From Brown Field to Green

Last Monday morning Iain and I walked to Zonolite Road to try to find the new park that Dekalb County is building there. I hadn’t actually known what Zonolite was; it’s a brand name for vermiculite insulation that came from Libby, Montana, that was used in the United States until 1990. Vermiculite is a mineral that expands in size when heated, sort of like popcorn; the heating process is called exfoliation, and that’s what they used to do at a facility on Zonolite Road. I assume that the vermiculite came to Zonolite Road by train from Montana, got heated up at the exfoliation facility, and then was packaged for sale as Zonolite brand insulation. Vermiculite mining began in Libby in 1919; at that time they didn't know (or didn't know that it mattered) that the vermiculite ore from Libby was contaminated with asbestos. Since 2000, the Environmental Protection Agency has been working to remove asbestos-contaminated soil in and near Libby.

The plant on Zonolite Road in Atlanta was in operation during the 1950s and 1960s. During the years the plant was in operation, between 499 and 1,225 tonsof vermiculite from Libby, Montana, is thought to have been shipped to the site. Demolition of the buildings there began during the 1960s and was completed around 1990. In 2010, the EPA sampled soil from the site where the plant had been, and found that one area of the site was contaminated with asbestos. Cleanup began on October 31, 2011. By February 24, 2012, 26,000 tons of asbestos-and vermiculite-contaminated soil had been removed. The 13 acre site, along the South Fork of Peachtree Creek, is now owned by Dekalb County, and now that it's been cleaned up, a park is being developed there.



I haven’t been in the Zonolite Road area for years and I hadn’t known there was a park there until I saw it in the South Fork Conservancy’s Watershed Vision for parks and trails along the South Fork of Peachtree Creek; it also came up in the community meeting that I attended earlier this month at Haygood. So Iain and I decided to go find it, even though we weren’t completely sure where we were going. The first road we went down was a dead end with no park in sight, but there were cats and a cat-crossing sign. On another street we found someone to ask, and got pointed in the direction of the park; there still was heavy machinery on the site, and work was obviously still going on. The man who gave us directions said that they were removing some concrete slabs, still. So Iain and I headed off for it, even though as Iain observed it looked more like a construction site than a park.

There was a big open area with tall grass, with a shallow pond in the middle; we were guessing this was where the clean-up work had been done. Beyond that there was a wooded area, with trails. We headed off down one of them, not really knowing where we were headed. How could it be that in the city, so close to my house, there was an area where I’d never been, where there were trails that disappeared into the woods, where it at least felt like one could get lost? We didn’t go very far, but did find the creek and walked back to find an easier place to get down the creek bank to the sandy shore; we ended up walking back to very near where we’d first entered the woods.



We explored upstream and downstream. The water quality didn’t appear to be too bad – there was an area where Iain spotted fish that were several inches long – but there was some trash and old tires that need to be removed. And a persistent sense of wonder, that we could be in easy walking distance from home, but still somewhere where we’d never been.

We walked back past the shallow pond, and returned to the road by the Floataway Buildings, walking past the printer and the vintage clothing store and the sign for the church and the orthodontist’s office with the pink flamingos.





As we were returning home I told Iain that I felt like we’d been on a treasure hunt. We stopped at Alon's and picked up some croissants. It was a great way to spend the morning.

Opening the Street

I first heard about Atlanta Streets Alive when someone pasted a link on Facebook – North Highland was going to be closed from Virginia Avenue south for two miles on Sunday, May 20.  It sounded like it could be very disruptive for anyone needing to drive somewhere.  In retrospect, I can’t believe that that was my first reaction.  It may have had to do with the original information I saw, which made me think it was a bicycling event, or some vestigial memory of being pregnant in the 1990s, with a spring due date, back when Freaknik paralyzed traffic in much of the city for one weekend each spring, and Tom trying to figure out how we would get to Piedmont Hospital if Peachtree Road was impassible.  But I looked into it a little more, and it wasn’t just for bicycles, and it looked like fun.  So last Sunday afternoon Iain and I headed off for the North Highland and Virginia, with hats and sunscreen and water bottles.

