As heard on the radio

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed says he wants to tear down the Peachtree-Pine homeless shelter, long mired in a legal battle with the city and business community, to make room for a police and fire station.

Speaking Tuesday to members of the Commerce Club, Reed said his move stems from a combination of public safety and health issues. He says the shelter is one of the “leading sites for tuberculosis in the nation,” according to conversations and data he received from the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“If a judge stops me, then so be it. But I am aware of what’s happening at Peachtree and Pine from a health standpoint. It is unacceptable,” Reed said. “What I’m going to do is exercise my office.”

The CDC did not return calls for comment to confirm conversations with Reed. But in a letter dated April 9 to Fulton County Commission Chair John Eaves, Georgia Department of Public Health Commissioner Brenda Fitzgerald said CDC officials had “expressed their concern … at the very highest levels and in no uncertain terms” about an outbreak of tuberculosis cases in Fulton County.

Specifically, the agency worried about a drug-resistant strain of the disease researchers said was tied to the Peachtree-Pine shelter. Fitzgerald wrote Fulton County had accounted for 82 percent of all reported cases of the drug-resistant strain in Georgia, and 57 percent in the U.S.

“Public health researchers identified the homeless shelter at the corner of Peachtree and Pine Streets as a major source of the current outbreak,” Fitzgerald wrote.

The mayor said his plans to shut down Peachtree-Pine, which puts no requirements on the people who seek shelter there, would also include plans for a new, “best-in-class” shelter to help the 300 to 400 people currently living there. Reed was mum on details about the location, costs and financing of the proposed shelter. He did say relocating residents alone could cost around $2.5 million.

Reed says he plans to use eminent domain to take over the controversial shelter between downtown and Midtown Atlanta. Ownership of the building, though, is currently tied up in a lengthy legal dispute, with a ruling from the Georgia Supreme Court expected sometime later this year.

The Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, which runs Peachtree-Pine, has been fighting eviction since 2010, when it defaulted on a $900,000 loan. The building’s mortgages were purchased by an investment company that tried to begin the eviction process. But the task force sued over wrongful foreclosure, claiming business and political interests colluded against the organization to limit private donations and public funding so it couldn’t pay its debts. The case has been tied up in court since.

The announcement came as a surprise to Peachtree-Pine’s executive director, Anita Beaty. She says Reed doesn’t have the authority to close the shelter.

“The city doesn’t have control of the building. This is an issue that’s stunning, and I just think it’s amazing that a mayor would go out on a limb like that with no legal justification,” Beaty said.

Beaty contended the mayor should focus more on housing needs for homeless women and children in the area and less on the shuttering the shelter.