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Forsyth County News
VIII —NUMBER 101 WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1987 —CUMMING, GA. 30130 40 PAGES 4 SECTIONS
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tort
is sought
for new
post office
By Kathey Pruitt
Staff writer
Forsyth County commissioners decided to
take the battle for a new Cumming post office
to a higher authority Monday night after re
ceiving a verbal commitment from a con
gressman who said he would look into the
matter.
Commissioner Michael Bennett said he
spoke with Sen. Wyche Fowler about local
post office problems while in Jekyll Island for
a Georgia Farm Bureau convention last week.
“He suggested that the commission send a
letter explaining the post office situation and
he’d look into the matter,” Bennett said.
Commissioners instructed the county ad
ministrator to draft a resolution to Sen.
Fowler, Sen. Sam Nunn and Rep. Ed Jenkins
asking for congressional help in getting a new
pe«t office.
A lack of money in the U.S Postal Service’s
1988 budget put construction of a new Cum
ming facility on hold indefinitely, according to
a public affairs officer at the Atlanta division
of the postal service. Earlier plans had called
for the purchase of at least five acres adjacent
to Lanierland Drugs on Ga. 20 for a 20,000-
square-foot building.
The current post office is pinched for space
in its 7,600-square-foot facility. Two new
routes will be accommodated by the addition
of trailers on the current site, but the postal
service said in late November that budgeting
for a new building would not come before 1989.
In other business, commissioners approved
a letter to the state Department of Natural
Resources requesting a matching grant for
improvements at Bennett Park.
“The recreation board already has $15,000,”
County Administrator Ralph Roberts told
commissioners. “If you approve the letter,
they’ll definitely get $15,000 in matching funds
from the state of Georgia and it won’t cost the
county anything.”
Renovation of Pool’s Mill Bridge, the histor
ic covered bridge that spanned Settendown
Creek in northwest Forsyth County until it col
lapsed in August, is about 65 percent com
plete, according to Commission Chairman Le
roy Hubbard.
The northern end of the 86-year-old struc
ture has been re-roofed and shored up, Hub
bard said. The southern end, which sagged
into the creek before county work crews re
moved it to the county barn pending restora
tion, has had its sides rebuilt, and workers
with Robert Cantrell’s construction company
Please see COUNTY, page 2A
Retail centers
still planned
despite delays
By Lindsey Kelly
Staff writer
Big plans outlined to scale in pretty, three-color draw
ings do not a shopping center make, a fact local residents
may have been noticing of late.
After being optimistically touted by developers, two
shopping center projects planned along Ga. 20, one on the
east of Cumming, the other on the west, have run into
problems.
A retail and business complex has been in the works for
a 12.7 acre site on eastern Ga. 20 near Ga. 400 since June of
1985 when Sandy Springs developer Marvin Isenberg an
nounced plans for a 70,000-square-foot shopping center
development with three commercial spin-off sites.
On the west side, plans for a 109,000-square-foot shop
ping center project, to be called Creekside Plaza due to its
location on Kelly Mill Creek, were announced in January
of this year. The 15.7 acre site is located off Ga. 20 near
Lakeside Community hospital.
So why haven’t these plans gotten off the drawing board
yet? For the Creekside Plaza project, the hold-up has
been a lack of tenants willing to commit.
When plans for the project were announced earlier this
year, developers said they were negotiating with several
possible tenants, including three food store chains, four or
five drug store chains and Hardees and Krystal fast food
franchisers.
But a rather frustrated Robert Johnston of Atlanta, one
of the three developers involved in the project, said re
cently he has invested “a lot of money” in doing demo
graphic studies and research to present to potential ten
ants but has yet to find one willing to sign.
“It’s very frustrating,” Johnston said. “You just can’t
build a shopping center without any tenants.”
Johnston said he has no real explanation for why he’s
having trouble getting tenant commitments, other than
the racial troubles last winter that he believes have seri
ously marred the area’s reputation.
Johnston was referring to two marches held in the pre
dominantly white county last January and February that
resulted in an often violent face-off between civil rights
marchers and white supremacists groups played out be
fore national media attention
“It turned everybody off locating in Cumming,” John
ston said.
But things seem to be looking up on the other side of
town. After overcoming some serious logistical head
aches, the project at Ga. 20 and 400 appears to be finally
moving from the drawing board into reality, apparently
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Community group forming to combat teen pregnancy
By Kathey Pruitt
Staff writer
Teenage girls should worry about
homework assignments or keeping up with
the latest fashion trends, not about why the
baby cried all night or the after effects of an
abortion, say community leaders who have
banned together to battle Forsyth County’s
teen pregnancy problem.
Representatives from church, health and
school organizations are concerned about the
number of girls age 10 to 19 who are becoming
pregnant a total of 142 in 1985, according to
the latest figures available. And community
leaders are trying to come up with ways to
help teens make responsible sexual
decisions.
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Creekside Plaza construction site remains vacant despite developer’s efforts
due to the tenaciousness of the property’s new owner.
Sam Williams, a developer out of Norcross, purchased
the site from Isenberg and his partners in November of
1986. Williams said the lack of sewer access to the proper
ty, geographical problems with the site and traffic con
gestion in the area were the reasons why Isenberg’s group
decided to sell out of the project.
