Mayor Tom Reed, Start-ups, & The City of Chatt Hills

Tom Reed is more of a "start-up guy" than a politician, in fact he's been on the Inc. 500/5000 List 7x for 3 different startups. But moving to Serenbe offered a unique opportunity to lead a "start-up city", Chattahoochee Hills, as Mayor. He talks about how to thrive financially while mindfully preserving a city's culture, and discusses how the the city provides an amazing quality of life due to the forward thinking zoning of Chattahoochee Hills. We round out the episode sharing how he works with other southside mayors to revitalize and preserve rural land on the edge of Atlanta.

3:20 - A Good Place To Grow Up
Tom Reed found Serenbe through his wife, Karen. They'd been with Capri Blue in Mississippi (while living in South Bend, IN), and decided to move to Roswell to be near family. Their kids had cornfields in Indiana, but the Roswell HOA fined them because of a tree fort in the back yard, so the Reeds knew it was time to find somewhere with space, nature, and a place for children to play out in the open. They were in Serenbe the weekend the Daisy opened, and that day reminded them of the time they lived in Indiana, so they reserved a lot. The lot wouldn't be ready in time for the kids to start school, so they also bought one of the only homes that were built at the time.

Looking back it's easy to see the benefits of living in a place like this with kids. They were building treehouses with neighbors, their children were making friends with peers and other generations. It was wonderful to be a part of building community traditions, which is something small towns understand but it's hard and harder to find. Tom's oldest daughter Emmeline had her first job with Chef Nic Bour when he was here back then. She wasn't legally old enough at 13, so she wrote to the Governor for permission...and got it! He credits raising his kids here for them growing up to be conscientious and well-adjusted adults.

16:19 - The Economics of a City
Tom became somewhat of a "student" of urban planning after moving to Serenbe. The first weekend the Reeds had moved in, Garnie came by with a petition to have Serenbe annexed into Palmetto. He was interested in what was happening and realized that the access to nature that Serenbe's residents had required intentionality both in thought and in build. Tom likes to dive deeply into things that interest him, and the annexation process was one of those things (though they ended up creating the City of Chatt Hills instead!).

Chattahoochee Hill Country Organizing Committee came together to do research on whether cityhood would be economically viable. Former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and Steve Nygren wrote the city charter following after Sandy Springs, Johns Creek, and other metro-Atlanta municipalities. They'd been approved previously, but it required a 60% vote from constituents to go through. They had 90%, and were ready to take control of their own destiny. Tom had an optimistic vision of what development could be, but if Chatt Hills had been annexed piece by piece, the rural zoning they'd been able to pass may not have held out. The biggest benefit to becoming a city was that taxes stay local. There's now a full-time, paid fire and police department, and the people that work here know the people that live here.

29:50 - Entering Local Politics
Cities are created in January, but you don't get your tax money until January. They struggled in the first year to get services set up, and needed to find someone to lead the new city. Tom was running a lot of the initial efforts as the president of the organizing committee, so he was drafted to run for mayor. They had 30 people running for office in general, and three running for mayor, so there was a lot of interest in community involvement. He's a startup guy, this was a startup city, and he felt like he could provide a vision. His opponents had lived in Chatt Hills a long time, and one of them one that first election. Tom volunteered to continue helping out.

"Startup" finances are tough, so the City had tough times the first few years. They went into heavy debt because of overhiring, and by the end of that mayoral cycle the City was nearly bankrupt. Tom ran again with the current mayor's support, won, and turned the city budget around. Now Chatt Hills makes profits that they roll back into road paving.

36:49 - Walkable Developments Good For Cities
There's also a structural deficit in Chatt Hills. There's no industry, no factory, no commercial money to come in to support roads. Zoning predicated on the idea that by developing 30% in highly-walkable areas, you create the money for preservation of remaining land and creates a tax base that provides funding for all the roads that are between these walkable areas. The biggest issue for the City right now is that there aren't more "Serenbes."

Serenbe has about 80 acres disturbed of taxable land, but has created about 50% of the City's tax base. This will eventually be one of the richest cities in the State for a couple reasons. When you develop this way, the service costs are lower. Concentrated people means concentrated road networks (fewer to maintain) and fewer police and fire stations, because they're also concentrated closer to where the clusters of people are. Another consequential benefit has been public parks. Cochran Mill Park is one of the busiest in the county, and there's a possibility for thousands of acres of parks in addition to the 1,200 that exist right now.

There's also an equity piece in this puzzle that's significant to Tom. Roswell used to be farmland, and in the last 30-40 years most of them have been displaced because of urban sprawl. Chatt Hills will never have that. The family farms and parcels of land that have been in families for generations, they will still be here generations from now. The transfer development rights program will keep them on their land and provide wealth through development.

42:40 - Balancing Development
Tom is looking forward to 3 ideal projects with the City of Chattahoochee Hills. The first is a mixed-use development initiative with Bouckart Farm, which he's excited about because they're committed to maintaining rural landscaping during their development. The next project is with Campbellton, which used to have a couple thousand people but they left when the railroad did so there's not much there now. Parts of the area are in South Fulton, so the two cities are working together to rezone a portion and create the ability for small parcel owners to participate in village development.

Tom believes Serenbe's outcome depends on what happens around it. There's a trend right now for distribution warehouses everywhere, and they're not the best use of the land. They contribute to the economy, but much less than other, more environmentally friendly opportunities. Tom wants cities to work together and consider the bigger picture, which is why he works with the other south side mayors to attract better businesses that are in line with their future views. They hope the Campbellton development will be an example of how that can be done.

Finally, they're looking at ways they can do things in small "bites." Chatt Hills is working on zoning flexibility to be able to concentrate development where it's already happening, like Serenbe. Through TDRs, they can have dense commercial while building thoughtfully and maintaining rural landscaping.

Chatt Hills is small, but Tom hopes that it will be a model of what a city can do. With places like Bouckart Farms and Serenbe succeeding as examples. The airport development also acts as an economic driver for all the cities around it. It's a message of aiming higher and developing smarter. There are opportunities and data points about great things happening on the south side of Atlanta.

55:07 - Transit Connecting Cities
It's easy to see the economic growth that happened on the north side of Atlanta, but they're now having to go in and retro-fit transit because it's now a desirable. Cities south of Atlanta are working to put that in now, the same way comparable cities like Charlotte and Denver are. Chattahoochee Hills, South Fulton, and other south side cities have made the plans and are ready to build the infrastructure once the funding is there.

MARTA had a meeting to see what the community thought about bringing rapid transit south. Most of the people that attended were people that lived far out in the country and may not have wanted it, but when MARTA asked about how all the people living out here would get to work and they realized roads would be clogged, they came around to the idea.