The Neighborhoods We Want (Business Edition, Part 2)

I haven't posted in a long time - there are several half-written posts in my head, but none of them ever got to keyboard (there's been a lot going on).  But I have to get this post written because there's another round of discussion on Nextdoor about local businesses closing.  The spice store in Virginia Highland closed - I loved the spice store, but it's gone.  On Nextdoor, it's pretty much the same discussion as last time, about rents and foot traffic and competition from cooler commercial areas like Ponce City Market or Krog Street Market and paid parking and what kinds of retail and restaurants used to be in the neighborhood as opposed to what's there now.

It's not that it's a great time for retail generally.  A couple days ago NBC News reported that over a thousand stores closed in a recent week, and more than 100,000 retail workers have lost their jobs since October 2016.  Retail space is overbuilt, and that, along with online buying and other changes in taste and habit (malls stopped being cool decades ago) have decimated shopping malls.

But our neighborhood commercial areas aren't enclosed malls or strip malls - they are appealing, and walkable, and in well-established neighborhoods with substantial buying power.  In spite of that, though, businesses struggle and the latest round of closings in Virginia Highland has reignited the discussion about what's going on.  In our small commercial area in Morningside, it seems that vacancies linger longer than they do in Virginia Highland, where hope springs eternal and retailers keep trying.  There's a "Coming Soon" sign up where Half-Moon Outfitters was and another empty location also will reopen sometime before too long as something else.  But if rents are so high that the businesses the neighborhood actually can and will support can't survive, and there aren't enough destination shops to fill the spaces, at some point, places stay vacant, because once rents go up, they don't go down.

There was an article in the New York Times last week about what happened to a small retail area on Bleecker Street in West Village in New York City.  There used to be neighborhood businesses like bodegas and laundromats and hardware stores, but then the high-end stores came in, and the neighborhood was briefly full of high-priced designer shops.  Then the designer stores failed (they didn't get much business), and now the rents are too high for anything else and the storefronts are vacant.

"If many of the high-end stores along Bleecker didn’t prosper as businesses, 'they succeeded in transforming the area into a luxury retail neighborhood that feeds on itself,' said Jeremiah Moss, who has tracked the city’s ever-changing streetscape on his blog, Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York, since 2007.

"Bleecker Street, Mr. Moss said, is a prime example of high-rent blight, a symptom of late-stage gentrification. 'These stores open as billboards for the brand,' he said. 'Then they leave because the rents become untenable. Landlords hold out. And you’re left with storefronts that will sit vacant for a year, two years, three years.'"

 Here are the last several paragraphs of the article:

"Elad Yifrach, the founder and creative director of L’Objet, an upscale décor brand that opened its first New York store last fall in one of the former Coach outposts, believes the area still has retail magic, despite the recent hard times.

“'Bleecker is quintessential West Village,' he said. 'The most beautiful townhouses are around there. The street needs to go back to bringing a cool factor, things that will inspire the audience.'

"For many longtime Village residents, what the street is missing is not a cool factor but the essential mix of businesses that makes a neighborhood function. On a recent afternoon, Marjorie Reitman, who has lived in the Village for 43 years and who was out on Bleecker Street walking her neighbor’s dog, Walter, reflected on the street’s mercantile past.

“'I remember when I first moved down here,' she said. 'There was a hardware store owned by an elderly couple, a grocery store, a newspaper store.'

"She was standing in front of ATM Anthony Thomas Melillo, a clothing boutique that opened in February to sell $115 'destroyed wash' T-shirts and other garments. The store had no customers, and the front door was open, allowing the air-conditioning to pump out into the street, something Ms. Reitman lectured the young sales associates about.
'That’s the attitude: "I have money, I can pay the fine, I don’t care,"' Ms. Reitman said.

"The original Marc Jacobs store on Bleecker that started the boom was next door with its windows blacked out. Ms. Reitman had an idea for that space and the other empty stores that dot Bleecker Street like missing teeth in a very expensive mouth.

"'They should all be pot shops,' she said. 'Seriously. I’m not kidding. I can’t imagine what else could go in and pay the rent.'"

If it is not possible to make enough to pay the rent, no one will stay in business, and once rents go up, they don't, apparently, go down.  So Caramba is replaced by Burger Tap which is replaced by the waffle sandwich place (okay, so maybe there is a reason other than high rents why some of these places didn't make it) which is replaced by Timone's which is replaced by Timone's which is replaced by Whiskey Bird. I certainly wish the Whiskey Bird folks well, but it they don't make it, it's back to brown paper covering the windows and a "For Lease" sign.

