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COURTESY OF KAPPA ALPHA
CITY PAGES
continued from page 5
and Industrial School. In recent decades, the
whole of the Hancock corridor and the surround
ing neighborhood has become a mix of apart
ments, student rental houses, and the single
family homes whose occupants' families have
been in the neighborhood for generations.
Although Cross said the high proportion of
apartments in the area made it a logical loca
tion for the KA house, one homeowner objected
that it is respect for the community that matters
Greeks who want them. KA has declined that
option in part out of a desire to own, rather
than rent, its new home; it has also worked far
in advance of the University's deadlines to se
cure its own location. Although some neighbors
questioned UGA's commitment to make the River
Road option attractive to all fraternities. Vice
President for Student Affairs Rodney Bennett
insisted the financial aspects of those arrange
ments are not even set up yet, and said later,
"The University welcomes the opportunity for
these groups to relocate from Lumpkin Street to
River Road."
If you think a house that looks like this doesn’t belong on Hancock Avenue, you’re not alone.
most; although some landlords may not have
valued the community in recent years, she said,
all of the residents—renters included—have
been respectful neighbors. But issues of respect
came to a head when UGA Director of Community
Relations Pat Allen, who facilitated the meeting
(which was organized by Allen and ACC District-3
Commissioner George Maxwell), asked Cross and
KA President Will Curry to explain KA's traditional
Old South parade. The annual parade features
KA brothers in the grey Civil War uniforms of
the Confederate Army, with their dates in ante
bellum-style hoop skirts. Cross described it as
“meant more as a re-enactment than anything
else," and said that allegations that the parade
is a display of racism "couldn't be further from
the truth." That prompted Bertha Troutman-
Rambeau, a lifelbng member of Hill First Baptist,
to remark: "It is. It is racial, and it doesn't feel
good." She went on, "Even your building doesn't
feel good, and you know that." Rev. Ben Rivers,
the church's pastor, agreed, reminding the KA
members of the church in which they were sit
ting and asking them to be truthful about their
own traditions. "The tradition of the Old South
doesn't feel good," he assented. "Hearing it
doesn't feel good."
Racial issues aren't the only ones that KA
will have to deal with when it moves into the
neighborhood. The residents present at the
meeting expressed nearly equal concern about
parties, noise, trash, parking, drinking and traf
fic. Curry promised a contact information sheet •
or refrigerator magnet with phone numbers for
neighbors to call with complaints, and tried
in vain to allay fears of late-night parties that
neighbors said would disturb working people and
threaten to destroy the neighborhood. But the
discussion eventually turned to the Old South pa
rade again, with neighbors both black and white
(including ACC District 5 Commissioner David
Lynn) requesting that the fraternity not hold the
parade. At one point, Troutman-Rambeau (who
was a member of the black sorority Alpha Kappa
Alpha) rose from her seat in a pew to approach
the KA members and plead with them, "a Greek
to a Greek," to abandon the parade for the sake
of their new neighborhood. "You can make the
change," she said. "It's wrong." She went on,
"It hurts people's feelings. That house is going
to hurt someone's feelings. And I know about
that house. My heart says something's not right.
Kappa Alpha." The KA brothers said they'd take
the matter into advisement, but offered no com
mitments at the meeting.
Neighbors also grilled defensive UGA admin
istrators about the University's role in ejecting
the Lumpkin Street fraternities out into Athens'
neighborhoods. UGA is providing land and leases
on River Road for all of the Lumpkin Street
Meanwhile, barely 24 hours after the in
tense meeting at Hill First Baptist, District 8
Commissioner States McCarter attempted to
cancel the Greek house moratorium by moving at
the Mar. 7 Commission meeting to reconsider the
February vote. This time. Mayor Davison broke
a tie vote to keep the moratorium in place. The
ACC Planning Commission will soon have to ad
dress Lynn's concerns with the zoning code; at
issue is the lack of specific code sections deal
ing with fraternity and sorority house*. Prior
to the update of the ACC zoning code in 2000,
however, Greek houses were identified as a con
ditional use in multi-family zoned areas, mean
ing those projects had to be approved by the
Planning Commission as well as the Mayor and
Commission. They were a permitted use outright,
in the old code, downtown and in the Office-
Institutional zoning category, which corresponds
now to the Commercial-Office zoning category—
the one that contains the Milledge Avenue Greek
houses. Lynn’s moratorium tasks the Planning
Department with addressing again the question
of the appropriateness of Greek houses in the
interior of in-town neighborhoods.
Ben Emanuel berxSrilagpole com
On Pope Street
Preservation Puzzle
Neighbors of Emmanuel Episcopal Church
on Prince Avenue, as well as the Athens-Clarke
Heritage Foundation, are opposing a plan by the
church to relocate a 100-year-old house that sits
at 685 N. Pope St. on the church's grounds. The
former church "Meeting House" belonged to the
family of the Athens fire chief for most of the
first half of the 20th century. The church bought
it in 1956, and for decades it housed various lo
cal child care and social service organizations.
After serving as the church Meeting House, it has
now suffered a period of vacancy and is showing
signs of neglect.
The church's solution is to allow Athens' Bona
Fide Construction 8i Renovation, a firm special
izing in historic preservation, to move the house
to a nearby lot on the corner of Barber and
Barrow streets, where it would be renovated for
use. Because the house sits within the Boulevard
Historic District, that action requires a Certificate
of Appropriateness (COA) from the ACC Historic
Preservation Commission (HPC); the COA applica
tion was filed Mar. 1, and will be taken up at
that commission's Mar. 15 meeting. Applications
to relocate historic structures are rare for the
HPC—ACC Preservation Planner Evelyn Reece says
she hasn't seen one in five years working as the
staff support for that body.
