Newspaper Page Text
The Champion, Thursday, August 20-26,2015
Page 5A
Arthur Blank isn't the only Memorial Drive investor
“Memorial Drive has not
seen a dollar of development
in two decades.”
That’s what interim
CEO Lee May said after the
DeKalb County Board of
Commissioners voted 4-3 to
approve an incentive pack
age to pave the way for bil
lionaire Arthur Blank, a co
founder of The Home Depot,
to bring the headquarters
and practice fields of Atlanta
United Football Club, a ma
jor league soccer franchise,
to the county.
Days later, after criticism
from the three commission
ers who voted against the
deal and from some resi
dents, May echoed his rheto
ric, saying Memorial Drive
had “not seen one dollar of
investment along that cor-
t
ti
Andrew Cauthen
andrew@dekalbchamp.com
Managing Editor
@AndrewChampNews
ridor.”
That’s not quite the case.
On Memorial Drive,
four miles east of the pro
posed soccer facility, a
148,000-square-foot Walmart
was opened in 2013. Devel
opers razed a defunct Subaru
car dealership near the cor
ner of Memorial Drive and
Hairston Road to build the
store that has created ap
proximately 300 jobs.
When the Walmart was
announced, DeKalb County
Commissioner Sharon
Barnes Sutton said the pres
ence of the new Walmart
should attract other busi
nesses to the area.
“It’s going to bring jobs to
our community,” Sutton said.
“It’s going to improve the tax
base and it’s an opportunity
to direct the traffic down
Memorial Drive.”
Less than two miles west
of the proposed soccer site,
is the Belvedere community.
Once in a state of decline,
this community has seen
some stabilization, and even
a bit of growth, since 2008
when a Walmart was opened
at the site of the Avondale
Mall.
During its grand opening
DeKalb Commissioner Larry
Johnson said the Decatur
Walmart would bring a surge
of vitality to Memorial Drive
as customers come back.
“Walmart is a critical
component in the redevelop
ment of the Memorial Drive
area,” Johnson said at the
time. “Their presence will
motivate others to invest in
the area.”
In the wake of the De
catur Walmart came Aldi’s
grocery store, Sonic Drive-in
and Zaxby’s. The renovated
building that once housed
Aaron’s Rents has been pur
chased by UHaul.
And in April community
leaders and DeKalb County
officials convened on Co
lumbia Drive, two blocks
from Memorial Drive, for the
official opening of the 80-
unit Columbia Senior Resi
dences at Forrest Hills.
The Memorial Drive cor
ridor, while by no means is
back to its heyday, is stable,
slowly improving and is in
creasingly being gentrified.
This is the corridor
that Arthur Blank is com
ing to, not as a savior, but as
an opportunist who is only
promising to give 12 jobs to
DeKalb County residents.
He knows a good deal, and a
good area, when he sees it.
His bucks aren’t the first
in the past two decades and
won’t be the last.
ONE MAN'S OPINION
Being stoned, Part 2
It was the valuable Stone
Mountain rock, in Georgia’s
pre-Gold Rush days, that at
tracted the formation of the
Southern Granite Company,
which included among its
major shareholders and orga
nizers in 1886, brothers Wil
liam and Samuel Venable.
By 1893, the Venable granite
empire would own most of
Lithonia and eastern DeKalb
County, and a 1901 brochure
published by the Venables
billed Stone Mountain as the
“largest deposit of merchant
able granite in the world.”
Though the Venables by
day were pillars of society and
the business community, by
night they were apparently
getting between the sheets, or
a least younger brother Sam
Venable was, in the reforma
tion of the Ku Klux Klan atop
Stone Mountain in a rally on
Nov. 25,1915.
Spurred in part by the re
lease of the film “The Birth of
a Nation” in Atlanta a week
later, the Klan billed itself as
“the world’s greatest secret,
social, patriotic, fraternal,
beneficiary order.”
The Klan initially pre
bill.csicrane@gmail.com
Columnist
sented itself more as an uber
patriotic version of the Ma
sons or the Shriners, as there
were visible connections to
the Democratic Party of that
day, and also plenty of hate
to go around, as the Klan had
harsh words for the Catholic
Church, Jewish and Irish im
migrants, Blacks and served as
a major proponent of Prohibi
tion.
The younger Venable
granted the Klan a 40-year
easement to hold rallies atop
the mountain in 1923, but it
is urban legend that the Klan
owned Stone Mountain and
began the efforts to create the
memorial carving.
William Terrell, an Atlanta
attorney and son of a Confed
erate veteran, suggested the
notion as a guest editorial in
The Atlanta Constitution on
May 26,1914 (a year prior
to the Klan’s re-birth). Helen
Plane, an 85-year-old Confed
erate widow, held the title of
honorary life president of the
Georgia Chapter of the United
Daughters of the Confederacy
(UDC), and Plane contacted
Sam Venable on behalf of the
UDC seeking his interest and
permission to create such a
memorial and monument at
Stone Mountain.
Plane would ultimately
serve as the first president of
the Stone Mountain Memorial
Association.
The Stone Mountain Me
morial Association selected
sculptor John Borglum to
design, engineer and complete
the carving. Borglum’s original
design called for five groups
of figures, each representing
an aspect of the Confederate
forces, surrounding a central
group of Generals Lee, ‘Stone
wall’ Jackson and Confederate
President Jefferson Davis.
All figures in the original
design, estimated at 700-
1000, would be facing east to
greet the dawn of a new day.
Borglum estimated the work
at eight years and a budget
comparable to the Lincoln
Memorial, then also under
construction.
Under pressure from Ven
able, Borglum would later join
the Klan, although he was a
Yankee and was fired from the
project due to its long non
completion in 1925, and even
tually became the sculptor and
project manager for Mount
Rushmore.
Though Klan members
were among the executive
committee and board of direc
tors, financial contributions
toward financing the carving
also came from the Rotarians,
Freemasons and numerous
Jewish and Catholic groups
across the South.
The project would sput
ter along with fits and starts
throughout the Great De
pression and World War II
eras. After being championed
by Atlanta’s mayor William
B. Hartsfield in 1945, the
legislature authorized the issu
ance of $5-million in revenue
bonds to reactivate the Stone
Mountain Memorial Associa
tion and move forward with
the project.
In 1949, Gov. Herman Tal-
madge worked with DeKalb
County Commissioner Scott
Candler to renew an option
with the Venable family for
five more years, to keep the
mountain from reverting to
the Venable family. In 1955,
Gov. Marvin Griffin worked
with civic leader and banker
Mills B. Lane of C&S Bank to
secure acreage at the base of
the mountain for a state park,
as well as the eventual comple
tion of the carving.
To be continued -
Bill Crane also serves as
a political analyst and com
mentator for Channel 2’s Ac
tion News, WSB-AM News/
Talk 750 and now 95.5 FM,
as well as a columnist for
The Champion, Champion
Free Press and Georgia Trend.
Crane is a DeKalb native
and business owner, living in
Scottdale. You can reach him
or comment on a column at
bill. csicrane@gmail. com.
#ItslnTheChampion
