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Too Many Apartments?
COMMISSIONERS CONSIDER SEVERAL MULTIFAMILY DEVELOPMENTS
By Blake Aued news@flagpole.com
pub notes
Red and, Yep, Black
WHEN INTEGRATION FINALLY CAME TO UGA
By Pete McCommons pete@flagpole.com
pects, reducing the likelihood of shooting
them, but some commissioners hope that
criminal justice reforms in the coming years
will end the need for Tasers. “I wouldn’t
want to saddle us with more enforcement
than is necessary if we are successful in
our work in the coming years making those
investments that drive down the need for
that level of force,” Parker said.
Commissioner Jesse Houle said Tasers
keep neither residents nor police safer. “My
concerns about Tasers are threefold: They’re
expensive, they’re potentially ineffective...
and they may also serve to reinforce or fur
ther enable an approach to crisis response
that I think relies upon too few first
responders with too few resources,” Houle
said.
Incidentally, the commission recently
approved a $250,000 settlement with
Salvador Salazar, a North Carolina man who
was shot by police in Athens last year after
pulling out a hidden machete and swinging
it at an officer. But
Salazar’s lawyers
argued that police
had no reason to
approach or ques
tion him because
a 911 call from his
girlfriend men
tioned mental illness and homelessness—
which are not crimes—and an alleged
probation violation that ACCPD did not
have an official record of. His lawyers also
said in a lawsuit naming responding officer
Roger Williams and dispatcher Tori Teets
that Williams escalated the situation by
pulling his gun when Salazar was attempt
ing to walk away and posed no threat.
Salazar suffered severe injuries and will use
the settlement to pay his ongoing medical
bills, according to his lawyers. Taxpayers
are on the hook for $100,000, with the rest
covered by ACC’s insurance.
If this proposal had been
student housing three years
ago, it would have been shot
down in a heartbeat.
With nearly 10,000 apartments completed,
under construction or proposed in Athens
over the past two years, Athens-Clarke
County officials are reluctant to let the
building boom continue. That especially
applies to student housing, although devel
opments that promise to be affordable for
working-class residents are having an easier
time.
In 2017, the commission approved a
controversial condominium project at 155
Mitchell St., near downtown and the UGA
campus, on a parcel that has long been eyed
by developers. That eight-story tower won
approval mainly because of a promise that
it would be made up of owner-occupied
condos for seniors. But now, the original
developer has flipped it to a company that
specializes in student housing.
“I feel like this was a bait-and-switch,”
Commissioner Melissa Link said at the Jan.
19 agenda-setting meeting. “If this proposal
had been student housing three years ago,
it would have been
shot down in a
heartbeat.”
Five of the seven
commissioners who
voted in favor of the
original proposal are
gone now, though,
so this new iteration will face a tougher
climb. Not only has the use changed, but
the later version is denser, with 23 addi
tional units and less commercial space. The
planning commission voted 5-4 to recom
mend denial.
“They have concerns with increasing the
number of units and decreasing commercial
[space]—just the overall increasing trends
they’re seeing with a lot of multifamily
right now,” Planning Director Brad Griffin
said.
The planning commission also voted
unanimously to deny a rezoning for a
proposed 501-apartment development
on Lexington Road. But the developer
has agreed to make concessions, said
Commissioner Mariah Parker, who rep
resents the area.
Officials looked more favorably on two
other multifamily proposals. One—on
Highway 29 near the growing commercial
node around the “Space Kroger”—consists
of 280 mostly one- and two-bedroom apart
ments advertised as workforce housing. The
other includes 87 one- and two-bedroom
apartments (nine below market rate), as
well as kiosks for startup businesses, on
Tracy Street, although planners questioned
its proximity to industries like the Pilgrim’s
Pride poultry plant.
Parker and Commissioner Carol Myers
also raised concerns about extending a five-
year contract with Axon, a company that
provides police body cameras and electric
shock devices popularly known as Tasers.
They said they intend to introduce a com
mission-defined option Feb. 2 limiting the
Taser contract to two or three years.
Police officials contended at a Jan. 14
work session that Tasers give officers a
non-lethal option to subdue violent sus-
COVID UPDATE: The COVID-19 virus has
infected more than 12,000 Athens resi
dents, killing 81 and hospitalizing 367.
With reports floating around the internet
of groups of maskless students roaming
Five Points and packing together on fields
for powder-puff football games, here’s a
friendly reminder that the pandemic is
still, in fact, a thing, although the numbers
have improved somewhat lately. Clarke
County’s seven-day rolling average of new
cases stood at 74 on Jan. 23, down from
108 the previous week. That’s good—but
still not good enough for Clarke County
School District students to return to in-per-
son classes. CCSD announced that remote
learning will be in effect until at least Feb
5. Local hospitals remain near capacity,
and intensive-care units are overcrowded.
