Peoplestown holdouts defy Atlanta's park-and-pond plan to address flooding

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When it rains, water that runs off Turner Field’s parking lots and other paved places in southeast Atlanta flows towards Peoplestown.

City officials on Wednesday night visited the Georgia Avenue neighborhood center to give an update on a years-long project of public works they’re doing in that part of Atlanta floods.

But the 70 or so people in attendance didn’t really come to hear about permeable pavers or vast water-holding vaults. The topic was the one block between Ormond Street, Connally Street, Atlanta Avenue and Greenfield Street where the park is proposed — and who might or might not be living there in a year’s time.

That part of southeast Atlanta was first developed in the first few decades of the last century and has long been a predominantly African-American working class neighborhood. Rain sometimes overwhelms the junction of sewers under the low spot and floods some of the houses. Some homeowners there have sued the city before for damages, though others say they’re on high enough ground that they don’t flood.

The city wants to knock down all the homes it can get its hands on and replace the block with a park designed around ponds and low spots arranged to collect water and cut flooding. Atlanta says it’s bought 21 properties and has an option to buy three more.

But some people like life there and say they don’t get flooded. Nonagenarian Mattie Jackson and her supporters, including some Occupy Atlanta veterans, /freshloaf/archives/2015/09/14/citys-plan-to-prevent-peoplestown-flooding-could-mean-moving-93-year-old-longtime-residentpressured the city into letting her stay in her home as long as she likes.

That leaves four more homes, which Atlanta staffers told the crowd they hope to buy and demolish in order to start start work on the project this fall. They showed a map of the little green rectangle park with Jackson’s house sketched in on one edge that they hope to have done by June 2017.

Not on the map was Tanya Washington’s house. She said it doesn’t flood and the city will not take her house off the map.

“I would ask those who want me to leave, what they would do if their house didn’t flood and they were asked to leave?” Washington said. She said she loves the neighborhood, has an affordable mortgage, works nearby and intends to stay.

“If they want my house they can petition for eminent domain,” Washington said.

A new park wouldn’t be the only new arrival in the area: some longtime residents are worried about being priced out.

At this meeting, some of the audience exchanges got heated, with some attendees trying to talk over each other, others muttering and grumbling, and even a brief chant of “gentrification, gentrification.” Lillian Miller said she lives on the next block located south of what would become the park. She said Occupy brought the politics into it.

“I’m really upset with the Occupy Atlanta movement to change the dialog of a public health and safety issue of the flooding into a gentrification and racism issue,” said Miller. “Unfortunately, no one should have ever built in that area."