The Decatur Planning Commission has a packed agenda in April.
Another item of note on the agenda – the commission will again take up an application by Weaver Capital to subdivide the Boys & Girls Club of Metro Atlanta property at 450 East Lake Drive, creating two residential lots.
The proposal requests that the parcel be subdivided and two R-60 residential lots be created on the hilly western side of the lot. The eastern lawn area – leased by the City of Decatur from the Boys & Girls Club for $1 a year – would remain part of the Oakhurst Dog Park.
The item was tabled by the Planning Commission late last year to allow the neighborhood and the Boys & Girls Club an opportunity to come to an agreement. (WABE summarized the issues at hand back in February March.) The application was withdrawn from the Planning Commission’s February meeting agenda by the applicants and has since been resubmitted for their April 14th meeting.
Map courtesy of Planning Commission Meeting Materials
Let’s hope these two houses end up significantly less awkward than the one that was just completed on Lot 5.
The house on poop corner?
This is a bad deal for the neighborhood. Today it’s the wooded area of the dog park being sold. Tomorrow it may be the athletic fields. At some point the Boys and Girls club may choose to leave the location altogether. When this happens some day, the city should reacquire the entire property and reincorporate it into Oakhurst Park. That won’t be possible if the city allows the parcel to be diced up and sold to developers.
I’ll bet the Boys and Girls Club would entertain a fair market offer from the City (or anyone else) for these two parcels. Otherwise, I really hope that your comment and others I’ve heard & read don’t reflect an attitude that this non-profit organization which on a national level serves millions of children and adolescents who otherwise have no supervised place to be during non-school hours, should sacrifice financially in order to provide a playground for middle and upper-middle class dogs.
+1 million.
Agreed!
+3 billion (r whatever we are up to)
Let me say this a different way… The land owned by the Boys and Girls club is currently used by many members of the community – both residents and nonresidents alike. This includes the members of the Boys and Girls club, kids who use the athletic fields through Decatur Rec and the YMCA, adults involved in the Fit Wit program , and people who use the Oakhurst Dog Park.
If the Boys and Girls Club wants to sell any portion of their land, the City should be involved in order to keep the land available for the general use of the community. If the property is divided up and homes built upon it, the entire community loses the use of this resource.
I certainly don’t mean to diminish the work done by the Boys and Girls Club or suggest that they should donate the land to the City. I just want the City to be involved in the future use of this land and other greenspace within the city.
I’m not trying to pick a fight, but I don’t understand how the City could “be involved” if the Boys and Girls Club decided to sell their property. The City has nothing to do with the organization and (as far as I know, and someone please correct me if this is not the case) holds no encumbrance on the land or the built facilities.
Here is the button this conversation pushes for me: every time I hear someone contend that particular tract of “green space” or “wooded area” should be preserved for the community, I want to ask that person if they happen to live in a new or renovated home in South Decatur and if so, how many trees came down during the project on their lot. That reaction is not altogether rational or fair, I realize, but it’s how those kinds of comments resonate for me.
I don’t understand how a driveway entering a 3-way stop intersection works? Anyone know?
I think there’s one at the intersection of Sycamore Drive and Forkner Drive. Whenever I approached it, I always assumed the resident has the right of way, even if I was at the stop first.
I know it’s complex, and I haven’t been paying attention to all the issues, but it’s very sad that in a city with limited greenspace/public space we are losing parcels like this……
This increasingly affluent community, including those who do not live in Decatur and thus don’t pay the taxes that support the dog park, yet still use the facility (and are somehow the spokespeople for the issue), should use their collective power to raise the money to buy the two lots from the Boys and Girls Club and donate it to the City as the permanent dog park, if it’s that important to them. I agree that 2 driveways on the curve of that intersection is a very bad idea, and I am against it for that reason alone. But as to the outrage because privileged people are losing part of their dog park at the expense of a community service organization? Ridiculous.
What happened to the resident licenses you were supposed to get to use the park? The spokespeople for this issue are not even residents?!
