Should Failed Malls and Office Parks be Converted Into Green Space?

New York was the first with the Highline. Atlanta has the Beltline. And now Chicago has its 606. Each is conceptualized to provide ribbons of green or park space in urban zones along abandoned rail tracks. And the real estate along these newly conceived greenway paths around the country is now highly coveted by developers looking to cash in on market demand for proximity to the limited park space available in US urban corridors.

We have talked about how the Highline will soon be turned into a shadowed canyon by all the building activity now crowding around it in lower Manhattan. In Atlanta, the Beltline won’t become a canyon, but its green borders appear destined to be walled in by assorted utterly banal low and midrise garden apartments and restaurant-bar strips catering to slake the thirst of Atlanta bikers and joggers using what has become a very well-worn path.

Smart real estate hounds are homing in on adjacent land tracts to cash-in over time. Not so ironically, this gambit benefits from unrestrained sprawl development that basically ignored the need for public greenspace and left it to suburban backyards to substitute. Better from an immediate profits perspective to cram in more black-topped parking space, malls, and subdivisions than plan for large parks to serve as a vernal escape from car-dependent streetscapes. Near-sighted politicos have always been more interested in locking in more tax assessments and just maybe large campaign contributions or taking other developer inducements, failing to realize that parks (think Central Park, Lincoln Park, Rock Creek Park) make cities more livable and attractive. And that eventually directly translates into higher (much higher) property values in districts adjacent to them. I would venture to say that parks are as important as good schools in driving local property values.

Outside of Midtown neighborhoods near Piedmont Park (designed by the sons of Central Park’s creator Frederick Olmstead in the late 19^th Century), Atlanta residents are park starved—like in other Sunbelt sprawldoms many districts don’t even have sidewalks. Years ago when I stayed with a friend, we would have no choice but to drive to access short jogging trails like the one along the Chattahoochee River near the I-285 perimeter. Bicyclists, meanwhile, take their lives in hand cycling along serpentine streets.

No wonder the Beltline now teems with people on weekends and on summer evenings after work.

The Beltlines are creative attempts to fill the park void in over-developed places where it is difficult to undo poorly thought out planning schemes. Converting failed malls and office parks into green space could provide worthwhile alternatives if local powers could just factor in the long-term benefits. But cash strapped budgets and tax-me-less mantras throw up hurdles.

And now letting developers crowd around these limited greenspaces and build crappy projects along them threatens to undermine their value over time. Better to protect the air and light in these old rail corridors, allow for more plantings and art works, and places for people to congregate and relax.

That’s unlikely to happen.

The views expressed here are the author’s own and not that of ALM Real Estate Media.