I would like to be optimistic but I'm not.  I don't know if there is any turning the clock back, once you lose the places that make your neighborhood function for the people who live there.  If the business plan requires that lots of people come from outside the neighborhood, then there's the reality of competition from cooler places and traffic and parking -- it might work for Murphy's, but it's hard to see it working for the entire commercial district.  Our neighborhood commercial areas may not be quite at the "high-rent blight" stage, but if it happens, at least now we know what to call it.

 And for all those folks on Nextdoor, we have the answer -- the rents are too high.

Rezoning Elizabeth Ann Lane

The developer's request for a variance at Cumberland and Wessyngton was on the agenda for the Neighborhood Planning Unit (NPU) meeting on Monday night of last week.  It's not that I thought it wouldn't go through, but I was curious what would happen.  It ended up being passed with very little discussion.

But there was a huge crowd -- a fill-up-the-sanctuary at Virginia-Highland Church-sized crowd -- and long lines to get in because they were verifying addresses on the way in. The reason for the big crowd was a rezoning request in the Lindridge Martin Manor neighborhood, which is part of our NPU.  (Lindridge Martin Manor is one of the neighborhoods that's been doing great work with the South Fork Conservancy on trails.)  Even though this didn't really have anything to do with Virginia Highland or Morningside, the notice went out widely through the neighborhood email lists that this proposed rezoning was a threat to our neighborhoods and we should show up. 

Elizabeth Ann Lane is a dead-end street off Sheridan, behind FedEx Plaza (on Cheshire Bridge, just south of I-85). 

There is commercial development to the north and west of it, a development of barely detached houses and another development under construction to the south, separating it from the strip mall where the Tara Theater and the Publix is.  So this street is nearly surrounded by commercial development.

All of the homeowners on Elizabeth Ann Lane and the adjacent area of Sheridan Road want to sell their houses to a developer who is proposing to put 89 townhomes on the site.

I didn't go into the NPU meeting with any particular opinion about this, although maybe I was included to oppose it on general principle, since the Virginia Highland Zoning Committee seemed to feel so strongly about it. 

The developer's representative made a brief presentation and implied that the houses were run down and an eyesore and they were doing the neighborhood a favor by getting rid of them.  On the subject of traffic, he said that there are fewer cars on Cheshire Bridge now than there used to be, and really, this wouldn't really make it worse.  Personally, I did not find this a highly persuasive argument.

But then the representative of the homeowners spoke.  They want to sell their houses to the developer, and the implication was that they are being offered enough for them that they can get the bigger houses they need for growing families, including accommodating other family members with special needs.  It was a good deal for them, but it wouldn't happen without the rezoning.  And already there is commercial development on two sides of them, so really, the site probably shouldn't be zoned R-4A anyway.

Then the opposition spoke, led by a (I think) a spokesperson for one of the zoning committees.  The arguments were (1) it's not consistent with the Comprehensive Development Plan; (2) it will take away some relatively affordable housing in the neighborhood; (3) the homeowners have no right to expect to make more from the sale of their homes than their value as single-family detached homes, given current R-4A zoning; and (4) the traffic is bad.  Then a man who identified himself as a professor of urban planning at one of the local universities said very emphatically several times that this was just "bad planning," without ever saying what about it was bad, and someone from the neighborhood said that traffic is so bad that the trucks that pick up trash sometimes skip his home.

While the discussion was going on, I looked up Elizabeth Ann Lane on Google Maps on my phone, and saw the map that I inserted above.  If this is what the Comprehensive Development Plan wants for this particular street - well, my thought was, that's bad planning.  And if the concern is affordable housing, the city could require the developer to provide some below market-rate units to school teachers, firefighters, and police officers.  And although the traffic may be bad, in the long run we do need density, and the developer cited in their proposal the proximity to bus lines on Cheshire Bridge and Lindbergh.

Last weekend, I went to Elizabeth Ann Lane.  Contrary to what the developer's representative implied at the NPU meeting, there was only one house that was in bad shape, and it was boarded up, unlike the derelict house near us on North Morningside.  Most of the houses look like the original houses on my street. 

