About Buckhead reporter. (Sandy Springs, GA) 2007-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 2, 2020)
4 | Community 4 A Place Where ■v You Belong , plucky s 0 Burger & Brew Mari's Best Friends ed Pepper V taqueri'a tropical SMOOTHIE (Opening Soon) TOWN BROOKHAVEN www.townbrookhaven.net Conveniently located on Peachtree Road adjacent to Oglethorpe University. We are open and ready to welcome you Stop by for a bite to eat or use curbside and delivery services. Please check with individual businesses for current operating hours and dining options. Facebook.com/TheReporterNewspapers ■ twitter.com/Reporter_News Vacant Cheesecake Factory will stand, but fence must rise, owner says BY JOHN RUCH johnruch@reporternewspapers.net The owner of the long-vacant Cheesecake Factory restaurant building on Buck- head’s Peachtree Road is backing out of a plan to demolish it. But he is pressing ahead with a request to surround it with chain-link fence and using escalated talk of on-site crime and police ignoring trespassers - which the Atlanta Police Depart ment denies. On Aug. 5, representatives of owner Peter Blum came before the Development Review Committee of the Special Public Interest District 9 zoning area with the idea of demolishing the building at 3024 Peachtree. The specific request was for an administrative variance to allow the 8-foot-high, black-vinyl-coated fence along Peachtree. The restaurant structure was built in 1993 and vacated by the Cheesecake Fac tory in 2014, when it moved to the Lenox Square mall. Sitting between Buclchead Avenue and Pharr Road, the 0.82-acre property stretches back about 500 feet into the Peachtree Heights West neighborhood. The former restaurant is a two-story building with nearly 9,000 square feet of space. The rear is a parking lot that is sometimes rented for event parking, according to Blum’s representatives. In his request, Blum said the property was “out of control” with homeless tres passers and its interior was “destroyed.” Members of the DRC - a purely advisory body to the city - were eager to see it demolished. But the look and utility of a fence, especially with no redevelopment in sight, were concerns for DRC members. Denise Starling, who is also executive director of the nonprofit Livable Buclchead, said she didn’t like the precedent of al lowing fencing along Peachtree. “If we’re going to make this better, let’s make it better,” said Sally Silver, the DRC’s representative from City Councilmember Howard Shook’s office. “Let’s not just put a Band-Aid on it.” DRC members suggested scraping the entire site clean, including the slab and asphalt, and covering it with grass. Some members noted that the amount of park ing in the lot would not be allowed in a redevelopment under current zoning any way. However, Blum’s representatives had concerns about maintaining possibly use ful features and whether grass would continue to attract trespassers. In an eventual compromise recommendation, the DRC called for the building slab to be removed and grassed over and for the fencing to start at the parking lot instead of at the street, a setback of roughly 150 feet. Now Blum is no longer seeking to demolish the building for unexplained rea sons, but still wants to install the fence, according to an Aug. 20 update letter to the city from Norman Koplon, a consultant for the property owner. Koplon did not respond to an email about the change in the demolition plan. In pressing the argument for the fence, the letter makes several new claims about the dangerousness of trespassers on the property, giving undated examples. “For example, when Mr. Blum told one trespasser that he needed to leave the property, the trespasser jumped up and approached him brandishing a knife,” the letter says. In another incident, the letter says, trespassers set fire to lumber “presumably” taken from the building and threw it onto the adjoining property of a Restoration Hardware furniture store, a site Blum also owns. “This could have burned Resto ration Hardware to the ground,” the letter claims. The letter claims that trespassers have “scaled the walls of the building like mountain climbers so they could access the building through the roof,” and that “homeless encampments” scare employees of Restoration Hardware. The letter says that trespassers are able to access the property because of the BH