Williams has had his own problems since in the year
since he purchased the property. He said it took five
months and a “great deal of effort” to get the state De
partment of Transportation to grant approval to grade
the steep bank on the property. The bank lies in the DOT’S
right-of-way.
Though approval has been granted, a permit has not yet
been issued to allow grading work to begin but is expected
to come soon.
Williams said plans by the county to install a traffic
light at the intersection of Ga. 20 and Old Atlanta Road
“When you see 13-year-olds, 14-year-olds
and 15-year-olds coming up pregnant, it’s
very disturbing,” said Earlene Roden, senior
nurse at the county health department.
“If we can prevent those pregnancies if
there are things we can do as a community to
prevent them that’s what we’d like to see
done.”
Roden and about 20 others met for more
than an hour recently to formulate the begin
nings of a countywide coalition against teen
pregnancies, which are seen as a growing
problem in the county.
Since 1983, the number of Forsyth County
girls who become pregnant has increased un
til the county has the third highest rate
among the 13-county District II health re
gion. In 1985,93 teens had babies, 46 had abor
have eased some of his concerns about traffic, but he
finally had to give up on waiting for extension of public
sewer service into the county. He plans to install septic
tank facilities on the site.
With these obstacles apparently behind him, Williams
offered an assurance that “there will be a shopping center
there next year.”
He said construction of a two-story office building is
scheduled to begin on one of the out-parcel sites in Febru
ary. Leasing agreements have already been secured for
half of the space, he said, and negotiations are under way
with “another party” who may lease the remaining
space.
His full plans for the 12.7 acre parcel call for a 105,000-
square-foot strip shopping center and two other spin-off
sites for commercial development in addition to the site
Please see CENTERS, page 2A
tions and three suffered miscarriages, ac
cording to data compiled by District II health
oruy uaw'son and Hall counties ranked
above Forsyth based on a comparison sys
tem that calculates the pregnancies per 1,000
teenage girls. Forsyth had a rate of 55.5 preg
nancies per 1,000 girls, Hall had 59.2 and
Dawson had 55.7.
But data compiled by the health depart
ment represents only girls who have been
treated in public health services. The fact
that many may go to private medical prac
tices or out-of-town clinics gives health de
partment workers reason to believe the num
ber could be higher. i» !
“About 50 percent of the pregnaift teenage
girls in Forsyth County are getting abor-
Staff Photo Kathryn L. Babb
Staff Photo Kathryn L. Babb
tions,” said Beverly Tuttle, state health offi
cer for district 11. “That tells you that there
are a lot of pregnancies that we don’t know
about” because they’re being dealt with
elsewhere.
At the Nov. 30 meeting, public health offi
cers from the District II office in Gainesville
pointed to the success of community-backed
sex education programs in reducing teenage
pregnancies in other counties.
After implementing a comprehensive fam
ily living curriculum that involved the reli
gious and medical communities, Rabun
County schools experienced a 49 percent re
duction in teen pregnancies over a four-year
period, according to Tuttle.
Please see TEENS, page 2A
Employers say
‘thank you’
in many ways
Forsyth holiday bonuses
buck the national trend
By Kathey Pruitt
Staff writer
Employers in Forsyth County can rest easy Christ
mas Eve, with no fears that they’ll be awakened by
ghosts of Christmases past, present or future.
Unlike Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ infamous story
“A Christmas Carol,” local firms are sending their
employees home with a wide assortment of Christmas
bonuses.
They’re also bucking the national trend.
Christmas bonuses are becoming a thing of the past
in companies across the country, according to a study
by Prentice-Hall Inc. Many companies have stopped
playing Santa altogether. Others have reduced the
scope of their gift giving.
Cash bonuses have been the first to go, the study
indicates. Of 218 firms that award bonuses, 11 percent
have stopped doing so with a check. Three percent of
the companies surveyed have started giving gifts to
employees during the holiday season.
When the study began in 1981,52 percent of the com
panies gave money, and 38 percent gave gifts.
In Forsyth County, however, a yuletide check signed
by the boss is still a popular appreciation gift.
“Our employees may not have the best conditions to
work in inside the plant, and we know that,” said Bill
Carter, president of American Proteins, the parent
company of North Georgia Rendering. “So we try to
take care of them and make things as good as we can
for them. During the Christmas season when they’re
buying Christmas presents, they would rather have
money than a gift.”
When the holiday season nears, each member of the
110-person work force who has been with the company
for six months gets an extra weeks’ pay, Carter said.
Kmart employees and workers in other retail chains
also take home checks from the corporate
management.
Forsyth Countians who work at the Tri-County Plaza
Kmart will find their Christinas budget expanded by
an amount that grows as their tenure with the compa
ny increases. The maximum bonus given out by the
Please see BONUS, page 2A
35 CENTS
With some cray
ons, a pair of scissors
and a little know
how, Lori Waters brings
Santa to life. Waters
is a second grade stu
dent in Miss Carolyn
Jones’ class at Coal
Mountain Elemen
tary. The Santa Claus
hangups were part of
a class project that put
everyone in the
Christmas spirit. For
more pictures of hard
working students, see
page BA.