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ATHENS NEWS AND VIEWS
Once More into the Breach?: Those of you
who aren't too burned out or disillusioned
to care about the Classic Center expansion
will want to be aware that the Athens-Clarke
County Mayor and Commission will hold a
special work session at 5:30 p.m. Thursday,
May 26 in the planning auditorium at 120 W.
Dougherty St. to review the architects' final
schematic design for the project The M&C
will consider input received from citizens at
a public meeting last week, as well as from
a user group composed
of government officials,
citizen experts and
representatives of the
Classic Center and the
architecture firm, as
they decide whether to
ask for changes to the
current plan. A summary
of the proposed design is
available on the SPLOST
page of the ACC website.
One of many design
issues sure to be consid
ered is that of pedes
trian access between
Thomas and Foundry
along the Washington
Street axis, which is
currently enabled by
a long exterior stair
way between the Fire
Hall and the theater.
Commissioners specifi
cally mandated that such access be preserved
when they approved the expansion concept
plan in April, with some clearly stating that
if the design didn't meet their standards, they
wouldn't vote to approve it. Well, the plan
submitted by the Classic Center's architects
calls for a pedestrian route right through a
large atrium to be built around and behind the
Fire Hall—or through adjacent hallways when
the atrium is in use—which would place that
"public" access firmly under the control of...
the Classic Center. Paul Cramer, the center's
executive director, says he's
"committed" to puviding that access, and he
thinks it can be facilitated "24/7." It remains
to be seen whether that's what the commis
sioners had in mind, and if not, whether
they're willing to do anything about it.
It Takes You: At its May 26 Community
Conversation, Whatever It Takes Athens will
present a draft of proposed solutions based
on a detailed assessment of community issues
pertaining to its mission of ensuring that
every child in ACC is on track to complete a
post-secondary education by July 1, 2020.
This is a big part of WIT's preparations for the
implementation of that enormously ambitious
plan, and it's critically important that citi
zens give their input. The meeting is from
5-6:30 p.m. at the Classic City High School,
440 Dealing Ext., #1. You can find out more
at www.witathens.org; if you can't attend, you
can still contribute by sending your ideas to
comments@witathens.org.
Dave Marr news@flagpole.com
The proposed design for the Classic Center expansion features a large atrium
that would be built around three sides of the Fire Hall (seen here in a cutaway
view from the Foundry Street side).
TPmtnjTfejmsTfr Tfa’s Krazy Korner
My new theory: Congressman Broun is working on a time
machine. Last week’s opinion piece by Broun in the Augusta
Chronicle offered an inspiring vision of an energy-independent
America, but there’s a big problem: there’s not nearly enough petro
leum underneath the North American continent to make his plan
work. In the op-ed, Broun uses an estimate of 163 billion barrels of
recoverable oil, but that number is pretty much impossible to verify
using Interior Department geological estimates. That’s where the time
machine—and Broun's big-game hunting skills—come into play. He must be
traveling back 65 million years or so, corralling dinosaurs into what would become the
U.S. outer continental shelf and Northern Alaska and then gunning them down in huge
piles. Otherwise, !'m not sure how Broun figures there to be so much petroleum there.
But, there’s another problem that effectively renders the first one moot. Anyone who
knows how the free market works understands that the barrel price is determined by
global supply. That is, a ton more oil found tomorrow off our coast won’t mean cheaper
gas for Americans. Oil drilled in the United States goes directly onto the international
market. Plus, it takes a long time to get oil online; from discovery to gas tank takes at
least five years. Phyllis Martin, a senior analyst at the Department of Energy, points out
that by 2030, the U.S. output will represent merely 1 percent of the projected global
consumption. -Even if we were to have all the oil Broun imagines, this number would
move up only slightly, and. again, that oil would simply be on the international mar
ket, where increased consumption in China and India will likely negate any boons in
supply. Broun’s plan just doesn’t make much sense. If he does have a time machine,
Broun should go to the future to see how mankind is going to move past oil, instead of
inventing stories that prop up his oil industry friends’ profits. (Matthew Pulver]
4 FLAGPOLE.COM-MAY25, 2011
SMALLWOOD, REYNOLDS. STEWART, STEWART & ASSOC
