by Jim Martin
james.martin@me.gatech.edu
The May NPU-D meeting was uneventful. It ended 30 minutes before its prescribed, although seldom observed, time limit of 9:00 PM. This is probably a record and it comes on the heels of a pretty short meeting in April. The only zoning item on the agenda was a parking variance for a renovation of some historic buildings (the Masonic Lodge and Adams Hardware) at the corner of Bolton and Marietta Rd. Everyone agreed that this was a good thing and it passed unanimously. John Schaffner’s summary of the meeting is here.
Of considerably more importance to Berkeley Park is a discussion that took place at the end of the meeting regarding an initiative by the planning department to adjust neighborhood boundaries so that all of the land in Atlanta will be within a neighborhood. This is something that we have been discussing at NPU-D executive committee meetings since January. Following the May NPU-D meeting, I exchanged emails with James Arpad (the Blandtown representative) and with the manager of the Westside Urban Market. I also spoke to the executive committee of the Underwood Hills neighborhood association. The maps shown below indicate adjusted Berkeley Park boundaries that everyone I spoke to found acceptable and that met the goals of including all the land in our NPU in one of our neighborhoods. The map on the left indicates Berkeley Park’s boundary as it is currently recognized by the city. This is a little different from what we believed when we wrote the Blueprints plan because it includes two blocks on the west side of Howell Mill around Bowen St. and because it does not include any of the waterworks land. The map on the right shows what I think should be our new boundary. It includes all of the waterworks property on the east side of Howell Mill down to the Norfolk Southern rail tracks (the southern boundary of NPU-D). It does not include the Westside Urban Market shops on the east side of the street. These will be part of Blandtown at the request of their manager. On the west of Howell Mill, the new Berkeley Park boundary will extend along Chattahoochee Industrial Blvd to the edge of the CSX rail yard. It will follow the eastern boundary of the CSX property to old Chattachoochee. There it will track along the back sides of the lots on the east of the street rather than along the street line as it currently does in order to accommodate a resident who asked to be in Underwood Hills. All of the land to the west of this new boundary (i.e. the CSX rail yard and the buildings fronting Old Chattahoochee) will become part of Underwood Hills. The triangle of land fronting Howell Mill that includes the Ambery Animal Hospital will also become part of Underwood Hills. At the June BPNA meeting we will vote on whether or not to adopt this new boundary. In light of all of the competing interests, it appears to make a lot of sense.
Another thing that happened at the end of May was the release of the draft Beltline work plan for the first five years of the project by the ADA. You can download this at http://www.beltline.org/newsEvents/index.shtml#WorkPlan. This is a slideshow indicating how money will be spent for the first five years of the Beltline project. The document is amazingly light on details for a proposal to borrow and spend $280 million. The biggest problem that I can see with this plan from Berkeley Park’s point of view (there are plenty of problems for the city as a whole) is that it almost completely neglects the Waterworks Park project. ADA’s plan is for June to be a month for the community to review and comment on their work plan. Implicit in this is the idea that the plan will be changed if we put forward good ideas for its revision. I have written up my opinion as to why the park should be included in the plan as a draft for our neighborhood’s official position on this issue. You can read it below. At the June BPNA meeting we will discuss this and formulate the BPNA position on this issue. It is important to deal with this in June because the plan will go before the City Council at the beginning of July.