Fresh Loaf

Politicos know that a bulging campaign war chest doesn’t guarantee victory. (Paging Roy Barnes…) Next to incumbency, however, it’s usually the best indicator of which candidate has the edge.

And by all known rules of thumb, Commissioner Burrell Ellis looks to be running away with the runoff race to become the county’s next CEO. For starters, before the end of June, Ellis raised $421,000 – more than all four of his opponents put together.

We didn’t have a chance to compare his contributions with those of the runner-up, state Rep. Stan Watson – mainly because Watson was several days late in filing his report. But now that we have both sets, we see that Ellis has all the earmarks of a sure thing.
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The DeKalb school board voted this morning to deep-six a controversial proposal to sell three school buildings and a stadium to Sembler to make make way for a mammoth shopping center and condo development.

After months of community protests over the potential loss of the school property, the final vote was somewhat anti-climactic. Sembler had recently decided it would build a smaller project, so it only needed a third of the school land, Superintendent Crawford Lewis told the board. The board voted unanimously to simply forget about the whole deal.

Sembler is still planning to develop another 70 acres on Briarcliff Road that it has under contract from the county housing authority, but the loss of the school property means no frontage on North Druid Hills Road. That, in turn, means plans for a grand boulevard linking the two roads will likely be scrapped.

In other words, it’s back to the drawing board for all concerned.

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StandUp DeKalb, the homeowner group opposing the planned Sembler development, has spent the past week sending out notices to spur attendance at a Friday public hearing on the proposal.

Now, on the eve of the gathering, it seems the DeKalb school board has moved the meeting place – again. First, it was to be held at the system’s Decatur headquarters. Then it was moved to Stone Mountain Middle School. Now it appears it’s been moved once more to the William Bradley Bryant Center at 2652 Lawrenceville Highway, just inside I-285.

The Sembler proposal, you will recall, is for a $1 billion, live-work-shop complex on 100 acres at the southwest corner of Briarcliff and North Druid Hills.

Superintendent Crawford Lewis will deliver to the board a presentation of Sembler’s offer to buy 30 acres of land containing three public schools and a football stadium. The meeting is scheduled to begin at 10:30 a.m. – for now.

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The DeKalb County Commission today approved the creation of a tax allocation district around the intersection of Briarcliff and North Druid Hills roads. It wasn’t even a squeaker, but a solid 5-2 majority, with the “nay” votes coming from Commissioners Burrell Ellis and Elaine Boyer, the board’s reliable naysayer.

To many, the action comes across as an endorsement of the Sembler Co.’s $2 billion proposal to redevelop the southwest quadrant of the intersection. But Commissioner Jeff Rader had earlier told CL that the adoption of a TAD as a funding mechanism for local infrastructure improvements doesn’t mean Sembler is in like Flynn.
The real question now is what the TAD-phobic DeKalb School Board will do. If it doesn’t approve the TAD, it would mean far less money to fix the snarled traffic situation in that area.

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Rep. Mike Jacobs, R-Atlanta, conducted a poll of 318 households in his mid-DeKalb district to see what local homeowners thought about the prospect of high-density, mixed-use development — a la what the Sembler Co. is proposing — around the intersection of Briarcliff and N. Druid Hills roads.

Turns out surrounding residents are fairly split on the notion: About 53 percent said they would not like to see that kind of redevelopment there, while 47 percent said they would — providing that it was accompanied by infrastructure improvements, such as traffic upgrades.

But the county commission is already moving in a direction some consider to be full steam ahead toward redevelopment. At tomorrow’s board meeting, commissioners are expected to vote on whether to create a tax-allocation district around the intersection. Ideally, a TAD would produce the funds necessary to pay for a transportation overhaul of the area. Some critics, including Jacobs, believe a community improvement district – in which infrastructure funds come out of landowners’ pockets, not from future tax revenues — is a better approach.

The meeting begins at 9 a.m. at the Manuel Maloof Auditorium in Decatur. Vernon Jones will be large and in charge.

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