MARTA Development Faces Pushback From Brookhaven Residents
The development MARTA is proposing around the Brookhaven-Oglethorpe station could include apartments, restaurants, park space and a hotel.
MARTA.
MARTA calls the 15-acre project it’s planning around the Brookhaven-Oglethorpe station a “transit-oriented development,” but nearby resident Don Green prefers a different term.
“It’s more like a traffic-oriented disaster,” Green said.
Green came out Thursday night for MARTA’s latest community meeting about the project, which is set to include apartments, offices and retail space.
He doesn’t think Brookhaven’s roads can handle that kind of dense development.
“You’re going to put two thousand cars out onto Peachtree every day at rush hour off of those office buildings?” Green said. “It ain’t going to happen. They’re not going to get in and out.”
Concerns, like Green’s, over traffic have come up over and over. They’re why earlier this week Brookhaven Mayor John Ernst asked MARTA to delay its zoning application two months to June 1.
In that time the transit agency will address the residents’ worries, said Amanda Rhein, MARTA’s director of transit-oriented development and real estate.
“We’re doing a traffic impact analysis,” Rhein said, “and [city officials] want us before we submit for rezoning to come back and say this is what we found and this is what we’re going to do to mitigate the problem.”
Rhein said MARTA also has to convince skeptics that people living at the station will be less reliant on cars because of the proximity to transit.
MARTA is working on transit-oriented developments near several stations around metro Atlanta, including one that’s a single stop north of Brookhaven in Chamblee.
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