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As housing prices have gotten more expensive, young urbane people have been looking south for an affordable house to buy. This has caused some unexpected changes.

Most prominently, Metropolitan Parkway is changing. Folks, let’s recognize that though one day the name was changed to Metropolitan Parkway, for a long long time it was still Stewart Avenue at night, but now it’s beginning to change. There are fewer neon lights and more Hispanic grocery stores. More colleges and fewer massage parlors. By no means is this street the new North Highland, but it is slowly evolving into a multi-cultural working class thoroughfare.

Main street between College Park and East Point is also changing. It’s becoming Atlanta’s affordable fine dining corridor. Originally, both town saw their fortunes rise in the areas with direct proximity to the MARTA station. However, in a real sign of staying power, there is a strip on the city line that is not walking distance from anything. Despite a lack of parking and access only from car or by bus, this block supports two upscale restaurants, a florist, and an antique store. One of the restaurants, Kosmos’ Cafe, is helping College Park to realize its fine dining title. College Park also features the Feed Store and Oscar’s, the restaurant that really started the revival. This strip also features the Break Pad, which join the Thumbs Up Cafe, and Corner Tavern in giving the East Point a reputation as a town for decent food and good places to hang out.

A recent civic engagement initiative by the United Way of Metro Atlanta, called Metro Voices, Metro Choices, conducted a regionwide telephone survey to find out what citizens believe are the most important issues facing our local communities, and the region as a whole. Some of the results:

When thinking of the local community, public transportation comes up as the single most important issue:

When thinking of the region as a whole, crime becomes the most important issue:

However, when it comes to those issues individuals can do something about, only Racial Tolerance is listed as an issue that a majority of respondents believe they can do a lot about:

Generally, the results seem to show that individuals feel they have the least power to affect the issues most important to them. It’s a heartbreaking conclusion.

There is also room for hope. Among respondents, a majority of respondents believe their communities are headed in the right direction, that the quality of life in the region is excellent or very good, and that they are either currently involved in the community or likely to become involved in the future.

You can make a difference in the results of this initiative. MVMC wants your voice to be heard. In its current phase, MVMC is conducting an online survey to find out where your interests lie. Beginning in September, MVMC will host a series of Town Hall meetings, with a Community Change Summit happening in December. The more people participating in this initiative, the more weight its results will carry among local policy makers, so get involved in creating a better Atlanta.

Sometimes it’s good to live an Atlanta.  This is one of those weeks.  Why?  It’s festival season!  Happy dancing artistic experiences for everyone!  Festivals are incredibly valuable because they bring masses of people from varying socio-economic, religious, and national backgrounds together.  Atlanta, like the United States, is made up of a wider and wider variety of folks, and the more they interact, the better.

First, the Atlanta Jazz Festival culminates this weekend!  Whether you come see Femme de la Funk Friday @ noon on Broad Street, or whether you go to Piedmont Park to see Rene Marie, you should not miss this excellent opportunity to experience some of America’s greatest music.  Atlanta has had a pretty good Jazz scene over the last few years and as venues such as the Jazz Forum have closed, the city has lost some momentum.  If you like jazz, now is a chance to get some of that momentum back!

Also this weekend is the Decatur Literary Arts Festival.  Authors will gather, but so too will artists, storytellers, theater troupes, and improv comedians!  Most of it is free!  Be smart, however, make sure you take MARTA.  The hassle is not worth it.  

On Friday June 3rd, the Castleberry Hill Art-stroll will occur.  Castleberry Hill is a neighborhood on the rise.  As it develops, it gives Atlantans another opportunity for interesting intown living.  The more sustainable neighborhoods we have of this variety, the better off we’ll be.
Lastly,  the city of East Point is holding it’s Taste of Mainstreet on June 11th from 2 until 10 P.M.  They’ll have restaurants, kids activities, bands, and DJs all over the place!  A splendid time should be had by all! 

All in all, a good week to be an Atlantan.

