COMMUNITY
WELLNESS
YOUTH
Former Superintendent Crawford Lewis (right) confers with his lawyer during the Aug. 14 arraignment of Lewis and three others on racketeering charges. 3
The action adventure film “The Losers,” which was released in May, will be screened at the Covington Library on Aug. 28. 8
Deondria Boyer’s colorful creation is one of three designs chosen for the DeKalb County Library’s new limited-edition cards. 9
Courtroom confab
New Movie Series
Copyright © 2010 CrossRoadsNews, Inc.
August 28, 2010
Winning design
Volume 16, Number 18
www.crossroadsnews.com
Board of Commissioners kill GM Plant redevelopment By Jennifer Ffrench Parker
The redevelopment of the General Motors Doraville will not happen with DeKalb County money. The DeKalb Board of Commissioners killed the $110 million project with a 5 - 2 vote on Aug. 24. DeKalb CEO Burrell Ellis had pushed the proposal from the Orlando, Fla.-based developer New Broad Street on the grounds that it would generate 9,000 construction jobs and jump start the plant’s redevelopment.
The plan to build transit-oriented mixed-use retail, office and residential development at the site on 1-285, near I-85 in Doraville had called for New Broad Street and the county to buy the 165-acre GM property for $60 million. Ellis had proposed using $35 million in American Stimulus Funds, that must be spent by Sept. 30, and bonds to finance its portion of the project. Ellis said it would generate $637 million to the county. New Broad Street would have also put in $60 million for site demolition
and brownfield remediation at the site where GM manufactured cars until September 2008. On the eve of the vote, New Broad Street vice president Blake Peeper said it would be dead in the water without the county’s input. “We can’t do this without the partnership of DeKalb County,” Peeper said at an Aug. 23 press conference called by Ellis to lay out his case ahead of the commissioners vote on the project. Please see GM PLANT, page 6
DeKalb CEO Burrell Ellis, flanked by members of the DeKalb Development Authority and the Perimeter CID pleaded his case for the GM project at a press conference on Monday before the BOC vote.
Now, can South DeKalb and Stonecrest get an ear By Jennifer Ffrench Parker
When DeKalb County lost the Perimeter area and all its tax benefits to the city of Dunwoody, hope sprung that it would have no choice but to champion a new commercial power center in its unincorporated areas. The logical beneficiary would have to be the Stonecrest area, anchored by the 1.3 million-square-foot Mall at Stonecrest that opened on 1,100 acres in October 2001. After all, the live-work-play community is home to thousands of acres of undeveloped land, prime for quick development with roads, water and other infrastructure, already in place. But when the first opportunity to invest $36 million in federal stimulus dollars came, DeKalb CEO Burrell Ellis looked north to the city of Doraville and the abandoned GM plant. Now that Board of Commissioners soundly defeated that proposal, will the southern part of the county – and the Stonecrest area – specifically, get a fair shake? Commissioners Lee May and Connie Stokes, who both represent the area, said this week that South DeKalb and Stonecrest have not fallen off the county’s radar. “Far from it,” Lee said. “We may have gotten a little side track, but we have not forgotten South DeKalb County.” Stokes, who was one of only two commissioners supporting the GM project, said the county sees Stonecrest as its heir apparent after the loss of the Perimeter Center. “The county sees the Stonecrest area as an opportunity for Class A office space, and for a convention center,” she said. “We talk about it all the time.” But you wouldn’t know it from unkempt ramps and overgrown Turner Hill Road median that leads to the shopping mecca. On Thursday morning, the grass in the center median on Turner Hill Road was three feet tall and the sides of the road lush with weed. Once you get on the mall’s property, the grass is neatly trimmed and crape myrtles are abloom.
Jennifer Ffrench Parker / CrossRoadsNews
On Thursday, the center median on TUrner Hill Road leading to the Mall’s main entrance was overgrown with weeds and littered with trash.
When it is as unkempt as it was Thursday, getting there takes some gumption, even from those familiar with the area, much less the interstate traveler who might venture off 1-20 for a shopping stop. Mall marketing manager Donald Bieler said -maintaining the Turner Hill Road median are the county’s responsibility. “We always have to remind them to cut the grass,” he said Thursday. “It should be on a schedule, but it is not.” Bieler said that when prospective tenants or developers come to the mall, they look its environs, not just the mall’s property, which is well maintained. “It’s the whole Stonecrest area,” he said. “The whole region needs to be maintained and look pristine. We seek the support of the county to do that.” Ellis did not return calls by press time. May, whose vote helped defeated the GM project, said he was unaware that the median was unkempt.
Both he and Stokes cite county’s budgetary issues and credit “a slow down in service delivery” for the overgrown grass. But if a commercial center is a job- and revenue- generator for the county, can we afford not to care for it? The mall’s market area includes more than 970,000 people and Bieler said that more than 5,000 people now work in the Stonecrest area, which generates millions of dollars in property and sales taxes for the county. One just have to contrast the appearance of the Stonecrest area to Ashford Dunwoody Road that leads to Perimeter Center or to Lenox Road that leads to Lenox Mall or Phipps Plaza. The four malls all shared some of the same anchors and stores, but while a premium is placed on appearance in Dunwoody and Buckhead , it is not on Turner Hill Road, or for that matter, anywhere in South DeKalb county.
Just take a really good look at Glenwood Road, Candler Road, Wesley Chapel Road and Panola Road the next time you get off the ramps from I-20. May said the Perimeter shopping district is more attractive because it has a CID [Community Improvement District] in which landowners tax themselves to take care of landscaping, public safety and other issues. “When you see police out there directing traffic, those are off-duty police officers paid by the Perimeter CID,” he said. “Stonecrest doesn’t have a CID.”
Area has lots going for it May says the stimulus money needs to be spent where it can spur development – not merely speed it up. “We can generate more jobs at Stonecrest,” he said. “I told New Board Street [the Florida developers that pitched the GM deal] they Please see STONECREST, page 6