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WHAT'S UP IN NEW DEVELOPMENT
Downtown Is an Island: As our downtown
visioning and masterplanning process awaits
continuation, with 42 responses to a request
for proposals in the inbox, one of the study's
topics seems to form a particularly interesting
challenge: "Connectivity to downtown (green
way, river, university, surrounding neighbor
hoods)." Downtown often strikes me as a sort
of island with a curious array of barriers on
all sides—some as permanent as steep slopes
and others more surmountable.
Centrally locating services and invest
ment in downtowns and in secondary nodes
makes sense both in terms of economics and
good planning. Proximity and density mean
more efficient use of city infrastructure. But
the catch is in getting people to those ser
vices efficiently and sustainably. Downtown
assets should be accessible to the widest
group of citizens. So, linking downtown to
neighborhoods and employment nodes means
investing likewise in key corridors radiating
from the center—Broad, Lumpkin, Hancock,
Prince, North Avenue, West Broad, Oconee.
Encouraging more housing and commerce near
these routes—and making them welcoming for
walking, biking, driving and transit—will help
link people and urban assets.
Walking Downtown: So, how easy is it to walk
downtown? It's generally a very enjoyable
place to stroll within—which is a great eco
nomic asset—until you hit an edge. Broad,
Pulaski, Dougherty and Thomas are wide, fast
roads: hard edges to downtown, although
Broad Street is partially redeemed by improved
crossings and pedestrian-friendly frontages
near campus. If we want to take advantage
of the underdeveloped areas near down
town, it does no good to wall them off. Street
modifications—three-laning, median islands,
etc.—would promote investment in the bor
ders of downtown, as well as connectivity and
pedestrian safety.
There are also major gaps in active front
age downtown created by surface parking
lots, long blank walls and other less human-
scaled uses. The university also seems to
have moved much of the "life" away from
its downtown edge. The charming old North
Campus buildings close to the energy and vari
ety of downtown—surely a key selling point
for talented prospective students—are now
almost all administrative buildings rather than
classrooms or dormitories. The flow of people
bringing a feel of animation—and security—
particularly decreases at night. However,
proposed campus designs for the "northeast
precinct" between Jackson and Oconee streets
would include housing (a 24-hour use) and
bridge the gap with downtown created by cur
rent surface parking lots. West Broad is also
gaining an emerging identity, with recent
renovations and new tenants that are help
ing reinvigorate the traffic-dominated canyon
between Pulaski and Milledge.
Day and Night: More obstacles emerge around
downtown at night. It is particularly interest
ing to consider routes home for patrons of
downtown's many drinking establishments.
How good are the connections with
neighborhoods where most people live?
Bus services end well before the bars
close.
An informal poll of bar patrons (and
our high DUI rate) suggested that driv
ing home after drinking is the norm.
The taxis/shuttles seem to do a cracking
business, although a few downtown con
sumers complained of inconsistent fares.
Many also walk—along routes of varying
quality. Among the key corridors from
downtown, all but Prince are quite steep.
Lumpkin, North Avenue, Broad and
Oconee are fairly devoid of life. A typical
pedestrian experience is on an exposed
sidewalk, traffic rushing by on one side
and closed businesses or parking lots
on the other. Hancock, in mid-gentrifi-
cation, has become a well-walked route
to Milledge late at night. I sometimes
hear complaints that downtown doesn't
cater to "grownups"; certainly, none of
our key corridors are very conducive to
a dignified walk home after a cultural
evening. For cyclists, the main, direct
corridors, again, are generally very steep,
dangerously heavy with car traffic, or both,
so cultivating an alternative network could be.
logical. Cobbham and campus do provide fairly
accessible routes west and south.
Our corridors from downtown could benefit
from smart treatment as the main radials they
are, by encouraging mixed uses that animate
the routes and cater to pedestrians, and by
rebalancing public rights-of-way to serve all
modes of transportation. While a streetcar
may be out of reach at the moment, bike/bus/
pedestrian facilities and development guide
lines that demand human-scale urban design
fronting our streets are not.
Crosswalk Commotion: Speaking of key cor
ridors from downtown, the recent police
"sting operations" on drivers disregarding the
crosswalk by The Grit on Prince Avenue begs
the question: What is it about this stretch of
road that produces 28 citations in an hour?
Athens has its share of irresponsible drivers,
but the wide, fast, four-lane road configura
tion tells drivers more clearly than any sign
that they should zoom through without need
ing to be alert to sharing the road with pedes
trians (or bikes, for that matter). Perhaps
those three-laning proposals of years past
had a bit of merit? Stay tuned for a more in-
depth look at past and future ideas for Prince
Avenue in coming weeks.
