1. Water Quality: Any development which constructs new or replacement of more than 5,000 square feet of impervious area is required to provide  water quality treatment. The idea behind water quality treatment is to provide removal of suspended solids in stormwater in the most common storm events.
2. Channel Protection: Also known as the 1-year storm, this requires the development to detain the 1-year storm for a period of 24 hours to avoid the scouring and degradation of stream channels.
3. Detention: This requires the development to detain stormwater for the 2- through 25-year storm events to their pre-development flows.

Redevelopment projects present several unique challenges and opportunities. Among the most challenging hurdles that many redevelopment projects face is that of stormwater management – both water quality and water quantity (detention). Typically older developments, if they have any stormwater treatment at all, have an undersized facility that provides detention only. Current regulations in Gwinnett County, and across most of the metro Atlanta area, require those redeveloping parcels to provide the same level of stormwater management as is required for a greenfield development. In other words, the site, even if it is covered with buildings and parking lots, is viewed as though it is still in a forested, undisturbed state for stormwater management purposes. Gwinnett County, recognizing that redevelopment provides both economic and environmental advantages over greenfield development, is making development regulation changes to distinguish stormwater regulations between redevelopment and greenfield development.

Greenfield developments will continue to have to provide all three components of a stormwater facility (see table). A greenfield development is property still in an undeveloped state and has not had any impact on downstream properties.

Redevelopment projects, on the other hand, have impacted downstream properties as much as they likely can. Fully atoning for the sins of the past by providing the full host of stormwater management, while a noble idea, is not realistic on many projects. Redevelopment projects will have the opportunity to apply for a variance from providing channel protection and/or detention. Developed parcels, particularly those which are candidates for redevelopment, have already impacted their downstream channels. Providing channel protection won’t accomplish its intended purpose. Providing detention in an already urbanized zone only makes sense if there is existing flooding downstream during the more typical storm events. Otherwise it, too, doesn’t accomplish its intended purpose.

All projects will have to provide water quality, as required by state law. This makes sense, as water quality is an on-going impact in both greenfield development and existing developments. Unlike channel protection, stormwater runoff doesn’t reach a peak pollution point and then find a new stability or gradually reduce. Providing a measure of water quality on every project is the prudent thing to do, even if state law didn’t make it so.

This change to the Development Regulations will provide a significant new tool to redevelopment projects by addressing one of the most expensive and difficult challenges that a project faces. The variance, if approved, would allow a project to waive either all or a portion of channel protection and/or detention requirements. Once a variance is approved, the developer would pay a fee to Gwinnett County that would be utilized in the same fashion as fees from the County’s stream buffer variance. These fees are used in stream restoration projects throughout Gwinnett County. The fee will be calculated on the volume of stormwater management that is waived. (i.e. if 10,000 cubic feet of stormwater management is waived, multiply the 10,000 cubic feet by the cost per cubic foot to determine the fee amount.) The fee amount is currently under consideration and will eventually be set by the Board of Commissioners.

Gwinnett Village Community Improvement District and Gwinnett Place Community Improvement District conducted three case studies to assess the impact of the new regulations on sample redevelopment projects. In those cases, it was assumed that a variance would be sought for both the entirety of channel protection and detention. It was also assumed that the impervious area in the redevelopment scenario would be equal to its present condition. Two of the three cases were conducted on project sizes where many redevelopment projects are anticipated – sites in the half acre range. Typically, smaller redevelopment sites provide the most challenges for providing stormwater management due to the lack of land necessary to provide all three stormwater components. In most cases, stormwater management will be provided in an underground facility. These facilities can only be placed under parking lots or open space and reduce the buildable area on a site.

The variance can only be obtained for up to the existing impervious area on the project site. If a developer proposes to increase the impervious area beyond what presently exists, the developer will be responsible for providing all three stormwater components for the increased area. The developer will not be able to obtain a variance from the stormwater regulations for the increased impervious area and must maintain or improve the existing downstream conditions. The developer can still apply for a variance for the portion of the project up to the existing impervious area.

It is important to point out that these regulations only apply to the unincorporated portion of Gwinnett County. Projects within the cities located in Gwinnett County, should they chose to also follow this process, will have to adopt the changes into their development regulations. Since the cities represent some of the most urbanized portions of Gwinnett County, these regulation changes, if adopted, would enhance the ability for revitalization within their boundaries.