We hadn't seen quite sure what to expect, but we had a great time.  We ended up walking all the way to the endpoint at Corley Street, near the Old Highland Bakery in Inman Park.  We saw people on bicycles in costume, people on unusual bicycles like the man riding the reproduction of an old bicycle with the very large front wheel and the small back wheel, and a napping cat strapped into an umbrella stroller.  There were musicians; my favorite were the percussionists, playing on overturned 5 gallon plastic buckets, and offering passersby and chance to join them, with pan lids to play, but the Seed & Feed Marching Band was playing near Manuel’s Tavern, and there were others too on sidewalks and in parking lots along the route.

There was lots of food.  The restaurants seemed to be doing a good business, and the ones with outdoor seating were pretty much full.  Some had set up tables to sell takeout, and there were food trucks and other vendors too.  We got lunch at a stand in the parking lot of the video rental place at Highland and North Avenue, and ice cream from the Westside Creamery truck, and popsicles from the King of Pops himself, in Inman Park. 

The Indie-pendent had a participatory art project – we painted something on the large canvas they had propped up against a retaining wall – and we cut pictures out of old children’s encyclopedias to make buttons outside Young Blood Gallery (they came out great --  that was really neat).  Story Corps was collecting very brief stories on Post It notes (“When did you fall in love for the first time?”  “What are you proudest of?”).  PEDS was asking people to put their foot in paint and leave a print on a roll of paper that they were going to deliver as a petition to the city, requesting that the sidewalks get fixed.  (I would have signed a petition, but I wasn’t going to take my shoe and sock off, almost three miles from home, and leave a paint footprint on a petition.  That just didn’t seem like a very good idea.)  I think it was the organizers who had a participatory exhibit entitled Pop-Up City Hall on how to improve the city.  But my favorite thing of the whole afternoon was Free Poems on Demand.  Two young men and a young woman were sitting on the sidewalk on folding chairs near Highland and North Avenue.  You could give them a topic, and then come back in a few minutes and get a poem, written just for you, on that topic.  As it turned out, demand was high and our poet had not gotten to the topic Iain had chosen by the time we finished lunch.  So we stopped by on our way back, and Iain collected his poem, and we dropped a dollar in the hat on the sidewalk.  (The poem, by the way, was worth waiting for, and we probably should have contributed more than a dollar.)

It was a great afternoon, but it was more than that.  The experience of walking the route really made me see the area differently.  It wouldn’t otherwise have occurred to me to walk from our house to Inman Park, but that’s what Iain and I did last Sunday afternoon.  It was about three miles, six miles round trip.  Realizing that in fact these distances are walkable (although maybe I won’t do it often) means that I probably will do it again sometime.  Honestly, that never had occurred to me.  And things look different from the perspective of the sidewalk (or walking down the middle of the street, where we were walking much of the time) than they do from behind the wheel of the car.  The event taught me that our intown neighborhoods are even more walkable than I thought they were, and just knowing that, I am more likely to do it.  (Where's that sidewalk petition?)

Atlanta Streets Alive wasn’t a big commercial festival like SummerFest for the Dogwood Festival.   A two-mile stretch of a street was mostly closed to vehicular traffic for the afternoon, and there were small scale, almost spontaneous activities and performances along the route.   Since last Sunday, I've learned a little more about the thinking behind events like Atlanta Streets Alive.  It's part of a movement of sorts to reclaim cities for people, through small scale changes in how people use space and interact with each other in the urban setting.  It’s called tactical urbanism.  According to Tactical Urbanism 2, “Improving the livability of our towns and cities commonly starts at the street, block, or building scale.  While larger scale efforts do have their place, incremental, small-scale improvements are increasingly seen as a way to stage more substantial investments.”  

The Atlanta Streets Alive project was – in tactical urbanism terms – an open street.  Open streets “temporarily provide safe spaces for walking, bicycling, skating and social activities; promote local economic development; and raise awareness about the detrimental effects of the automobile on urban living.”  I can’t say it better than the authors of Tactical Urbanism 2, so I am going to quote them at some length.

