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rm% city dope
Downtown’s White Privilege
PLUS, T-SPLOST, BIKE SAFETY, WEST BROAD, FIREWORKS AND MORE
By Blake Aued, John Huie and Martha Michael news@flagpole.com
Once, downtown Athens was a place for
everyone—including minorities and low-
income residents who didn’t have the
option of getting in their cars and follow
ing the department stores out to the mall.
But for decades now, downtown’s been
undergoing what Pratt Cassity, director of
public service and outreach for the UGA
College of Environment and Design, calls a
“demographic tsunami” fueled by affluent
students that threatens to engulf it.
“Are we offering the downtown user
a canned experience?” Cassity won
dered during a Sept. 15 talk on campus
entitled “Where Have All the Wig Shops
Gone? White Privilege and Downtown
Development.” (Wig shops, Cassity
asserted, are a good rough measure of
whether a downtown has been successfully
revitalized. Downtown Athens’ wig shop
left three years ago.)
It’s a question plenty of Athenians have
been asking for years. Urban Outfitters.
The specter of a downtown Walmart.
Longtime locally owned
businesses close their
doors and are replaced
by chains. Last week,
owner Irvin Alhadeff
announced Masada
Leather would close after
40 years. In its place comes High Country
Outfitters, an Atlanta chain. More chains
fill up the ground floors of new high-rent
developments.
The authenticity issue is tied in with
gentrification. “Within a mile radius of City
Hall is an extremely high percentage of
Athens’ working poor,” Cassity said. They’re
the people who benefit the most from being
within walking distance of jobs, stores
and services. What is there downtown for
them?
It’s been going on for decades, really.
The Hot Corner, the old Jim Crow-era
African-American retail district centered
at the intersection of Washington and Hull
streets, is now mainly hipster bars, with
just a couple of black-owned businesses
remaining. Wealthier whites are pushing
out the less-wealthy whites who pushed out
the African Americans. Circle of life.
What is new are all of the luxury apart
ment towers that have popped up down
town, bringing an influx of students and
money that’s changing the face of down
town once again. “Is it good or bad?” Cassity
said. “Time will tell, but I guarantee you we
did not predict this in 1991... It’s a topic of
constant communication and discussion.
Everyone is confused.” Is Athens in danger
of becoming San Marcos, TX, where Texas
State University became, as Next City called
it, the college that ate a city? Perhaps, if it
continues to homogenize. [Blake Aued]
TRANSPORTATION TAX: Voters in the Athens
region rejected the first T-SPLOST (a pro
posed 1 percent sales tax for local trans
portation projects) back in 2012, as did all
but three regions in Georgia. After that,
state legislators went back to the drawing
board, and have proposed rules for a new
T-SPLOST referendum, this one to be put
to voters county-by-county, which makes
it simpler, but unlikely to address regional
needs. Only rarely do legislators open new
revenue streams to local governments.
Athens-Clarke County has funded many
local projects (parks, trails, paving, bus
stops, the library, the jail) with “regular”
Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax
money, and the transportation SPLOST will
work much the same way. Only transporta
tion projects will be eligible, although that
could include greenways, bikeshares, transit
improvements or a “Whitehall/Milledge
roundabout,” as one commissioner sug
gested at a Sept. 13 work session.
Any citizen, organization, commissioner
or county department can propose a project
for T-SPLOST funding. A citizens’ advi
sory committee appointed by the mayor
(each elected commissioner will nominate
two members) will vet all the proposals.
Commissioners will vote on the final proj
ects list, and that list will be approved or
rejected by ACC voters no
sooner than November
2017. If approved, a 1 per
cent sales tax will be col
lected within the county
for five years, totaling an
estimated $113 million.
(Winterville and Bogart will share in the
bounty along with Athens.) That would
bring Athens’ sales tax up to 8 percent—4
percent for the state, 1 percent that goes
into ACC’s general fund, 1 percent for
SPLOST, 1 percent for the school district’s
E-SPLOST and 1 percent for T-SPLOST.