However, a new antibody treatment avail
able at Piedmont Athens Regional for
COVID-19 patients with risk factors could
help alleviate the situation. Vaccine distri
bution is ramping up but remains limited
to people age 65 and up, nursing home res
idents, health-care workers and other first
responders. ©
Former UGA Dean of Men and Dean of
Students William Tate once proposed to
write a three-part series for The Athens
Observer recalling Athens as he knew it
during his years as a student here, 1920-24.
The dean’s method would be to walk down
Prince to Milledge, thence to Five Points
and back to town on Lumpkin, recalling
only from memory buildings and the peo
ple who lived and worked in them
during his years of matriculation.
As the dean waded through his
flood of recollections, the series
grew into 17 fascinating Observer
installments, later collected into his
book, Strolls Around Athens—still a
rich read if you can get your hands
on a copy.
I will follow Dean Tate’s method
here, relying only on my memory.
Fortunately, my recall is much
inferior to his, even though I have
already cheated by re-reading Calvin
Trillin’s An Education in Georgia.
These ruminations are occa
sioned by the 60th anniversary of
racial integration at the University
of Georgia in 1961, currently the
subject of a series of events on cam
pus. I was a junior during the winter
of 1961, so I had a ringside seat.
In federal court, right here in
Athens, we sat spellbound as the
chancellor of the University System
of Georgia, the UGA president, the
registrar and other top officials took
the stand and—under oath—denied
that UGA had any policies excluding
Black students. Dismissing those transpar
ent prevarications, the court ordered the
immediate admission of Charlayne Hunter
(now Hunter-Gault) and Hamilton Holmes,
two Black students from Atlanta.
This action came during the civil rights
movement, when other Southern colleges
had been integrated amidst rioting and
bloodshed, so a corps of veteran reporters
descended on Athens, ready for the next
wave of mobs and tear gas. And we did
have our mobs—groups of students gath
ering to chant “[N-word] go home” and
to impress their English profs with such
rhyme schemes as “Two, four, six, eight/
We don’t want to integrate.” Groups of stu
dents gathered in various places in crowds
at night, working up to the full-fledged riot
that came later.
But we did have Dean Tate. He had not
been among the administrators lying in
court, and he simply went about fulfilling
his duty to protect the safety of all UGA
students, now including, for the first
time—except for a bunch of foreign stu
dents—two of color.
Dean Tate by that time was already a
campus legend, a stern disciplinarian who,
as a former UGA track star, could easily
outrun underclassmen fleeing the scene
of infractions. At that time, the univer
sity had the legal status “in loco parentis,”
meaning that while you were enrolled and
in town, UGA was your parent, and Dean
Tate was your enforcer-uncle. Your ID card
was your passport. Without it, you were no
longer a student. If the dean got your card,
he owned you. When push came to shove,
Dean Tate could grab you with one hand
and your wallet with the other, and imme
diately the future of your college education
depended on what transpired when you
showed up at his office on the day and time
commanded.
Dean Tate could read a crowd. He knew
when to be firm and when to be jolly. He
waded into a group of angry undergradu
ates in front of the Arch on one of those
nights and just started talking to the stu
dents. He approached one and said, “Boy,
what’s your name?” The kid stammered
out his name, and the dean asked where
he was from and then if he might be the
son of so-and-so up there, which, it turned
out, he was, so Dean Tate launched into a
long anecdote about the misdeeds of the
father while he was an undergraduate, and,
before long, the whole group of boys was
laughing and drifting away, dragging their
Confederate flags behind them.
But wait: I see that by invoking the dean,
loquaciousness has crept into my account to
the extent that it must be concluded next
week. Meanwhile, I urge you to obtain a
copy of Trillin’s An Education in Georgia. This
is important because UGA Press is sponsor
ing a campus read of the book (reprinted by
the Press in 1992), and, on Thursday, Feb. 4
at 4 p.m., Trillin and Hunter-Gault will have
a virtual conversation about the integration
of UGA (ugapress.org/kick-off-event-an-
education-in-georgia-then-and-now/).
Next week, I promise rioting, tear gas,
flying rocks, the KKK and one pissed-off
reporter. Meanwhile, you can familiarize
yourself through photographic and memo
rabilia exhibitions at the main UGA library
and the Special Collections Libraries on
campus. ©
AN
EDUCATION
Charlayne Hunter. Hamilton Holmes, and the I I
integral on oMhe University ol Georgia I I ^
GEORGIA
Foreword by Charlayne Hunter-Gault
4
FLAGPOLE.COM | JANUARY 27, 2021