While the benefit of Open Streets initiatives are widely recognized, perhaps the most tangible benefit is the social interaction and activity that develops – thousands of people of all ages, incomes, occupations, religions, and races have the opportunity to meet in the public realm while sharing in physical or social activities.  In doing so, participants develop a wider understanding of their city, each other, and the potential for making streets friendlier for people.

The resulting vibrancy therefore enables people to experience their city’s public realm in a different way, which helps build broader political support for undertaking more permanent pedestrian, bicycle, and other livability improvements.  In this way, open streets are a tool for building social and political capital, while having a very real economic impacts for businesses, vendors, and organizations along the chosen route.

Last night we went to Caramba for dinner, and driving down North Highland I was pointing out to Tom and Caroline where we’d made the buttons, where we’d gotten a poem written to order, where we got our lunch.  I don’t see the street through the same eyes as I did before last Sunday, and I know I can walk to places that previously I would have never thought of walking.  And I'd still like that sidewalk petition.

On page 2 of Tactical Urbanism 2, there is a story about a “guerilla crosswalk” that was painted across a busy street in Baltimore; it has since become permanent, with an official, City of Baltimore-sanctioned crosswalk there.  I’m thinking that maybe we need one at Wessyngton and Cumberland.

Photo from Tactical Urbanism 2

A Community Meeting

It was two weeks ago that I got the email from one of the neighborhood email lists, that Park Pride was going to be hosting a meeting at Haygood the following evening to get community input on a proposal from the South Fork Conservancy that affected Herbert Taylor Park.  I’d never heard of the South Fork Conservancy, but I downloaded the plan that was under discussion and took at least a quick look at it – it’s a hundred pages long, and I didn’t read the whole thing,  but I did look at enough of it to get the basic idea.  The plan set out a vision for green space along the South Fork of Peachtree Creek, connecting existing parks and public use areas with trails.  These seemed to me to be very ambitious, and it wasn’t clear to me how trails would result in improved water quality, which I thought was the point.

So I went to the meeting.  It was in the Haygood gym, where round tables had been set up.  I got there a little late so I missed whatever welcome or instructions were given; after signing in and getting a nametag, I was escorted to a table where there was a chair available.  A facilitator was making a valiant effort to work through a list of tasks.  What would we like to see along the creeks and streams in the city?  Access points?  Signage?  Benches?  Trash cans?  Picnic tables?  Trails?  And if trails, paved or not?  The organizers had equipped each table with a large map, colored markers, stickers,  and – if we got that far – colored string and cellophane tape that we could use to lay out the trail that we wanted to see.

When I arrived, the group was discussing crime, and how long it takes the police to respond when they are called.  This puzzled me, because trails didn’t seem to me to have much to do with crime (I didn’t envision criminals making off with someone’s flatscreen television on foot).  Even though I didn’t really know the context, I spoke up and offered my opinion that people make a park safe.  There was a woman in my group who lived near the Daniel Johnson Nature Preserve who did not seem to have a single positive thing to say about anything.  Trails bring crime.  People turn their dogs loose in parks.  The sewers will not be fixed for another 14 years and who wants to walk by an open sewer?  Even if these sewers are fixed the ones upstream won’t be.  All that pavement at Emory is the problem.  The businesses at Zonolite have been adversely impacted by the park there; how can the city take their property?  The bridge in Herbert Taylor Park should be blown up to keep people out of it.  This will bring more people into our neighborhood and that’s bad.  Who would want to walk on these trails anyway?  If there’s any Federal money for anything, the ADA kicks in and any trail will have to be paved.  There are homeless people in the parks and no one does anything about it.  It’s not safe.   It will hurt our property values.  The government can’t seize our property.  This is our property and you have no right to talk about it.

