Atlanta BeltLine Origins: An Interview with Ryan Gravel

In 1999, while everyone was making post-apocalyptic survival plans in anticipation of Y2K destroying the technological universe, Ryan Gravel was busy making plans to save a city. Writing his master’s thesis at Georgia Tech on the Atlanta BeltLine, the idea of reconstruction obviously didn’t phase him as he was laying the the ground work for the project that would revitalize Atlanta.

Now the Design Manager at Perkins + Will for the Atlanta BeltLine Project, Gravel isn’t just watching his idea for the BeltLine come to life, he’s actually implementing it as the project is now in its fifth year of construction. After traveling to the far reaches of the Atlanta BeltLine I not only realized how big his vision was, but also the complexity of seeing the project to fruition. I still had more questions. Who better to ask than the man himself.

Getting in touch with Ryan Gravel proved to be a lot easier than I had imagined. Atlanta showed it’s small town colors when I discovered that my Dad worked down the hall from him. An e-mail, a phone call and a few days later– we were given the opportunity to sit down with the “author and creator” of our faith…in the Atlanta BeltLine.

Purge: You wrote your master’s thesis paper on the BeltLine back in 1999. How did you know that the railroad was even there?

Ryan Gravel: I like railroads. I grew up in Chamblee, but I moved downtown to go to Georgia Tech for undergrad. I was fascinated with the industrial sort of gritty side of the city. As a suburban kid I had never really seen that part of the world before. Because I like railroads and following where they go and looking on maps, I spent a lot of time driving around the city looking around at things. So I knew that there was this loop of railroads.

Purge: Did you ever go out and hike the entire BeltLine?

Ryan Gravel: I didn’t hike it until years later when I had decided that this is what I wanted to do my [thesis] project on in Grad school.

Purge: Where did you get the idea for re-purposing the BeltLine?

Ryan Gravel: I spent a year abroad in Paris and when you live in such a civilized place you want to come back and make this place like that. After that, I started studying in graduate school how the design of infrastructure systems influences urban development. So the same way that the streetcars came out of downtown and neighborhoods like Virginia-Highlands, West End and Grant Park were built–the same way the interstate highway system created a fundamentally different kind of growth pattern.

How do you design an infrastructure system that creates a private market reaction to create the kind of places we might want to live? You know, more compact urban districts with street level retail, parks, transit, all that stuff. So that was the idea for the infrastructure– and applying it to the BeltLine space became the next step.

Purge: I first discovered the BeltLine for myself right at Ponce and North Avenue. Since then they’ve laid gravel and turned it into a walking trail. How rough and overgrown was the BeltLine in general prior to the different areas being cleaned up?

Ryan Gravel: Yeah. It was really rough. In the late summer you could barely even move because there was so much kudzu. There were places down by Inman Park where it was shoulder deep and you had to crawl over it to get through. It was crazy. People did use it. There was a narrow little foot path. It was a much more raw condition and of course the tracks were still there. All of that came up in the Fall of ‘09 after the city had acquired it. It was at that point that it became much more use-able for the general public.

Purge: I was really surprised at how fast we could get to certain parts of the city so quickly. I walked from Ponce to the Starbucks on Monroe in less than 5 minutes. I don’t think the general public realizes the convenience that the BeltLine will bring.

Ryan Gravel: Unless you get out there and walk it and see the connections it makes, it’s still abstract. On the east side you can even bike from Piedmont Park to Dekalb Avenue in 10 minutes. It’s nothing. I do think it’s going to change a lot of people’s behaviour. Once we get the first piece of the trail built there’s going to be a lot more momentum to finish the rest of the trail and get the transit going too.

Purge: I saw one of the installations for the Art on The BeltLine event last year. How effective was that in terms of getting people out there to see what’s going on?

Ryan Gravel: That was huge. The idea was to get people out there so they knew that they could start using it. They’re going to do it again this year. The challenge this year on the east side is that it’s about to undergo construction for the permanent concrete trail. So parts of it may it be closed during that time.

Purge: Before I discovered the BeltLine it sounded like a mystical place that only a chosen few had been to, now I feel like everywhere I go people are talking about it. It seems like its momentum is really gaining.