Across Sheridan Road is a development called Sheridan Place, with pretty big houses with double garages that are really close together, and a new development called Sheridan Estates, with luxury homes "from the $800's" with (according to the signs) super pantries, mud rooms, and European appliances (I hope they work better than our Bosch dishwasher).  Incidentally I note that Sheridan Estates is being marketed by Muffley & Associates, along with their Dream Home program, which is where they pay a premium to buy up older homes that can be knocked down and replaced with other houses.  Given the discussion at the NPU meeting, apparently this is only permitted if the houses to be built are large, really expensive ones.

So I sided with the residents of Elizabeth Ann Lane, but the combined influence of all those opposing neighborhood associations had pretty well packed the meeting, and it was defeated, 189 to 124. I'm not completely sure this is the end of the story; I think the ultimate decision belongs to the city, and the developer's proposal concluded with the statement that any action other than approval would violate the developer's constitutional rights under the Georgia and U.S. Constitutions, so once the city makes a decision, it may still not be done. So we'll see what happens.

In the meantime, I have to wonder if anyone else looked at Google Maps before weighing in on this.

A Halloween Intervention

It started with a query on the neighborhood Facebook page from one of our new neighbors - how much candy should we get for Halloween?  The responses were quick and depressing.  Not much.  Hardly any trick-or-treaters.  Some years, we don't even see most of the kids who live on our street, much less anyone else.

(Just now I started to write that "I can understand how some adults may not enjoy Halloween," but that's not actually true-- I don't really understand it.  Halloween involves outdoors and getting out in your neighborhood in the evening and non-threatening interactions with children you don't know, as well as a chance to decorate your house and yard and wear costumes, so I can't understand why anyone wouldn't enjoy it, but maybe some people don't -- dentists, for example.)

The best place I ever lived as far as observing Halloween was Baltimore.  In the late 1980s, I lived in the Hampden neighborhood in Baltimore, and at least at that time, they really knew how to celebrate Halloween.  I lived in a house on Roland Avenue that year, and -- like our new neighbors on Wessyngton -- didn't quite know what to expect in terms of numbers of trick or treaters I should be prepared for.  But it seemed like almost all the houses had Halloween decorations up, so I thought it might be a Big Deal, and got what I thought would be a sufficient amount of candy.  Then I reconsidered and got some more, just to be safe.  On Halloween night, the visitors to my door were pretty much constant throughout the evening.  I have no idea how many trick or treaters came around that night, but it was a lot.  I remember I was concerned I was going to run out of candy. I didn't, but it was close.

If decorating is the measure, Halloween is more of an event in our neighborhood every year.  More and more houses in Morningside have elaborate decorations of the type that used to be reserved for Christmas, with lights and inflatables and life-sized plastic skeletons and tombstones in the front yard.  Here are a few more or less random ones from North Morningside.

Now, based on the Baltimore experience, I would expect that this increasing interest in decorating would translate into hoards of trick or treaters, but it just hasn't happened, or at least not on Wessyngton. 

There were more houses with Halloween decorations on Wessyngton, this year, and some of us put our houses on the Treat Map that was on Nextdoor, but it's not like it was candy corn from Highland to Cumberland.  

What to do? I thought maybe some Halloween lights on our street signs would help, with the thought that trick or treaters have to make a decision to turn onto Wessyngton from Highland or Cumberland, and the houses with lights and decorations up aren't necessarily so visible from those corners. So on Halloween afternoon I went to the Halloween store at the development at Piedmont and Sidney Marcus, to get some battery-powered lights to put up on our street sign at Wessyngton and Cumberland.  

Everyone else in the Atlanta metro area appeared to also have last minute Halloween shopping needs as well.  Even before I got into the store, there was a hint that it was going to be crowded, as everyone visible in the parking lot was converging on this one store.  When I arrived, the line for check out extended to the door and I decided I didn't want to buy anything there that badly, so went to the level below to Target where I found some battery-powered Halloween lights.  There were plenty of last minute shoppers there too, but it was a bigger store and they weren't so overwhelmed.  Once I got home, Iain and I put the lights up on the street sign and we hoped for the best.

We got some early trick or treaters -- mostly little kids who live on our street -- and they continued to trickle by throughout the evening.  Probably there were 20 or 25 who came by, more than I remember ever having.  Was it more houses with decorations, or the Treat Map, or the lights on the street sign?  I'm not sure, but probably all of the above.  And once it got dark, Tom built a fire in our new fire ring out on the drive way, and several of our neighbors stopped by. All in all, it was a very nice Halloween.

