1) Eminent Domain: The Piñon Canyon Project opens at Composition Gallery.
2) The Red Bull Soapbox Race comes to town.
3) Alton Brown and Ted Allen team up for Good Eats Live at Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre.
4) German Bierfest invades Woodruff Park.
5) Drummer KJ Sawka plays 529.
(Photo by Kaylinn Gilstrap)
For most of the Beltline’s history, concerns about displacement have largely focused around slowly gentrifying neighborhoods in Southeast and Southwest Atlanta. The land and homes are less expensive and ripe for the picking by a developer agog at the thought of a project near the 22-mile loop of parks, trails and transit.
But at Monday morning’s Atlanta City Council meeting, councilmembers heard from concerned residents who feared a plan to save a key part of the $2.8 billion project would potentially uproot them from their homes.
At yesterday’s special-called meeting, council unanimously OK’ed a deal reached by the Georgia Department of Transportation, Amtrak and Beltline officials that saved residents near the Piedmont Park the headache of high-speed trains lumbering nearby on tracks called the “Decatur Belt.” The move also saves the entire Beltline project — late last year, the city poured money into the area when it purchased the property from a Gwinnett County developer for at least $66 million.
But the vote came without some last-minute amendments thanks to Marietta Street residents who said Amtrak, GDOT and Beltline officials’ plan to save the Decatur Belt merely shifted the burden of high-speed rail on to them — and placed their homes at risk. According to rough plans presented to GDOT’s board last week, the alternate plans for high-speed rail serving Atlanta involve expanding the tracks and potentially seizing property. The buildings and lofts in which the residents could very well be some of those.
State Sen. Jeff Chapman, R-Brunswick, along with Democratic state Reps. Debbie Buckner of Junction City and Stephanie Stuckey-Benfield of Decatur, was one of the few voices during last year’s legislative session to criticize the Linger Longer project on Jekyll Island, a historic state park.
The op-ed below by Chapman is the first in three that the senator says will lay out the case for increased examination of the Jekyll Island Authority, the Governor-appointed state agency that oversees the park, and the idea of “selling off” state land to the private sector. In closing, he says he’s requested the state conduct an audit of the authority’s activities during the last three years.
Chapman admits it may seem strange for a senator to write a series of articles about the topic, but:
in the case of Jekyll Island State Park, there are issues involved which demand the attention of elected officials who have been given the honor to serve the public good. Transparency and accountability in government, responsible management of publicly-owned assets, and respect for the public trust are all wrapped within the Jekyll issue, as is the principle of eminent domain, not in the traditional form but in an upside down way with the taking of publicly-owned land and using it for private profit—a kind of eminent domain in reverse.
Senator, the Internetz are yours. Below and after the jump is Chapman’s full editorial:
Last year, when the Jekyll Island Authority (JIA) granted a rent reduction of some $10 million to hotel developer Trammell Crow (TC) to replace the Buccaneer Resort, there were many who saw it as a sweetheart deal. Now the authority is spreading the love.