But the idea's proponents say it is the most
feasible way to preserve the house. Bona Fide's
Matthew Hicks, who is a member of Emmanuel,
says, "We want to see the house saved." The
house's next-door neighbor, the Youth House,
is in a similar situation, and Hicks says both
are "worthy of being restored." But the church's
resources are limited. A much bigger preserva
tion task, Hicks points out, is the large, ante
bellum Howell Cobb House across Pope Street,
which also belongs to Emmanuel. "The church
has worked very hard to come up with a reason
able situation," he says. "In my mind, this is a
reasonable solution." (Hicks also points out that
moving the house is no small project, and will
likely cost more than building from scratch on
his Barber Street lot.)
The leadership of the Historic Boulevard
Neighborhood Association (HBNA), however,
disagrees. Tony Eubanks, HBNA chair, says neigh
bors have tried to work with the church for years
to save the two houses. Pratt Cassity, a professor
in UGA's School of Environmental Design and
Boulevard's preservation chair, says that reloca
tion as a rule is "not a preservation solution."
Although relocation is preferred over demolition,
he says it is not a "historic treatment"—"you
lose the building's context, even when it's moved
nearby." He says that "one of the great things
about the houses being there is the way they
frame the Cobb House." Replacing them with
685 N Pope Street
open space in the form of parking or green space
(options the church has considered, according to
documents on its website) would take away what
Cassity calls "one of the most important design
characteristics of that little street." Relocation is
effectively similar to demolition, and Cassity says
the local preservation ordinance treats it that
way. Eubanks calls it "a clear-cut case of demoli
tion through neglect."
Ben Emanuel ben@Pagpole com
Capitol Impact
Science Versus Religion
A showdown between Republicans and
Democrats over a controversial bill regulating
stem cell research (SB 596) was averted Mar. 7
when the bill's sponsor agreed to remove some
of the objectionable parts of the legislation. The
Senate Science and Technology Committee then
voted to approve the stripped-down bill, clearing
the way for a vote by the full Senate.
SB 596 seeks to encourage medical research
on stem cells derived from umbilical cord blood,
amniotic fluid and placental tissue, research
that could help find cures for Parkinson's and
Alzheimer's diseases and provide relief for the
victims of spinal cord injuries. The original ver
sion of the bill sponsored by Sen. David Shafer
(R-Duluth) would have made human reproductive
cloning—where a cloned embryo is allowed to
grow into a fully formed human being—a felony
offense. It also would have made the therapeutic
cloning of unused embryos for stem cell research
purposes a criminal offense punishable by one to
10 years in prison or fines up to $100,000.
That provision caused an uproar in commit
tee last week when the bill was being initially
debated. Academic officials feared that the crimi
nal penalties in SB 596 would drive biomedical
researchers away from Georgia and hinder the
state's efforts to attract life sciences and bio
technology firms. Ironically, at the same time
the Senate committee was considering the bill to
make therapeutic cloning a criminal offense, the
House Appropriations Committee was putting $5
million in the state budget to invest in biosci
ence firms.
Shafer said he decided to remove the con
troversial cloning provisions from SB 596 "after
thinking on it over the weekend." He met with
Sen. Tin Golden (D-Valdosta) prior to the Mar.
7 committee meeting and the two lawmakers
agreed to the compromise version of the bill.
"I believe the newborn umbilical cord blood
initiative is absolutely vital to scientific research
and medical treatment," Shafer said. "I don't
want to let the controversy over embryonic clon
ing stand in the way of our using umbilical cord
blood for medical research." Golden commended
Shafer for making the changes in the bill, al
though he added, "I'm a little disappointed in
the politics of all this." The Christian Coalition
of Georgia, a strong influence on the state's
Republican Party, opposes the use of any em
bryos in stem cell research and says the practice
is the same thing as abortion.
Dr. Marie Csete, a
prominent biomedical
researcher affiliated with
Emory University, asked
Shafer at Tuesday's com
mittee meeting to make
some minor changes in
the wording of the bill
so that its definitions
would be technically
correct.
"There have been so
many games played with
definitions, I would pre
fer we stick with these
definitions," Shafer said.
"I'm not going to let
you grow embryos in pig
uteruses."
Sen. Bill Heath (R-
Bremen) said he was
"very much disturbed we
would abandon a ban on cloning... why would
we hesitate today to put in the code what is
bothering us?"
Sen. David Adelman (D-Decatur), who had
strongly objected to the criminal provisions
against therapeutic cloning in the original ver
sion of SB 596, called the revisions to the bill "a
victory for science in Georgia and the thousands
of patients who suffer from debilitating, degen
erative diseases, as well as spinal cord injuries."
Tom Crawford tcrawford@capilclimpact com
Animal Control
Last Week’s Scorecard
Athens-Clarke County Animal Control respond
ed to 68 calls:
7 complaints of animal cruelty
3 bite cases
2 complaints of barking dogs
6 citations for ordinance violation
37 animals impounded:
26 dogs
5 cats
3 chickens
1 hawk
2 raccoons
21 dogs placed
8 adopted
7 reclaimed
6 turned over to other agencies
ACC Animol Control press release for the week
of Mar. 2 to Mar. 8.
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FLAGPOLE.COM • MARCH 15, 2006