kills off opportunities for non-Centennial Yards businesses to work.
In addition, the bulk of this $1.9 billion in funding is going to the construction and maintenance of a downtown parking lot. Not to mention the bond issued for this property which will see potentially billions of dollars diverted for decades to support the project:
The Saporta Report (6/29/2020)
The Supreme Court of Georgia says it would indeed be “sound, feasible and reasonable” for a city development authority to issue up to $1.25 billion in bonds and forego tax money to finance the construction of a private, mixed-use development downtown.
In a unanimous ruling except one justice not participating, the court OK’d a complex deal that would see a city authority borrow money in several steps to help pay for private reconstruction of up to 15 blocks in the Gulch as “Centennial Yards.” The bonds would be paid off with “infrastructure fees” paid by Gulch businesses, once they open, in lieu of sales taxes.
The idea is that the city, county and state forego sales taxes until as late as 2048, but after that, they would collect sales tax money that wouldn’t have come from a vacant Gulch.
The deal of Centennial Yards could be seen as the first moment in which Atlanta’s relationship with current mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and the rise of the next Atlanta met. This project is one of many that started during the Reed administration and are seeing its fruits blossom for a new demographic of Atlanta who could care less about the history of the site, the costs, the terrible deals, and parking problems.
The project will likely not be done until 2024 and once completed will be part of a renewed push in downtown Atlanta. A downtown that just saw the CNN building sell for $145 million, a 22-story Margaritaville (with its own bad deal attached), across from the newly renovated Centennial Park. While on the other side of Centennial Yards will be the newly renovated old Norfolk Southern building (also owned by CIM), the new-ish Castleberry Station, the new Reverb hotel concept from Hard Rock cattycorner from Centennial Yards. All of his happening at the encroaching property flipping in Vine City + the Bluff (English Avenue). Even with all of those projects mentioned, downtown is still open for more opportunities for development.
This comes on the heels of former Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce EVP Brian P. Gowan being named president of Centennial Yards in late May. Gowan will be tasked with spearheading a project which could be one of the most transformational real estate projects in Atlanta’s history. Gowan has good relationships with many of the Atlanta politicos and financiers due to his time at the chamber. Gowan will also be aware of the potential backlash due to things that occurred before his arrival. Gowan will have to decide what his tenure will do (if anything) regarding equity, gentrification, and affordability.
2. National News
Statues of Robert E Lee and Jefferson Davis have been removed from Charlottesville, Virginia.
A Utah teenager has been charged with a hate crime for vandalizing a ‘back the blue’ sign.
A mural of George Floyd in Miami, Florida has been vandalized and repainted, following a continuation of desecration of public art projects related to him.
Several US military leaders were ready to stage a walkout if Trump won the 2020 election.
Chuck Schumer unveils legislation to decriminalize marijuana.
The US is looking to meet with the World Anti-Doping Agency over loosening marijuana restrictions in the wake of the Sha’Carri Richardson suspension.
Illinois will become the first state to mandate Asian American history be taught in schools.
California will provide free school meals for all public school students regardless of their family's income.
3. International News
Australia, one of the world leaders in the Covid-19 response, now is seeing an outbreak.
A new study suggests that Covid-19 could’ve been in Italy as early as October of 2019.
According to a recent study, alcohol may have led to an increase in 740,000 new cases of cancer last year globally.
Pope Francis has been released from the hospital after a 10-day stay regarding surgery to remove part of his colon.
The Norwegian women’s handball team is in a bit of controversy as the team is electing to wear shorts instead of bikini uniforms to compete at the Olympics.
Thousands of people have come to support a vandalized mural of English football player Marcus Rashford after he and several of his Black teammates have been inundated with slurs and hate speech following England’s loss to Italy at the 2020 Euro Cup.
NASA is looking into a potential Moon ‘wobble’ that could bring in a new surge of coastal flooding in the 2030s.