Jailhouse rejuvie
by Jerry Portwood
- Jim Stawniak
- LITTLE PETER COTTON TALE: Residents in Benteen Park maintain a small-town atmosphere despite being in the big city.
"Friends joke that I live by the pen," says Jane Hayes. "But I laugh and say, 'It's the prettiest pen you've ever seen, though. One day it'll be a spa with a golf course."
Hayes is referring to the United States Penitentiary in Atlanta, the imposing federal-style marble structure that sits on a rise in south Atlanta. It's located south of Benteen Park, an emerging neighborhood situated along Boulevard below gentrified Grant Park. Hayes, like many others, discovered the neighborhood when searching for a home in her price range. Grant Park had already exploded. East Atlanta was on the rise. Benteen Park seemed just right.
Traveling south along Boulevard, one sees low-income apartments, a sketchy service station, trash littering the street. But once you turn into the Benteen Park streets, you see cozy post-WWII bungalows, canopies of trees, squirrels and more: One home has a hand- painted sign that reads, Bunny Rabbits, all colors: $6
"It's a little bit more down-to-earth here compared to living in Virginia-Highland, where I was before," says Hayes, who's been a resident of Benteen Park for two years and is currently the neighborhood association president. To Hayes, the area is more like a small town, but different than the one she originally grew up in on the Florida panhandle. For one, she says, it's more diverse, with a large Hispanic and black population and a growing white middle class. Her neighbor has lived in her home for 70 years.
Andrew Earle and his wife, Jane, also enjoy the neighbors they've come to know. They moved to Benteen Park when they couldn't find an affordable place in East Atlanta or Grant Park.
"We thought it was basically a shanty town when we first looked at it," says Andrew Earle. "But what we could get for our money here was worth it."
And it seems Benteen Park's future may be looking up. Capitol City Partners is planning more than 80 homes, priced in the $200,000s, on a 25-acre tract. The neighbors that just a few years ago were chasing prostitutes and drug dealers from their yards nowadays see joggers and people walking their dogs.
But the prison isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
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