The way Herbert Taylor Park was being discussed, it sounded like you were taking your life in your hands to venture into the place.  I got asked in a somewhat accusing tone if I ever went there, and I said yes.  Did I feel safe?  Yes.   What about the dogs?  Well, people should keep their dogs on their leashes and a lot of them don’t but that didn’t seem to me to constitute a crime wave.

Finally the facilitator told her that we’d heard her point of view, and other people needed to be heard.  I did ask my question about how this improves the water quality.  The answer was interesting; if more people walk along the creeks and streams, there will be less tolerance for sewer systems that dump sewage into creeks.  People will demand improvements.  I think that’s true; it is walking through the Morningside Nature Preserve and Herbert Taylor Park and following the creek in the Nature Trail behind Sunken Garden Park that got me out with Iain on a Sunday morning marking storm drains on our street, so I think I get it.

Later we had a chance to walk around the gym and see what other groups had come up with.  There were lots of people there that night from the neighborhood near the Daniel Johnson Nature Preserve and Herbert Taylor Park.  I guess I would be concerned too if I saw a map online that included a trail through the green space behind my house, on my property, even if it was just a proposal.  It didn’t matter how many times the attorney from the South Fork Conservancy told the woman at my table that no one was going to seize anyone’s property.   One group actually had managed to propose a continuous trail along the South Fork, with pink string neatly taped in place.  As we stood there admiring the map, a man who had been at my table said, “I wish I'd been at this table.”

The South Fork Conservancy has developed a long term vision that – if realized – would contribute to making the city a habitable and more walkable environment.  That would be good, and I also think it’s true that it would help increase support for fixing the sewer problems upstream.  Some parts of it may not be feasible and may never happen, and maybe some parts of it should not happen.   But I am glad someone’s thinking about it, because I am pretty sure that without the vision, none of it will happen.  Once land is developed, that’s pretty much it.  At least if there’s a vision, there may be a chance that some of it can be purchased in the future.

A few weeks ago, I was walking home from work up Old Briarcliff Road, and I paused on the bridge to look at the South Fork of Peachtree Creek.  The creekside is littered with debris and often the water is foul-smelling, even from the distance of the bridge.  But that day there was a mallard duck there in the water.  I stopped to take a picture, and another pedestrian stopped to see what I was looking at.  I pointed out the duck, and she broke into a delighted smile.  

How beautiful, she said, and how unexpected.

24 Hours in Morningside

Weekend before last weekend there was a lot going on in my neighborhood. On Friday night, the Morningside-Lenox Park Association sponsored music in Sidney Marcus Park. We were a little late getting dinner on the table, so by the time Tom and I walked up there, they were almost done. But it was nice seeing people out with their kids and their folding chairs and remains of their picnics. Looking around, Tom (who hardly ever goes anywhere that he doesn't know someone) commented that he didn't know anyone there. Of course, that's not surprising; our kids now being past the playground stage and on to the Facebook stage. But we did run into people we know, and ended up having some good conversations. We talked about (among other things) contemporary religion and the pace of social change with the Haygood pastor and teaching little kids to sail with a neighbor. A nice walk back home, enjoying the supersized moon.

Then on Saturday morning Tom and Iain headed off to Lake Allatoona for sailboat races so I was on my own for the day. I went to the Morningside Farmer's Market, where they were celebrating kale, although I am not sure why. I could have gotten a kale bumper sticker or a kale T-shirt. I didn't, but I did get lettuce and strawberries and Italian sausage.



Later on Saturday, Morningside Presbyterian's preschool was holding their spring festival. This year is the 10th anniversary of the preschool, and they had a carnival-type ride, hauled in on a trailer, and an inflatable for bouncing, and face painting. No kids home but I went anyway and saw several neighbors there, none of whom were actually accompanied by children; Lynsley and I got popsicles from King of Pops and then went over to saw hello to the firefighters from Station No. 19 that were showing kids the firetruck. There also was a man who was making massive bubbles by dipping a rope loop into a bucket of soapy water and then holding it up into the breeze. I got lunch there before heading back home.





All within an easy walk of my house. I love my neighborhood. And, by the way, the Italian sausage was spectacular.