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CITY PA GES
THE SHAPE OF ATHENS TO COME — ROUND 2
Residents, officials offer ideas
on the city of the future
As the second round in the planning of
Athens’ future started up last week, the
effects of the dismissal of New Jersey con
sultant Tony Nelessen became a little more
evident.
One local government leader told
Flagpole that Nelessen, who conducted the
“visual preference survey" earlier this year.
was dropped from the city’s march toward
a new comprehensive zoning and land use
plan for two reasons. One, the source said,
was because Nelessen’s style seemed inap
propriate culturally — he was perceived as
ill-mannered and not open enough to sug
gestions and ideas from the community.
The other was that government officials
apparently felt they were getting an “off-the-
shelf product,” i.e., recommendations that
were not specifically suited to Athens in
particular.
Taking the lead currently in the consult
ing process are Connie Cooper and Bill Ross
of the Birmingham/Atlanta firm Cooper-Ross,
and John Fregonese, former head of planning
for Portland Metro, a body encompassing 27
local governments in the Portland, Ore. area.
Last week’s two meetings were directed by
the chirpy Cooper, who was introduced by
John Stockbridge of the ACC Planning
Department as “good local Southern peo
ple.” Cooper peppered her presentation with
“y’alls” and seemed to take extra efforts to
include all participants in the process.
Meanwhile, Fregonese presented himself as
a “practical New Urbanist" whose current
efforts in the private sector include working
with builders to create viable, real-life alter-
i native designs. He told participants at
Saturday morning's Vision Advisory
Committee meeting, “We re not here to tell
you how to do things... it’s basically your
town. We re not here to convince you what
to do.”
On Wednesday the Athens-Clarke County
Commission and the ACC Planning
Commission were in the drivers’ seat, bash
ing out proposed “guiding principles" for the
Comprehensive Plan, which will overhaul the
city’s zoning and land use plans for the 21st
century. On Saturday morning, members of
the public, some of whom are on the Vision
Advisory Committee, a 169-member group
appointed by the mayor, did the exact same
thing. Both bodies tinkered with a draft of
the “guiding principles,’’ progressive, pie-in-
the-sky statements concerning everything
from auto dependence to air quality to uni
versity relations to educational initiatives.
At Wednesday’s meeting, the phrase “it’s
a matter of semantics” came up more than
once, but even at this early stage the seman
tic splitting of hairs was the result of specific
and serious policy concerns. Taking center
stage were District 4 Commissioner John
Barrow’s views on population growth in
Athens. When the Planning Department’s
John Orr mentioned that as many as 130,000
people could be living in Clarke County by
2020, Barrow interrupted to tell the politi
cians assembled that most Athenians do not
wanf 30,000 new neighbors.
Barrow said the county’s policy until now
has been one of “If you build it. they will
come.” Fearing that Clarke County would
only react passively to potential population
growth, he maintained, “We've got to decide
how many people we want to have here as a
basic goal of our plan.”
Athens should halt growth “in those areas
that are a challenge to us," Barrow said.
Clarifying his comments on Monday, he said
that when it comes to “single-parent families
and economically distressed families,”
Athens is “carrying more than our fair share
of the region’s burden.”
“If you control the housing, you’ll control
the population," he said. “It’s very simple if
you have the w«ll to do so. We need to stop
conversion of upscale rental housing into
downscale rental housing."
District 7 Commissioner Doc Eldridge
>• see PLANNING on page S
ATHENS PRESENT, ATHENS’ FUTURE: THE NUMBERS
' •Population of Athens Metropolitan Statistical Area, or MSA, 1970 (Athens-Clarke. Oconee
and Maaison Counties): 86,609
•Estimated population of Athens Metropolitan Statistical Area, 1997: 142,903
•Rank of Athens MSA, in terms of population growth rate, among other non-Atlanta MSAs in Georgia for
the period 1970-1997: 1
•Population of Athens-Clarke County, 1970: 65,177
•Estimated population of Athens-Clarke County, 1997: 95,422
•Rank, in terms of population growth rate, of Athens-Clarke among other non-Atlanta central
city/counties, 1970-1997: 1
•Low-ball projection of ACC population, 2020: 112,530
•High-ball projection of ACC population, 2020: 131,454
•Average percentage of white population increase in Georgia counties, 1970-1990: 35.6
•Percentage of white population increase in Athens-Clarke County, 1970-1990: 18.7
•Percentaoe of white population increase in Oconee County, 1970-1990: 143.2
•Ave-age percentage of African American population increase in Georgia counties, 1970-1990: 47.1
•Percentage of African American population increase in Athens-Clarke County, 1970-1990: 79
•Percentage of African American population increase in Oconee County, 1970-1990: 3.4
•Percentage of owner-occupied housing, ACC, 1970: 48.53
•Percentage of owner-occupied housing, ACC, 1990: 40.76
Source: ACC Planning Deportment
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