The bottom line is that these changes will provide a new tool for developers to add to their tool box to satisfy stormwater management requirements for redevelopment projects. This new tool will allow Gwinnett County to provide a significant advantage to developers looking to do redevelopment projects in the metro Atlanta area. At the same time, it will improve the environment by providing an additional funding source for improving the streams throughout the county. Of course, redevelopment projects themselves provide other significant environmental advantages over greenfield development by utilizing existing infrastructure and reducing consumption of undeveloped property.  Finally, it supports the significant economic impact that redevelopment projects provide by revitalizing the aging areas of the county while increasing employment and property values. This is one of those rare situations when new government regulations provide a win-win scenario for all involved. Gwinnett County should be applauded for its forward thinking and proactive efforts to address one of the biggest challenges that many projects face.

Taylor Anderson, PE, is President of Blue Landworks LLC. Blue Landworks provides civil engineering, land surveying and development consulting across the southeast. Taylor is the chairman of the committee assisting Gwinnett County in re-writing their development regulations on stormwater for redevelopment projects. The opinions expressed in this article are his and are not intended to represent those of Gwinnett County or the committee. A version of this article appeared on the Gwinnett Chamber’s Redevelopment Newsletter Website.

Recently the claim department of the Design Professional group of XL Insurance has seen an up tick of onerous public contracts. Public entities are using tough new contracts as a way to transfer inordinate amounts of project risk onto design professionals’ shoulders, jeopardize their insurance and make demands that design firms cannot reasonably fulfill.

Best advice: Read the contract. It sounds obvious, but many A/Es assume that the contract for a new project is the same one they received from the same entity on the last project. Onerous clauses and phrases that you negotiated out of one contract have a way of finding their way back into another.

In many contracts, engineers are accepting risk that their insurance will not cover. Worse still, many engineers don’t realize what they’ve done. It’s important, as an industry, to negotiate out those portions of the contract that transfer risk and responsibility to the engineer that the engineer has no control over. Often times this includes statements such as taking responsibility for the contractor’s actions, even if construction administration is not part of the contract. By accepting these unreasonable provisions in contracts, engineers are setting precedent for bad terms that will be carried forward in the future.

XL Insurance even makes the following strong statement regarding municipal contracts:

Public agencies have tremendous power and many delight in using it. [Emphasis added] However, persistence, reason and the knowledge that you were chosen based on your track record can get you past more than a few government attorneys. When you’re tempted to sign on the dotted line, think about your exposure to serious liability for circumstances you’d be rendered powerless to control. As tough as it may be to get a good public contract, it’s even more difficult to defend yourself under a bad one.

John McIlwain, ULI Senior Resident Fellow for Housing, describes the U.S. housing market, and how it will be affected by demographic trends. John’s talk was recorded at a gathering of ULI trustees on Jan. 26, 2010.

At the end of 2009, the area had 149,277 lots, down slightly from 149,782 in 2008, but above the 143,253 lots in 2007.

The inventory of lots kept rising because even has Atlanta’s housing market crashed, lots continued to be developed, said Eugene James, director of the Atlanta division of Metrostudy Inc., a residential real estate research firm.

“We were watching developments being reluctantly finished up,” James said.

In the 12 years Metrostudy has been recording data from metro Atlanta’s housing market, the area had the fewest new home starts — 4,400 — in 2009, James said.

That means in 2009, effectively only 500 lots came off the market in the metro Area, or about 1/3 of 1% of the available developed lots. Doing the math on new starts, 3,900 lots were developed last year in Atlanta.

At 4,400 new homes a year equates to a 34 year supply if no new lots were developed. A reasonable number of starts for the metro area in a normal economy is probably in the 20,000 unit range, meaning there is about a 7 year supply of lots. However, the reality is that anywhere between 10-20% of the current developed lots will likely never see houses on them either because of location or other factors including poor configuration and environmental concerns.

A good article from Inman News highlighted the area that many investment funds are headed to – residential lots.

As a result, finished lots are being dumped back into the market at 50 cents on the dollar — or much, much less — by builders and banks, which took back the properties due to loan defaults.

