Saturday, December 31, 2011
Inside CL Top stories of 2011 — Thomas' picks
Posted by Thomas Wheatley @thomaswheatley on Sat, Dec 31, 2011 at 5:20 PM
Ah, 2011. We had the long-awaited lifting of the ban on Sunday alcohol sales. The laborious process to determine which road and transit projects would receive funding from a 1-cent transportation tax metro Atlanta voters will decide in July. Georgia's new immigration law (which my dear colleague Gwynedd has already covered). And oh, sweet Jesus, we had the hilarious social and political experiment known as the "Herman Cain presidential campaign." And Snowpocalypse! People were skiing in Piedmont Park, ice skating down Peachtree, and actually walking to destinations! Madness!
All these were big, important stories, and they deserve their spot on any year-end list. But personally, they weren't the stories that resonated with me on a personal level.
What stuck out to me while reporting in Atlanta over the last year: Some parts of the city prosper and other areas crumble. Or, at best, they stay the same. It's part of the old "tale of two Atlantas." Granted, this isn't some new phenomenon. But this year, as I went into neighborhoods, covered events, and spoke with community members, it felt more pronounced. And in the years ahead, especially as the city tries to adapt to its post-Great Recession landscape, I think addressing blight will be a vital (if unsexy) issue to watch.
Let's start with the good neighborhood- and city-building news — much of which occurred along the Atlanta Beltline — and then touch on the bad.
Progress
Looking back, it felt like much of the city's infrastructure investment happened along the Atlanta Beltline, the 22-mile loop of parks, trails, and transit planned to circle the city's core. In the shadow of Freedom Parkway, the Historic Fourth Ward Skate Park — and the nearby greenspace and playground with the same name — have become a source of pride for Atlanta-area skateboarders. Between Piedmont Park and DeKalb Avenue, a 2.5-mile bike trail which will wind through some of Atlanta's most vibrant neighborhoods — and attract more resident and developer interest in what's already a vibrant area — is finally starting to take shape. A few miles away in southeast Atlanta in Peoplestown, another Beltline-area park opens — and yes, deals with some vandalism. Then another greenspace along the Beltline opens. Triumph Lofts, a nearly vacant loft complex adjacent to the Beltline, is becoming a home for working families. A one-cent sales tax, if approved by voters in July, could pay for transit along some of the Beltline's segments.
Blight
Yet there are so many parts of the city which deserve better. An historic Atlanta neighborhood in the heart of the city which, in a perfect world would be a walkable, transit-connected community, is a ghost town at night, a place where drugs are openly dealt, the homeless sleep, and male prostitutes proposition passersby. In Vine City and English Avenue, two other historic neighborhoods which, by some estimates, are more than 70 percent vacant, residents cross their fingers for two different plans that propose using parks and ponds to revitalize the communities. And in southeast Atlanta, city crews were finally able to cut through red tape and demolish a former hub of prostitution and drugs.
Have a safe and happy New Year. See y'all on Tuesday.
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