Katie Goodrom athensrising@fiagpole.com
Broad Street leaving downtown: a less than elegant pedes
trian experience.
A Loggerhead Sea Turtle's Stoiy
C an Freedom be saved? Researchers on
board the Georgia Bulldog decided to find
out when they discovered an anemic, emaci
ated loggerhead sea turtle off the coast of
North Florida last summer. They delivered her
to Jekyll Island's Georgia Sea Turtle Center,
whose capable staff named her "Freedom."
Three months later, it was awe-inspiring to
see this magnificent animal with three adults
wrestling her feisty 200 pounds, trying to hold
her still enough for treatment by Dr. Terry
M. Norton, the center's founder and director.
"She's had lots of treatments," Norton said at
the time. "She's now up to weight, but still
too anemic to survive in the ocean."
Why go to so much trouble for a turtle?
Mahatma Gandhi said, "The greatness of a
nation and its moral progress can be judged
by the way its-animals are treated." Saving
turtles encourages us to be better people.
These craggy-faced creatures have been on
earth for 215 million years. Five of the world's
seven types of sea turtles live off the coast of
South Georgia, all endangered. Only one out
of 4,000 loggerhead hatchlings lives to adult
hood, making Freedom a marvel.
As a female loggerhead, Freedom reached
maturity between 17 and 35 years of age. She
started laying eggs that year. Between late
April and early September, she returned to
the beach of her birth, probably her first time
back on land. At night, she ventured onto the
beach above tide line to spend over an hour
digging a nest with her back flippers—a nest
deep enough to hold up to 150 leathery white,
Ping-Pong ball-sized eggs. After covering this
nest with sand, she returned to the water. She
may have laid several nests over the season,
which peaks in June and July. She'll faithfully
repeat this nesting every few years. Last sum
mer, GSTC staffers discovered a female who
was missing a back flipper and helped her dig
her nests.
The nest hatches 55 to 62 days later.
Alone, a tiny hatchling must crawl out of the
nest, make its way across open beach and into
the water without being washed back, killed
by predators, misdirected by artificial lights or
dying of sun exposure. New baby loggerheads
measure about two inches long and weigh
less than an ounce, while an average adult is
three feet, weighing 200 to 300 pounds—an
astounding growth journey.
During nesting season, GSTC staffers look
daily for eggs that haven't hatched on time.
I GSTC staff hold Freedom,
an anemic loggerhead sea
turtle, vtfiile she is treated
b>? Dr. Terr? Norton.
They attempt to save these eggs by placing
them in the center's incubator. Since the sex
of a loggerhead is determined by nest tem
perature, they set the heat at 90 degrees to
produce more females for egg laying.
The center sits surrounded by Jekyll
Island's beauty, where mossy oaks, palmettos
and palms meet. Dr. Norton says, "We're mak
ing a combined effort with education, research
and rehabilitation... [We] show kids what
we're doing; then they tend to have more
interest in things like marine biology... turn
ing people back to the natural environment."
Visitors of all ages delight in the cen
ter's interactive displays and games, visiting
patients and watching turtles being treated
through the large viewing window. There are
staff talks daily, and the center's website
offers hours of intriguing information about
turtles, turtle patients, oceans and GSTC
activities.
Emma, a juvenile green sea turtle, was
voted the center's 2010 Turtle Patient of the
Year. Emma, short for Emerald, arrived at the
center severely injured from a boat strike
that left a deep gash down two thirds of her
carapace (shell) paralleling her spine, expos
ing one lung. Asked if Emma will return to the
ocean, Dr. Norton replies, "It's a possibility, if
she gets enough mobility in her front joints...
She's improved a lot." If you're at the center
this June, be sure to visit Emma and vote for
your favorite turtle patient for 2011.
Can Freedom be saved? Yes. Thanks to the
dedicated care of the GSTC staff, a healthy,
hardy and aptly named Freedom eagerly
crawled into the surf and swam home to sea
on Dec. 3, 2010. She now lives wild, free to
swim, lay eggs and enjoy the rest of her turtle
life.
Kate Guilford
For more information on reservations for GSTC nest
walks and turtle walks and special events like the
Turtle Crawl Triathlon May 21, go to www.georgiasea-
turtlecenter.org or call 1-912-635-4444. If you see
a dead, injured or harassed sea turtle, call 1-800-2
SaveMe.
MAY 4,2011-FLAGPOLE.COM 7
KATE GUILFORD