The next day, I went back to Target and got more lights (now 50% off), including another set of battery-powered lights for the street sign at the other end of Wessyngton.  

Next year, we'll do even better. I'll be sure to have plenty of firewood, as well.

The Great Good Place

Caramba Cafe is closed again.  We got the news via Facebook on either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, I can't remember which.  We went there last Friday night and again on Tuesday.  We tried to make it there early both evenings because we expected them to be busy.  On Friday night, when I took the picture above, they weren't so busy yet, but on Tuesday night we got the last table that was available; there were several multifamily groups there already and they kept coming - all of us wanting one last dinner at Caramba.

Caramba Cafe used to be in Morningside, where Timone's now is, and we used to walk there.  They closed in 2010, and when they reopened on Decatur Street, some of the Morningside regular customers became regulars there.  There were people we saw there almost every time we went.  We saw our neighbor Marian there frequently, and Caroline's reading teacher from early elementary school and his wife seemed to be there all the time.  I've taken out of town colleagues there for dinner and margaritas, and we've had dinner there before being dropped off at Irwin Street for the last two lantern parades on the Beltline (this one and this one).  We continued to celebrate birthdays and report cards and the girls coming home from college there.  I celebrated the last couple of my birthdays with shots of tequila with Mia.  We took our German exchange student there several times during the six weeks or so that he was at our house; he discovered that he really liked fajitas.  There were kids there Iain's age who he'd gone to elementary school with, and the two of them would wander off to talk to other high school kids who were there.  Sometimes we sat at the bar and talked to people we didn't know, but more often we were at a table by the window.  We watched one of the protest marches following Michael Brown's death from that window; the kids took off to watch, and I stayed long enough to pay the bill.  There almost always were hugs before we left from George and Rachel and Mia.

A couple of years ago I started reading a book that I never finished, The Great Good Place, by Ray Oldenburg.  (This was one of those books that would have been a great article in The New Yorker or The Atlantic, but there wasn't quite enough for a whole book).  The idea is that the public places that you and your neighbors go to regularly, whether it's a neighborhood tavern or a diner or a coffee shop or a barber shop, are important to neighborhoods and communities.  They are places you can go where they know you, and they facilitate strangers becoming acquaintances and acquaintances becoming friends.  It's a safe environment for sociability in a society where many people live alone or are far away from family and may not know their neighbors.

Back when I was reading this book, the example from my own experience that kept coming to mind was Caramba Cafe.  This was our family's great good place, and we are going to miss it very much.  If there's a great good place in your life, go there often and take your friends.  Appreciate it with your presence and your patronage.  

The last night we went to Caramba - the next to the last night they were open - I went through the piles of books next to my bed, looking for this one.  I was going to give it to Mia, but couldn't find it. 

Best of luck to la familia Caramba, and to all of us who felt at home there.

More on the New Development at Piedmont & Cheshire Bridge

This is the artist's rendering of the development that Millcreek Residential has on their website now.   It would appear that name of the development (previously the somewhat deceptive Morningside Park) has been changed to Modera Morningside.  I am not sure what "Modera" means -- I think it's one of those words that marketing people make up that doesn't actually mean anything, but I'm not sure.  (Interestingly, the name of the GIF image is "Morningside Heights," which I actually liked -- sort of an amalgam of Morningside and Piedmont Heights, the neighborhood on the other side of Piedmont.)

Iain and I have been trying to figure out where the viewer of this imagined scene would have been standing.  I thought it would be from the gorilla car wash (I thought the woman on the far right, walking straight ahead with the Coke in her hand, had left her car there to be washed) but we went there this morning and walked around.  It clearly was not the future view from the gorilla car wash and maybe not even from Grind House (the only establishment on that block on that side of Piedmont that has any landscaping, I might add, but even there not the lush greenery in the foreground of this drawing).  Our guess was it was from the BP station.

Here's the view from the BP station (inexplicably devoid of cars on Piedmont).

And here's the BP station, which does not have vegetation between it and the street.