Dear Mayor Franklin:

You can help improve Atlanta and improve a vital part of our history right now.

The Old Atlanta Constitution Building, on Forsyth is facing demolition. This is a valuable piece of architecture which should be restored from its disrepair rather than demolished.

GDOT is endeavoring to build a new rail terminal there and while that is a vital goal, restoration of the constitution building would serve to enhance the terminal, not impede it. This building is an important piece of Atlanta history. It housed Ralph McGill’s Constitution. Celestine Sibley had her office there, and in its day it was beautiful.

Restore the building and you preserve a vision of Atlanta as a city where trains and people matter. Let the building fall and the hopes of the people and another link to our history falls with it.

I hope you will join this fight.

Links:
Docomomo.com
Fact sheet for the Atlanta - Lovejoy Line
Mail your city Councilors!

Recently, Joe put up a good entry about parking decks that caused a lot of discussion.

What has not been part of this discussion is what parking garages ought to do and how they ought to work. Let me be clear. I am not specifically talking about the Piedmont Park garage here, but about parking garages generally.

A good parking garage accomplishes 5 goals:

1. It lets cars enter the garage quickly and points them toward to most convenient open space
2. It lets cars out quickly and efficiently causing little traffic for either the street or those waiting to exit
3. It lets people exiting their cars get to their primary destinations easily and conveniently (it might even keep them dry)
4. It’s street friendly: Retail on the first level can make the garage a benefit for all members of the community rather than those just driving in.
5. The top level is useful. Wide flat spaces in the city are rare. Athletic Facilities or green space can make a real difference!

Let’s break these down…
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The constant joke in Georgia is that  ‘At least, we’re not Alabama!’, but sometimes those jokes are based in reality.

When it comes to politics, we make it better for the people… as in ‘We the People’. One of the rights every citizen has is to petition their government for redress of their grievances. That’s really a fancy term for lobbying. You, as a Citizen, have the right to tell your representatives and elected officials what policies you think ought be carried out and you have the right to do it in person.

Alabama, however, makes that difficult. Never have I visited a state with more intense security measures to impair a citizen from having an off the cuff conversation with their elected officials. Security is everywhere and specifically blocks the entrances to the offices of those holding Constitutional positions.

Most people, however, want to make direct appeals to their legislature. Alabama again however, makes this tough. First, their legislature does not even meet in the Capitol, despite having very nice legislative chambers. Instead, for the past 20 years, they have met in a separate State house. What makes this truly frightening is that each chamber is hermetically sealed. Legislators don’t even breath the same air as their constituents in the gallery! Further, the entrance and exit from the Chambers are in a secure area where the public is not allowed to go.

Contrast this with Georgia’s Capitol! There is security to get into the building and there are security officers, but once inside, all citizens have the chance to meet and talk with the folks who run our state. The Governor, Secretary of State, and Attorney General all have their offices in the Capitol. They all have to use public entrances and exits.

The legislature also meets in the Capitol and they do it in beautiful open air rooms that allow citizens very easy access to the folks casting the votes. It may seem silly some, but this likely makes for better laws.

If you have to directly face the people concerned with the issues on which you vote just prior to and just after the vote, you’re going to think harder about that vote. Vox populi will be more important than vox party. And you have to breath the same air as everyone else.

Okay.. it’s shallow.  Yes… it’s silly… but Condi Rice’s hair is taking over the corridors of power in Atlanta. 
I first noticed the trend at the French Bistro Violette where sophisticated power lunchers get a coq au vin on the cheap.  Several business groups came in and then I started to see it… African American women had adopted the Condi cut!  There are of course several stages in dealing with this…
1) Stunned Amazement.. in which anyone thinks to themselves ..”oh no she didn’t!”
2) Laughter…  For condi, the cut is fine.  It’s hers… but some women do not need to be trying that….
3) Acceptance.  Paging Monica Kauffman….
Now, in Atlanta, hair has long been a means to the power corridors.  A friend of mine returned to our fair city and remarked “Oh My God! I totally forgot that Atlanta had been over run by power blondes!“
Watch the gulch at the capitol when the session is in season and you’ll see the power of the blonde. 
Next session?  A 40 day bout!  Celebrity Hair Match!  The Blonde versus the Rice!

