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According to a recent report in the Atlanta Business Chronicle,  MARTA is responding to the market that has perhaps driven the desire for mass transit and is offering land near several train stations to developers. 

Gas prices in metro Atlanta have eclipsed $4 a gallon, spurring increased ridership on MARTA trains and GRTA (Georgia Regional Transportation Authority) buses.

MARTA, or the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, is considering whether to issue requests for proposals (RFPs) by early next year to develop:

-11 acres at its Brookhaven Station

-6 acres at its Lenox Station

-and 1.5 acres at its North Avenue station that it could take bids on in 2009.

The sites won’t be offered until MARTA has a clear idea of what kind of transit-oriented developments, or TODs, best suit those stations. MARTA is doing engineering studies on the sites and creating its development guidelines.

“We are very interested in what we are going to create there,” said Darryl Connelly, MARTA’s director of transit-oriented development and real estate. MARTA would prefer to retain the land and ground lease instead of selling the land.

The development firm Carter did it at MARTA’s Lindbergh station. A doctor’s building is part of a transit-oriented development at MARTA’s Medical Center station by Northside and Saint Joseph’s hospitals. MARTA has also received inquiries about its Brookhaven site in recent years.

But, not until the climb in gas prices began to combine with other factors — including a growing desire for smaller homes near the city — did MARTA have the market for its sites that it can boast today.

And, before the current market, there wasn’t the same need to draft scenarios in which mixed-use developments could blossom at its stations — a vision of MARTA planners years ago. MARTA has 38 stations on 48 miles of rail.

The state of Michigan’s retirement system owns a site it could develop in Northpark Town Center on Abernathy Road. Northpark is connected via tunnel to the Sandy Springs MARTA station.

Orlando-based Kessler Collection Hotels is developing a hotel that will also be connected to the Sandy Springs station.

Local developers Barry Real Estate Companies Inc. and Ackerman & Co., along with Boston-based The General Investment & Development Companies, are each either developing or planning to build projects near MARTA stations in the office market around Perimeter Mall, said Yvonne Williams, president of the Perimeter Community Improvement District (PCID), whose organization is primarily responsible for coordinating the flow of pedestrian and vehicular traffic in the area.

The Perimeter Mall area has the Medical Center, and Dunwoody and Sandy Springs MARTA stations. Farther north on Ga. 400, MARTA may consider a transit-oriented development around its North Springs station. Those plans could be years away from coming to fruition, MARTA says.

“The four MARTA stations create a major asset for the Perimter market, exceptional to the Atlanta region,” Williams said. “Perimeter is looking to densify around those stations.”