The other curious thing about the artist's drawing is the near absence of cars on Piedmont.  Now, as my photograph above shows, it is possible at just the right time to capture such a view.  But this photo, also taken this morning, is more typical:

A notice recently went out to the neighborhood, that the Millcreek construction team would be doing roadwork over the next several months that would impact Piedmont, Cheshire Bridge, and Piedmont Circle, resulting in "slight road closures" and detours.  I'm not sure what a "slight road closure" is but if it requires a detour it sounds to me like an "actual road closure."  At the community meeting that Iain and I attended back in March, there was mention of a traffic study, but it wasn't done yet.

Is it done now, and if so, what did it find?  

Just curious.

Not My Neighborhood

When Caroline was in kindergarten, she (and we) were asked to participate in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study.  This study, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, followed a group of kindergartners from the class of 1998-1999 through 8th grade.  Study staff met with Caroline several times at school and they probably got input from her teachers as well (although I don't remember that for sure).  What I do remember were the long telephone interviews, asking about who was in the household and who took care of her.  There were questions over the years about how many children's books we had in the house.  As all three kids got older, there were more and more, and I remember one interviewer seemed incredulous in one of the later interviews when I estimated it at 2,000.  That probably was a low number, in retrospect, given how many boxes and bags full of books we've given away to pretty much anyone we could get to take them over the years.  We've given some to neighbors and boxes and boxes of them have gone to Morningside Elementary.  Some have gone to one of the green Better World Books bins around town.

One day last week someone on Noble Drive posted a note on the Morningside-Lenox Park email list requesting book donations for an elementary school in West Atlanta.  Last year the PTA at that school had sponsored a reading event and there was lots of interest from the students; in the course of this, it became apparent that there was a big unmet need in many children's homes for books.  So someone in my neighborhood sent out an email, asking us all to check our bookshelves, and so Iain and I did that on Saturday.    

I delivered the books on Sunday.  That overfilled box in the front are the books that I brought, but clearly we weren't the only family with books to donate.  I'm glad there was such a good response to this very worthwhile effort.

On the way home I was thinking about all the things we do with books that we're through with -- pretty much anything but throw them away (although I've done that too).  And then I drove past the Little Free Library that one of our neighbors has placed between the sidewalk and the curb in front of their house at Cumberland and Reeder.  We've left books there, too, as well as in the one on North Pelham.  Of course a Little Free Library is no substitute for a public library, but it's not intended to be; it's a way to pass along a book you don't want to keep to a neighbor who would enjoy it -- which certainly is a good thing to do.

Except in Leawood, Kansas, where a family had built a Little Free Library in their front yard, and then were informed by the city that the structure was in violation of a city ordinance prohibiting structures in front yards.  (I can only assume that bird houses are prohibited as well.)  According to the city, there had been complaints from neighbors.  One can only wonder what kind of neighborhood results in complaints like these, which blogger Scott Doyon cited from news reports. 

"Why do we pay taxes for libraries and have those boxes on our streets? In a blighted area? Sure, put them everywhere. We’re not a poor area. We don’t need them."

"First, there was just a library. Then, a bench was placed next to it. I think people were concerned there would be more and more stuff at their front yard."

The Kansas City Star editorial got it just right. "Neighbors who might be worried about them should wander over and borrow a book."

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/editorials/article590071.html#storylink=cpy

Last week the Leawood City Council unanimously approved a temporary exemption from the ordinance for Little Free Libraries.  So the Collins family's little library is legal in Leawood until October 20.  I'm not sure what happens then.

Thankfully, that's not my neighborhood.  Need something to read?  Lots of books to choose from, just around the corner.  And when you're done with it, you can pass it along to another neighbor.

"For Sale," Again

The duplex up the street is about to be demolished and replaced with a new house, apparently.  First the "For Sale" sign went up and the tenants moved out, then it was "Under Contract",  then it was back "For Sale", then it wasn't, and now it's for sale again, but this time they are selling something else, a new home that hasn't even been built yet.

There's been no sign about a request for a variance, yet, so they are not too far along.  A trailer has been in the driveway for a while, I'm assuming for salvage of what gets salvaged when a house is demolished, but I haven't seen any action yet on the demolition front.

So that's the story.  A small brick duplex where young people used to find affordable housing in the neighborhood is going to get replaced by a large, new, expensive home.  