In bigger developments, investors have been buying these lots at 30 cents on the dollar, notes Nate Nathan, president of Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Nathan & Associates. In fact, well-funded investor groups have been sweeping up these long rows of unfinished lots by the dirtful leaving individual investors with no other option than to haunt smaller projects. And that, too, has been a worthwhile use of time and resources because, as Nathan points out, customized lots are selling for 10 cents to 20 cents on the dollar.

Think of it this way, lots are being acquired below finishing costs, which if new construction proceeds means the land cost is negligible, if not zero-valued.

The article noted that investors are expecting to hold the unfinished lots for 3 to 4 years and that they aren’t expecting significant new building to start until 2012. It also notes that we’ll need 1.2 million housing units in the next 10 years for population growth alone. (1.1 million units were built in the previous two years.)

Residential News

The WSJ says we don’t need to get worked up about Monday’s home sales report. Meanwhile, the ENR reports that while there won’t be a recovery in housing in the immediate future, one person believes that we’ll see 15%+ growth towards the end of the year and into 2011. In line with the weak housing numbers, Tom Royce reports that the Builders Confidence Index has dropped. Finally, not surprisingly, the WSJ reports that the number of subprime mortgages currently with negative equity is 6 in 10 borrowers on both the national and Atlanta level.

Commercial News

CIRE magazine highlights market trends for all sorts of markets and Atlanta is mentioned several times. The AJC summarizes the Atlanta office market. Finally, the WSJ thinks the worst is over for the commercial real estate market.

GA DOT

Lots of news on the transportation front this week for Georgia. Maria Saporta says that if we can’t do transportation funding right, then don’t do it at all. The ABC reports that DOT is changing its accounting practices in an effort to get projects moving. B King at Terminal Station comments on both the Saporta article and the fact that the statewide sales tax to fund transportation is dead. Finally, it what seems to be a never ending string of articles on ranking traffic, this week’s flavor ranks Atlanta a modest 22nd worst, which is actually pretty good.

Gwinnett Airport Privatization

A story that will probably be in the news a lot this year is the possibility of the privatization of Gwinnett County’s Briscoe Field. The Board of Commissioners is proceeding with studying the topic and reports on this can be found here, here, here and here.

Miscellaneous

Poverty is rising in Atlanta’s suburbs. A small business snapshot in the southeast. A look at a potential huge mixed-use project on Atlanta’s south side.

The region’s homebuilders and Realtors both reported the pace of home sales had softened slightly since August. Despite this, homebuilders noted an increase in traffic with several reporting the credit quality of potential buyers had improved as well. Demand for low- to mid-priced homes remained relatively strong, supported by the first-time home buyer tax credit and increased interest by investors. However, most continued to note downward pressure on home prices from foreclosures and short-sales. The majority of homebuilders and contractors observed construction remained very low. The sales outlook among both builders and Realtors over the next three months was less upbeat than reported in August.

Private-sector commercial real estate activity in the Southeast weakened further in September. Vacancy rates continued to rise across all segments, and contacts continued to cite downward pressure on rents. Developers reported fewer backlogs and more projects were delayed or canceled. Contractors expected activity to continue to decline into 2010.

Turns out that the US Geological Survey is actually saying that in many cases, this was a 500-year event.

“It is epic!” said Brian McCallum, assistant director for the USGS Water Science Center in Georgia. “The USGS can reliably say just how bad these floods were.”

They are calling this a 500-year flood because of the likeliness of it occurring is so rare, said McCallum. “We could have another flood next year, or floods back-to-back and still be considered 500-year floods because of the probability.”

Here is where the big problem for flooding in homes of people who didn’t have flood insurance comes in. The National Flood Insurance Program offers insurance to those who have property in the 100-year floodplain, not the 500-year floodplain. The 500-year floodplain is actually shown on many FEMA FIRM (Flood Insurance Rate Map) panels. If you’re curious to see where you property sits relative to a floodzone, you can search for flood maps at this FEMA website.

The Army Corps of Engineers, which has been a frequent target of criticism in Georgia, once again is on the defensive with regards to water releases from Lake Lanier during the floods. The Corps had this to say:

“The corps curtailed its operations on Sept. 19, and only minimal releases of approximately 670 cubic feet per second released through the small house unit have continued,” Coghlan said.

Those releases, about 300,000 gallons per minute, equated to less than an inch at a gauge 30 miles south of the dam in Vinings, according to the corps.