I think the issue is more of location of driveways and loss of green space than the dog park.
On two occasions I’ve gone to get the resident tags for my dogs, and have received them. However, on my most recent visit to the office they seemed surprised that someone was actually trying to do the right thing and they even had a hard time locating the tags. It seems there is zero enforcement or even an attempt at enforcement of any resident-only usage of Decatur dog parks. I actually don’t think the dog parks should be resident-only, but since technically they are supposed to be, I was trying to live by the rules.
Same here but I think you are correct. Also I think the required permitting information has been removed from the city’s website.
yeah, all us ne’er–do–well folks from East Lake and Kirkwood, not paying our fair share of the $1 annual lease that is such a burden CoD taxpayers. We’ll keep out of your city funded parks if you keep out of ours, including Piedmont, Grant, Candler, Old Fourth Ward, and the Beltline.
I don’t think that was KF’s point.
If the point is “there should be a resident leading the charge to maintain the park as-is”, fine. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone come forward as a “spokesperson” for keeping the park as-is . . . just a lot of residents and non-residents alike trying to see what alternative options exist. The linked article is nothing but quotes from regular users.
Personally, I think fees for the dog park ought to be structured as they are for Decatur’s pools and other recreational facilities: one rate (maybe free) for residents and a higher rate for non-residents. I also think they should enforce such rules or do away with them, otherwise they create murkiness in budget planning.
Anyhow, my point (and KF seems to agree) is that the land in question is not neighborhood green space, as many seem to want to pretend. It is privately owned by a non-profit organization that does heroic work on behalf of kids in need of that particular support. For relatively affluent pet owners to complain that the Boys and Girls Club ought to consider them first–instead of its primary constituents–in managing its assets is, as KF noted above, utterly ridiculous.
Agree 100% with the second part.
As for the first part . . . agree to disagree I suppose. The insurance, upkeep, consumables, staffing, and utilities costs for operating a pool are orders of magnitude higher than they are for a muddy lot with a single light and a water spigot. A pool probably also requires a lot more “demand management” via charging fees than a dog park does.
I get that. Not advocating dog park fee on level with pools or other rec programs. Just saying that if they ARE going to charge anything, or license access in any way, that it should be consistent with how they do it for other stuff. Maybe a dog park tag is free for residents and costs $5/year for non-residents. Or maybe it’s free for everybody. I doubt that resources are available to enforce any level of restriction, in which case they should eliminate the rule (and not pretend in budget discussions that the amenity is only being offered & used by residents).
I lived up the street from this dog park for many years and the most vigorous discussion I recall around how/whether access should be restricted for non-residents was in the context of parking and traffic.
The lease is not the primary operating cost.
I would expect it’s not . . . since it’s $1.00. I’m guessing it’s probably insurance, since I doubt it’s the recycled wood chips that get dropped off for residents (ahem, *users*) to spread themselves, or the occasional removal of a dead tree.
First, I want it to remain a dog park.
However, why doesn’t the City revisit the zoning for some of these parcels. They keep talking about needing more commercial, so why not allow parcels like this to be rezoned from residential to commercial? That is a high traffic area. A drive through Starbucks (first example I could think of) would crush it in this location. I’m sure the City would make a lot more money and allow the B&GC to make more on their sale.
That seems like an even more polarizing proposal than building houses. Might be more money in the bank, but I expect you’d have even more community push back.
Sometimes I long for the days when we had more crack houses than craft beer bars in Decatur. Things seemed so much simpler then.
We should buy it. However, i fear the people we have elected have yet to meet a piece of property that they don’t see dollar signs smiling from. Also, I have to wonder…. why do we keep hearing about the need for more commercial real estate, yet we’ve continued to annex areas with more houses. If we wanted a higher percentage
of commercial property, annexing another neighborhood seems inimical to the goal. Unless, by increasing
residential property the perceived need for greater commercial seems even more of a necessity. Sort of a back door method.