In Virginia Highland, there's been an effort over the last year or so to create a neighborhood master plan.  There have been community meetings and chances for comment on line and lots of strong advocacy on the neighborhood email list.  There had been a proposal to allow "accessory dwellings" -- garage apartments and so forth -- that might provide some lower cost housing in the neighborhood but I think it's gone from the current draft.  Here's what the FAQ on the plan now says:

In the survey part of the Master Plan process, some citizens expressed an interest in themselves living in such units on their own property as they age out of needing a larger home. Conversely, many community members expressed their opposition to any easing of restrictions on accessory dwelling units. As a result, the Master Plan recommends an ongoing examination of this topic, understanding the necessity of addressing the negative aspects that have historically been associated with accessory dwelling units. Loss of tree canopy, storm water runoff, increased on street parking, and backyard privacy issues are problems that will need to be addressed. The neighborhood will evaluate and review existing and additional accessory dwellings in the context of proposed upcoming city zoning changes.

Whether it's our intention or not, we seem to be determined to allow only people of a certain income level to live in our neighborhoods, between the market incentives for property owners to replace older rental housing  with new, expensive construction, and zoning that prohibits home owners from providing such housing on their property.  I can't help but think that the primary concerns don't actually have much to do with "loss of tree canopy, storm water runoff, increased on street parking, and" (my personal favorite) "backyard privacy issues."

I got a big kick out of this on line guide when I saw it last month.  The Morningside neighborhood was not even mentioned, and see that map?  We're in that big empty spot just below Lindridge Martin Manor.  Now I know it's not just housing costs that keep Morningside off the map -- there isn't much commercial activity in the neighborhood either, and that's what's on the map, mostly -- but no neighborhood as socioeconomically homogeneous as this neighborhood is is going to be a very interesting place to live.

It may be boring, but at least we have our backyard privacy.  Of course, for improving the quality of life in the neighborhood, we'd be better off with front porches.

Update on the New Development at Piedmont and Cheshire Bridge

Years ago planning began to redevelop the retail strips between the thrift store and the taco place on Piedmont, across the street from the gorilla car wash and the BP station and The Pagoda and bar/tattoo parlor, between East Rock Springs and Cheshire Bridge.  The two small strip malls in the area were vacated.  That's when Artlite moved to much smaller and (it seemed to me) relatively horrible space facing a gargantuan parking lot at the new development at Piedmont and Sidney Marcus (since that time they've moved into somewhat less horrible space in the same development, but it is still a much smaller store than it used to be, and they're a stone's throw from Office Depot, which seems like it can't be a good thing).  So the tenants got mostly cleared out but the recession hit and nothing happened.  Then businesses moved back into the spaces for a while but now the construction fences are up and demolition begins soon.  Even the taco place is going to go, although that area is not yet fenced off.

Wednesday night representatives of Mill Creek Residential. the Dallas-based company that is developing the site, spoke at a community meeting sponsored by the Piedmont Heights neighborhood association at Rock Springs Presbyterian Church.  As an aside, when I first saw the name "Mill Creek" on the fence, I was highly skeptical.  I didn't think there had been a mill on the site, and I didn't even think there was a creek there.  So this struck me has a highly inaccurate and even misleading name for the property.  But it's the name of the company.  The plan apparently is to name the development Morningside Park.  It is, technically, in Morningside but it will not be very park-like (more about that later).  You might be excused from thinking it would be, though, from their website, which features this nice view of Piedmont Park.

The only thing in the area that looks remote like a park is the cemetery at Rock Springs Presbyterian, catty-cornered across both Piedmont and Rock Springs.  

But I digress.  The two representatives from Mill Creek came and answered questions about the development for about an hour.  I didn't quite catch their names but I think the one on the left (who did most of the talking) is Oz and the one on the right is Chris.  The Fellowship Hall was packed with neighbors from Morningside and Piedmont Heights as well as at least one owner of a nearby business.

The plan is to build two buildings 65 feet tall with 44,000 square feet of retail at street level and 300 residential units.  Behind will be a 7-story parking deck which will be partially underground providing controlled access parking for residents (1.6 parking spots per unit) and open parking for retail customers (5 spaces per thousand feet of retail).  Some of that is surface parking I think because the number of parking spaces they gave for the deck was only 520. They have signed Sprouts Farmers Market, an Arizona-based grocery chain with a recipe for Quinoa Pear Muffins on its website, to occupy 27,000 square feet on the first floor of one of the two buildings.

