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1) Qhapao Nan, the Inca Trail continues at Decatur Library.
2) Attend Yuppies for Puppies and help out Atlanta Pet Rescue.
3) Langhorne Slim plays the Georgia Theatre.
4) Michael Gates Gill discusses and signs his memoir, How Starbucks Saved My Life, at Wordsmiths Books.
5) Signs of Reappropriation opens at Atlanta College of Art Gallery.
(Photo courtesy Decatur Library)
1) Lost Kingdoms of the Nile: Nubian Treasures continues at the Michael C. Carlos Museum.
2) Newberry Jam, Polemic, Hawkeye Pierce and Requiem perform at Lenny’s Bar.
3) Cocktails in the Garden continues at Atlanta Botanical Garden. This month’s theme is Rock Roses and Red Rubies.
4) The Faint, Jaguar Love and Shy Child perform at Variety Playhouse.
5) Becoming a Man in 127 Easy Steps opens at 7 Stages.
(Photo by Harvard University-Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition)
1) Tilly and the Wall perform at Variety Playhouse.
2) Damaged Virtues: A Cry From Within, a play about unethical medical experimentation on enslaved African-American women, opens at Atlanta Fulton Central Library.
3) Tony Bennett performs at Chastain Park Amphitheater.
4) Atlanta Botanical Garden hosts Cocktails in the Garden: Lilies and Lemon Drops.
5) Ours, Plain Jane Automobile and God or Julie perform at Vinyl.
(Photo by Jaime Warren)
Friends of Piedmont Park, the nonprofit park advocacy group that was one of the most vocal opponents against the Piedmont Park parking deck, responded today to the Atlanta Botanical Garden’s claim seeking $273,000 in legal fees after last year’s bitter Open Records dispute. The nonprofit group filed an answer motion to contest the garden’s claim that the entire brouhaha was “frivolous.”
We haven’t had the chance to sift through every word of the 34-page document, but Abramson says it states why FOPP thinks it was justified for testing the garden’s refusal to open its financial records based on its private, nonprofit status.
“It explains why the standard of being ‘frivolous’ was not met,” Doug Abramson, president of FOPP, said in a phone interview. “It was anything but ‘frivolous.’”
He calls the garden’s $273,000 claim an act of vengeance and a warning to other organizations against following its example. The garden says FOPP’s lawsuit forced them to divert money from exhibit and operations budgets in order to pay its lawyers.
We’ll stay on top of it. In the meantime, click here to peruse FOPP’s 34-page response to the garden’s $273,000 “request.” (Heads-up: It’s a Word document.)
Well, that went relatively unnoticed.
On Dec. 7, 2007, the Atlanta Botanical Garden filed a $273,000 lawsuit against the Friends of Piedmont Park and Doug Abramson, the park advocacy group’s president. The garden claims that because of an earlier suit filed by Abramson seeking the garden’s financial records, it had to spend unbudgeted funds — almost $300,000, according to a garden spokesperson — on a legal defense contesting the suit.
In 2004, the garden pushed for a parking deck in Atlanta’s most iconic greenspace to accommodate more visitors. The Piedmont Park Conservancy backed the idea.
FOPP, however, along with many other voices in the community, didn’t like the sound of that, and fought the project with gusto. After a series of lawsuits and a lot of yard signs, a judge in September said it came down to this: The deck’s getting built and the garden doesn’t have to disclose its financial records — it was and is, the judge said, a private, nonprofit entity.
(For an excellent rundown and take on the parking deck debate, click here for former CL staff writer Michael Wall’s “Welcome to Piedmont Parking Deck.”)
The garden says that FOPP’s lawsuit was “frivolous” — a legal imbroglio that was a whole lotta legwork, paperwork and headache. And now FOPP is being handed a $273,000 bill for legal fees, which the garden claims it had to divert from other projects in order to pay.
Click here to read the garden’s lawsuit against FOPP.
And from Doug Abramson at FOPP’s website:
Central to the Atlanta Botanical Garden’s claim for fees is the unwarranted contention that Friends of Piedmont Park was “frivolous” in its attempt to secure a judge’s ruling that the Botanical Garden must comply with open records laws. Frivolous? Hardly. Determining whether the Atlanta Botanical Garden, as a steward of public land, should be treated as a public agency is an important policy question. An impressive group of First Amendment advocates supports our position. Before going to court, Friends of Piedmont Park sought an opinion from the Georgia Attorney General’s office on this issue. Initially the AG supported the position that the Atlanta Botanical Garden is subject to Georgia’s Sunshine Laws and should turn over documents. Later, after our suit was filed and the AG’s office consulted with Botanical Garden attorneys, the Department of Law wrote that “substantial questions remain as to whether the Garden is in fact covered by [the Georgia Open Records and Open Meetings Act].” By no stretch was it frivolous to ask a judge to resolve these “substantial questions.
A call to Doug Abramson’s residence was met by an answering machine. We’ll keep an eye on this one.
The Atlanta Botanical Garden notched another small victory in the ongoing lawsuit over its planned parking deck last week when a second plaintiff announced he was withdrawing from the case.
This time, however, the drop-out didn’t cite intimidation as the reason.
John Grady Burns is quoted in an ABG press release as saying he decided to bow out of the suit because garden officials have managed to satisfy his concerns about the parking deck.
“I have come to a better understanding of the project,” he is quoted as saying, “and I believe the plans are sound.”
Earlier this year, another plaintiff, Bill Lockhart, dropped out after the ABG threatened to countersue on the basis that the lawsuit against the garden is frivolous.
Burns’ departure leaves two plaintiffs, activist Doug Abramson and the Friends of Piedmont Park. Or perhaps only one plaintiff, hints the ABG release, which takes pains to point out that Abramson and his wife, Susan, operate Friends of Piedmont Park out of their home.
The lawsuit seeks to force the garden to release documents showing why it can’t build the six-story parking deck under its current parking lot rather than locate it in nearby woods, as it plans to do.