ACC commissioners have been eyeing
the T-SPLOST to fund projects like “corri
dor improvements” along Atlanta Highway
or Prince Avenue, construction of new
sidewalks and replacing very old under
ground pipes downtown. It could also cover
expensive items like road repaving normally
funded through the general budget. “There
could actually be a decrease in the general
fund budget,” Commissioner Jerry NeSmith
said optimistically at last week’s work
session.
Commissioners could vote on a timeline
next month, making project proposals due
perhaps by January. [John Huie]
BIKE SAFETY: A team led by ACC Traffic
Engineer Steve Decker has compiled data
on bicycle and pedestrian crashes and
where they happen, and changes will be
made to improve safety at those loca
tions. The safety audit involved staff from
police and transit as well as Transportation
and Public Works; Decker has previously
designed bike plans for Florida and New
Mexico. ACC’s highest crash rates were
along Lumpkin Street adjacent to UGA and
Prince Avenue between Barber and Pulaski.
“Low-dollar projects”—typically
improved markings, pedestrian refuge
median islands and overhead flashing lights
at crosswalks—will be done first. Lumpkin
is Athens’ busiest pedestrian street, and
the new refuge island adjacent to South
Campus has been very effective, Decker
Are we offering the
downtown user a
canned experience?
Pratt Cassity is wigging out about downtown gentrification.
told commissioners. Another is planned for
North Avenue and possibly Prince. Once
installed, projects will be evaluated based
on crash rates.
Radar speed signs “are really worth the
money,” Decker said—they do slow traf
fic. One is planned for Hawthorne Avenue
(along with a new bus bay near Broad
Street). But there aren’t many easy fixes
for Hawthorne, Decker says. Power poles
in the public right-of-way are a problem
on Hawthorne and also Barnett Shoals
Road, but it’s not easy to get Georgia Power
to move them. “We’ve been fighting that
battle for years,” said County Attorney Bill
Berryman.
Despite public interest, a stoplight is
“not warranted” at the planned 100 Prince
development on the former St. Joseph
property, based on traffic counts, Decker
said.
A new mid-block crossing will be added
near McDonald’s on Gaines School Road.
Crosswalk improvements are planned
at several intersections along Prince, on
Baxter Street and on Oglethorpe Avenue
at Forest Heights. Reflective paint is being
added to red-brick crosswalks in order to
increase nighttime visibility, and green
paint will be added to some bike lanes.
But additional projects that come out of
the revised bike and sidewalk master plans
(see p. 9) “are bigger projects,” Decker told
commissioners, and will have to be bud
geted, perhaps through T-SPLOST. [JH]
>- CYCLIST KILLED: These issues are on many
people’s minds after an allegedly impaired
and distracted driver hit three local cyclists
with her SUV Sept. 12, killing one and
severely injuring another.
According to police, Whitney Baker
Howard, 31, of Spring Valley Road, was high
on prescription drugs and using her phone
when she crossed Athena Drive’s center
line and plowed into the three cyclists
head-on, killing Ashley Block, a 25-year-old
UGA graduate student, and severely injur
ing Mitchell Enfinger, a fixture in the local
cycling community. Brian Molloy, owner of
The Hub, a local bike shop, suffered minor
injuries.
Howard faces a half-dozen charges,
including DUI and first-degree homicide by
vehicle. It won’t be her first time in a court
room. The Athens Banner-Herald reported
that she was charged with one DUI in June
and another last month. Court records show
that she’s struggled with addiction for years,
which cost her custody of the older of her
two children. The other, a two-year-old, was
in her Jeep at the time of the crash. [BA]
WEST BROAD: A clearer picture of what devel
opment in the West Broad neighborhood
might look like in the future is beginning
to emerge after an open house Sept. 15.
The public was invited to share their ideas
and concerns with the design firm, Lord
Aeck Sargent, which was hired by the ACC
government, Clarke County School District,
6 FLAGP0LE.C0M • SEPTEMBER 21, 2016