There will be a delivery entrance that can access the loading dock on the south end of the property, between the grocery store and the thrift store, and the main entrance will be between the two buildings, roughly across from Saigon Basil.  There will be a new traffic light here.  There were lots of questions and concerns about the impact of the development on traffic flow.  Oz said that a traffic study was underway.  Would delivery trucks be making left turns from the southbound lanes on Piedmont?  No, they wouldn't, they would only be turning in from the northbound lanes.  The plan also calls for parallel parking in front of the grocery store that would be inset into the property but still seems like a terrifying thing to do, given the speed and volume of traffic on Piedmont.  Why couldn't they have their main entrance across from Wimbledon?  It just didn't work, on the site plan, with the grocery store at the south end of the development.

There were questions about bike lanes (Oz wasn't sure) and the pedestrian experience.  What features would make the development accessible for pedestrians?  There would be 10 foot sidewalks and crosswalks; that seemed to pretty much be it.  Could they match the new streetscape on Cheshire Bridge?  Maybe they could, they didn't really know, they could check into that.  Did they know about the Piedmont Heights master plan and the proposal to turn the Piedmont/Cheshire Bridge intersection into a roundabout?  They didn't and although they didn't say so they pretty clearly had no intention to re-engineer this intersection.  

There were questions about water and trees.  Is there a creek in that valley?  No.  What about runoff?  There is water retention built into this, somehow, although where it is isn't so clear to me.  Did they know that their notice about trees (planned tree removals, I assume, but I'm not sure) was behind the construction fence and wasn't visible from the street?  Okay, thanks, noted.

The most uncomfortable moment of the evening was towards the end when a woman pointed out that lots of issues that weren't resolved had been raised and she wasn't confident that any of them were going to be addressed because she hadn't seen either Oz or Chris taking any notes.  Oz replied that he'd certainly made some mental notes.  

Iain and I were there and we took lots of notes.  If the guys from Mill Creek would like a copy, I'm sure we'll both be happy to share.

Owl Spotting

I have lived here for more twenty years, but it wasn't until a few years ago that I noticed the owls in the neighborhood.  Perhaps the owls weren't here before, but I doubt it; I think that instead I just wasn't paying attention, that I didn't know what to look for.  Finally one evening I made an effort to remember what I heard and looked it up on line; it was a very distinctive sound, and it didn't take long to identify that it was the two-phrased hoot of the barred owl (hoo-hoo-hoohoo, hoo-hoo-hoohoo).  Barred owls are common in the southeast, and at least according to Wikipedia, they are doing very well in suburban neighborhoods if there are large trees available for breeding and roosting.  Although we have lost many of our large trees, there apparently are still enough for barred owls to make this home.

In his book about the owls of North America, Wayne Lynch says that in one study in Michigan, barred owls were found to defend a territory of about 1 square mile.  Good territories may be retained for many years; he says that barred owls are known to have occupied one wooded area in the northeastern United States for 34 years.  Sometime last year the question of owls came up on a neighborhood email list, and lots of people described where they hear and see them in the neighborhood; one person said there have been nesting pairs in her yard for 20 years.

I'd hear them in the dark, but to see them, you have to wait, and look toward the sound, and if you do sometimes you can see them.  I had never actually seen one until a year or so ago, when early one evening I heard the distinctive hoot.  The owl was nearby, I could tell, and it sounded like it was on the other side of the street.  I stopped what I was doing and looked toward where I thought the sound was coming from and eventually saw it, roosting on a branch of a tree behind the houses across the street.  I watched it and then, astonishingly, it took to flight and headed across the street, pretty low and not far in front of me, but absolutely silent.  It then disappeared over our house.  It happened so quickly, and I was so surprised, that I could not tell you anything else about it other than that it was large, and it was close, and it didn't make a sound.  And then it was gone.

Since then I've seen owls a few more times.  I've caught a glimpse of one in the trees behind our house.  Then one evening a few weeks ago I was walking the dog after we got home from eating dinner out.  We were going around the block, and I was on Morningside headed toward Highland when I heard an owl.  I stopped, and I looked, and then I saw it fly right in front of me and then it was gone.  Again, it was all over too fast and I was too surprised to be able to say anything about what it looked like.

I have learned, when I hear an owl, to stop and look for it.  But I haven't yet learned how to really see it, when I see it.  I'll keep trying.