In her column yesterday, Cynthia Tucker wrote on the principle showing that parking decks tend to make cars multiply. Therefore, the Piedmont Park parking deck should not be built:

The advocates of a six-story garage in Piedmont Park tout it as the solution to the district’s traffic frenzy — the parked cars that clog neighborhood streets and the (barely) controlled chaos that accompanies the jostling of automobiles, bicycles and baby strollers.

If they are right — if an 800-car garage in the city’s premier park will cure all those problems, then let’s build parking decks everywhere. Let’s stack one atop every MARTA station, hotel, hospital, park, school and restaurant within the city limits. Let’s even tunnel under a few mini-mansions and build underground decks. That will really solve the traffic problem, won’t it?

As expected, the column generated some of those letters to the editor we all know and love. Two of the three published letters showed support for Tucker’s column, which presumably means that two-thirds of the letters sent in to the AJC were against the deck. This means there was one letter published in support of the deck:

Garage a winner from all angles

Cynthia Tucker incorrectly claims the Piedmont Park parking garage is touted as a traffic solution. It is touted as one component of a multilayered system (Beltline, streetcar, MARTA, etc.) to address traffic problems. And it is not offered as the solution to parking problems, but as a means to meet specific garden and park needs while mitigating parking issues of the local public.

Claiming that a six-story garage is an odd idea for conservationists, Tucker is again off the mark. Three levels are underground, with three levels tiered above to ground level with the Atlanta Botanical Garden while the exposed portion is landscaped to blend in with the green space.

The proposal adds green space to the park, expands peacefully green experiences for the community, rids us locals of crime crevices and better positions Atlanta for 2030, when we are projected to be a metropolitan area of 7 million inhabitants.

STEVEN P. FAUST, Atlanta

So, let me get this straight. The deck is not what Cynthia Tucker says it is, but it is exactly what Cynthia Tucker says it is, but using softer terms. It’s not really a parking deck; it’s really a temporary storage facility for automobiles. In other words, the parking deck is a euphemism, and this is why it should be built.

By the way, while we’re on the subject of Atlanta politics, we should bring a thinly veiled element of racism into our argument. As far as Faust is concerned, these “crime crevices” are hurting what is presumably metropolitan Atlanta’s only public park, and our only hope for solving this problem is with a parking deck.

And the way to accomodate a growing population is to build parking decks for the local parks rather than use those funds to build more green space. It’s all a Faustian bargain for a euphemism.

In all the discussion of public officials, policy and the shape of
Atlanta, we sometimes forget to follow the money.
Not today… Thanks to
opensecrets.org we can find out where Atlanta’s movers and shakers
are putting their political contributions and infer what policy
decisions may result.

The key, of course, is that the wealthy invest in politicians who will
see their intrests as personal concerns.

Let’s Start with Georgia Pacific Chairman Pete Correll:

Clearly, Georgia Pacific’s leader sees its companies future in the
hands of Republicans. Fewer environmental regulations and lower
taxes for GP.

BTW, This entry would be impossible without Joe’s expert editting assistance.

Next we’ll look at Charles Brewer, proprioter of Green Street
Properties
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Georgians interested in architectural preservation need to check out Docomomoga!
Docomomoga is a society dedicated to making sure that the legacy of modernist architecture is not lost.  There is a lot to preserve!  Did you know that I.M Pei’s first commercial structure is right here in Atlanta?  It’s at the corner of Courtland and Ponce. 
Right now Docomomoga is trying to save the old Atlanta Constitution Building. 
Help them out!  Even if you don’t like every modern Atlanta building, a lot of their preservation efforts are well worth it!