Ryan Gravel: It’s crazy. It started out as a grassroots movement and we’ve had this unbelievable amount of people excited about it and making it happen. It’s grown since then–more people, more publicity, more, more, more. But you still find people who have never heard of it even though they live near it. It may be that they’re just not paying attention. If you know about it and are following it, it’s generally pretty easy to know what’s going on.

Purge: As the Design Manager for the Atlanta BeltLine Corridor Design Project at Perkins + Will, what direction are you going in terms of how the BeltLine is going to look when completed?

Ryan Gravel: In the design we’re trying to retain the sense of adventure and sort of the grittiness of it. We don’t want it to feel like everywhere else. We don’t want it to feel like a corporate plaza. It needs to be a little rough around the edges, but it needs to be safe too.

We know a lot about the BeltLine already so there’s not a lot of learning curve. Even as much as we know about it, what we found in the design process is that it’s really complex.It looks kind of easy at first because it’s flat, but by the time you start layering in the topography and adjacencies and other variables it gets really complex really fast.

Purge: Did you ever think that when you wrote your thesis on the BeltLine that you would actually be working on the project one day?

Ryan Gravel: Early on it was just a great conversation. I didn’t even think that we would be doing it. We were going around and talking to neighborhoods about it. It was just cool as a planner and a designer to be talking about quality of life and the kinds of places we want to live and how we could change where we live into those kinds of places. It was interesting.

Purge: Why do you think the BeltLine project has been successful so far?

Ryan Gravel: The public fell in love with the project and took ownership of it. It was really crazy to see because it takes a lot of people to pull off something big like this. The fact that it’s so complex, it’s so hard and political; the idea that it’s still more-or-less true to what everyone bought into in the beginning; I think that’s a testament to how much the public is involved with it day-to-day. that’s not only cool for the BeltLine, but I think there’s some lessons there. We should build places that people get excited about.

Purge: Your Keynote at The TEDx Conference really resonated with me, because I want to see Atlanta make the jump to the next level. It seems like if the BeltLine Project goes as planned that Atlanta could truly be one of the greatest cities in America.

Ryan Gravel: Atlanta is at a really interesting point right now. We’re growing up. We’re making some decisions right now that are either going to make Atlanta a really wonderful place to live or not. In terms of Urban Planning, Atlanta is an exciting place to be because it is changing dramatically right before our eyes.

Chicago is pretty much always going to be Chicago. Boston, San Francisco–those cities are so established in their cultural identity. They can do big projects like the BeltLine, but they’re not game changing in terms of their overall identity.

Atlanta is wide open. People are moving back into the city and we have the opportunity to leverage that growth to change things. It’s such a cool opportunity, that you certainly want to be here. Whether we make the right decisions or not– this is where the 21st century is being defined. I think it’s an exciting place to be.

Purge: If everything goes as planned, when do you think the BeltLine will be finished and you can die in peace?

Ryan Gravel: To be honest with you and I really believe this answer: I don’t think it’s ever done. When is Atlanta done? When is New York City or Paris done? It’s never done. What’s so exciting about the BeltLine is that it’s so embedded in all of the kinds of things that it takes to make a city that it’s not like a simple project with a definable area that simply needs design and construction.

The BeltLine is like a living, breathing part of the city that will change over time. Part of the answer is that it’s never done. It’s always going to change and evolve as the city grows, evolves and changes. Atlanta will be a fundamentally different place in 20 or 30 years.

The other answer is that it’s sort of done now. I mean, it’s not done, but you can go out there and enjoy it now. You can hike or you can bike and there’s public art. It’s being programmed into use now in a way that I think is already changing behaviour and already getting people excited.

Purge: When do you think that transit and other main components of the BeltLine will be available?

Ryan Gravel: The primary funding source is a tax allocation district that has a 25 year life that started in 2006. So we’ve got 20 more years. As that money rolls in over time then we will be able to build it up. With that said, I think the project has the ability to move faster than that.

Certainly, nobody really wants to wait that long. It’s just that in Georgia, transit money is scarce for projects like this. I do think that because it combines community development, with public health, with mobility and all the other aspects, that it really is a model project across the country. There’s nothing like the BeltLine anywhere. I think if we can start getting some attention in Washington, I have a hope that we can get it rolling faster.

Purge ATL Atlanta BeltLine Series
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