“Releasing from the small unit did not contribute to the localized flooding in the metro Atlanta area,” Coghlan said.

Coghlan said the flow out of large dams is rarely halted completely due to adverse impacts on river environments. The small unit generates power for the dam and project offices and “assisted in maintaining viable conditions for essential habitat below the dam,” Coghlan said.

As is usually the case with the Corps, their statements usually lead to more questions. While I doubt that releases of 670 cubic feet per second did much to exacerbate downstream flooding, the Corps apparently does have the ability to cut off all flow from Buford Dam according to Coghlan. Under what circumstances would the Corps actually do this? Coghlan correctly points out that cutting off all flow from Buford Dam would have some fairly bad consequences for the immediate area below the dam – the river would essentially be dry immediately below the dam. But what is the “essential habitat” and is 670 cfs the minimum amount of maintain “viable conditions”? Coghlan maintains that releasing did not contribute to the localized flooding downstream, but hardly seems like an accurate statement. If it’s a matter of adding no water versus adding water, then releasing certainly would contribute to the flooding. It may have been immaterial, but it certainly did contribute. By its own admission, the release added an inch to a gage 30 miles away, so on one side they say the didn’t contribute, but then acknowledge that their gage data shows they did. Of course, the Corps has earned a reputation for gage reading too.

Unfortunately for the Corps, they’re stuck in a pretty difficult position given the current legal battles going on between Georgia, Alabama and Florida. The fact they’ve become a common target doesn’t mean they’re at fault every time the weather gets wacky in Atlanta – be it drought or flooding. However, their communication of what they’re doing, how they’re doing it and why they’re doing it leaves them open to criticism. They would be wise to be more open about their operations and less defensive about their actions.

That this is even an issue, despite the fact that the drainage basin of Lake Lanier is minuscule in comparison to the the total drainage basin at either the Alabama or Florida border, is stupefying.

As an side, Lake Lanier is getting closer and closer to full pool. Earlier this year, a state climatologist predicted that Lanier would reach full pool after a dry late summer and fall and wet winter due to the effects of El Nino. Obviously that prediction didn’t include the previous week’s rains which has moved the lake to within 3 feet of full pool this morning.

The rains dropped 5.51″ as recorded at my house on Monday, which is the equivalent of a 10-year storm event. However, with a total of 5.28″ of rain occurring over the previous six consecutive days, the event manifested itself as more like a 100-year event (7.7″ of rain in 24 hours) because of the saturated ground being unable to absorb much of the rain. The rain we got Monday is the most I’ve ever recorded at the house, which includes the 2005 tropical storm season and remnants of Hurricanes Ivan and Katrina, which both dropped less than 5″ of rain. Because of the nature of the week long rain events culminated by a 10-year storm, chances are that was a once-in-a-lifetime weather event. While we’ll certainly see flooding again at some point, the incredibly unique situation that occurred last week will likely not be repeated again anytime soon.

Real Estate and Construction
Reports from Realtors indicated that existing home sales were stabilizing overall. Florida contacts noted that the steady improvement in sales over the past several months moderated somewhat in April, whereas other parts of the District experienced minor gains over the month. Homebuilders noted that new home inventories were trending down on a year-over-year basis as construction remained at low levels and new home sales improved modestly. Home sales prices continued to decline according to most reports. The outlook for sales strengthened in April according to most Realtor and homebuilder contacts.

Commercial real estate activity remained weak. Vacancy rates continued to rise in many parts of the District, putting downward pressure on rents, most notably in the retail sector. Contractors reported more projects being postponed or cancelled. Commercial real estate contacts anticipate more space will become vacant in the coming months and that construction will continue to slow.
…
Employment and Prices
Labor market conditions continued to be weak. Many firms reported additional cuts in hours or had instituted mandatory unpaid days off for some staff. State and local governments were also reducing payrolls because of budgetary pressure. However, the pace of layoffs appears to have slowed, as fewer firms reported layoffs than earlier in the year. There were also scattered reports of increased temp hiring, although several contacts noted that these positions were largely seasonal in nature.

Homebuilders and manufacturing firms continued to report that prices paid for both raw materials and imported finished goods were below year-earlier levels. Retailers noted a reduction in price discounting compared to previous months, and a majority of merchants reported that selling prices were generally on par with a year earlier.