The Neighborhoods We Want

It's a good thing that people want to live in Atlanta's older walkable neighborhoods, the neighborhoods that were built as streetcar suburbs in the 1920s or even earlier.  These older intown neighborhoods have many lovely older homes, and many have within them small commercial areas that provide walkable destinations, with neighborhood restaurants, coffee shops, bars, and small shops.  As more people want to live in these kind of neighborhoods, there's demand for housing in them.  Some people want to live in the neighborhood but want a bigger house with all the modern amenities.  So older homes are being purchased, demolished, and replaced with bigger houses.  In most parts of the city, the only requirement for newly-constructed houses is to comply with the city building code.  They are not required to be of the same scale as adjacent houses, to be of the same design as adjacent houses, or to be compatible in any way with the neighborhood.  All they have to do is meet the current building code.

This is an issue in many parts of the city as well as in Decatur.  There's currently an effort in Virginia Highland to explore Historic District Overlay Zoning for two subdivisions in the neighborhood.  This has already generated vigorous discussion on the neighborhood email list, with an active opposition group formed that opposes the designation.  Decatur's City Commission recently considered a moratorium on demolitions of single family homes.  They ended up voting against it.  In the Oakhurst neighborhood, the demographics of the neighborhood are changing rapidly.  Commissioner Kecia Cunningham told the Atlanta Journal Constitution, “For me, it’s not about ‘McMansions,’ it’s the loss of racial and economic diversity, the loss of affordable housing."

On our street, the apartments at the corner of Wessyngton and North Highland are being vacated and will be demolished soon.  I don't know what will be built there, other than that I am certain it will be three large expensive homes.  Lynsley found designs on line that a local architecture firm has proposed for the street (see this link and this one).  The two houses are contemporary, "fusing modern luxury with holistic sustainable design."  The architects note that the proposed location for these houses is "one block from some of Atlanta's best shops and restaurants."  What it doesn't say is that Wessyngton Road is still mostly made up of small ranch-style homes built during the 1950s and that these new houses that are proposed don't look anything like most of the houses on the street.  

But not all the houses on our street were built in the 1950s.  There are newer houses, some dating from a few decades ago; one of them has a quite contemporary design and is for sale now.  There also has been demolition of older homes and new construction on the street in the last few years.  Some older homes including ours have been renovated and second floors added.  It's not that small 1950s ranch-style homes are architecturally important and should be preserved; it's that demand for lots for new construction threatens existing neighborhoods by forcing out longtime residents when property values become too high.

And it's not just that.  A neighborhood is a complex adaptive system, and changing one thing can result in major and unanticipated changes in other areas.  Part of what makes Atlanta's intown neighborhoods interesting is that different kinds of people live in them, that everyone is not just alike.  Interesting neighborhoods require housing to be available across the income spectrum.  Already Morningside is not nearly as interesting as Virginia Highland, which is not nearly as interesting as Poncey-Highland, and that is why.  

I love Atlanta's intown neighborhoods, and I'm glad other people do too, but at the moment it feels to me that we are at risk of loving them to death.  The city doesn't require a Social Capital Impact Statement for new development; all there is is the permitting process.  But building codes and even Historic District Overlay Zoning are pretty blunt instruments.  We need additional and sharper instruments if we are going to shape the direction that our neighborhoods take.  Incentives and disincentives are preferable to regulations, if they'll do the job, and if there are things that the market will do without incentives, even better.  (My impression is that many of the new large intown mixed use developments do include a range of housing types; whether that's due to requirements or incentives, I don't know, but I am pretty sure it's not market forces.  Market forces are leading to an increased focus on walkability in commercial areas, according to a recent study, but not to what the authors called "social equity," which included affordable housing and accessibility.)  My guess is that new houses that look like they belong in the neighborhood probably sell for more than houses that don't, and not all the new construction is dreadful.  But the city and county need to use tax policy to help people on fixed incomes be able to stay in their homes when property values are rising.

This is my new favorite house in the neighborhood.  It was on the market in 2011, after its owner moved into assisted living.  A couple bought it, and after that work started out the site.  I assumed it was going to be demolished and replaced with a much larger, new home.  One day after that I saw them standing in the yard, and I asked.  They seemed surprised at the question.  No, they said, they they planned to renovate it.  The work is ongoing, but one of the things they've done already is enlarged the front porch.

I wish our neighbors in Virginia Highland well, as they continue the discussion about the Historic Overlay District Zoning.  But unless everyone in the two subdivisions wants it -- and that seems pretty unlikely -- it will be a tough sell.  So the discussion continues about the kind of neighborhoods we want, and what -- if anything -- we are willing to do to maintain them or improve them.