Have you ever meet Lyn Menne , do you know anything about the history of the past 15 years and how hard a handful of people including Lyn worked to make Decatur what it is today?
When my best friend bought a house in Decatur 25 years ago a contractor told her it was worth doing a $20,000 renovation on a house in Decatur , today her home is worth about 3/4 of a million dollars and its not because she put that much monbey into it. It’s because there were folks who were determined tomake Decatur a place where people wanted to live and raise their famies.

It just dosen’t happen that folks move back into the city. there are plenty of places in the city that you wouldn’t want to more back into, but Decatur worked with all of the residents and created family friendly and young people friendly events that drew people back. Then they especially Lyn Menne held the heart of Decatur in their hands and saw to it that the growth was beneficial and beautiful. Fund raisers through The Decatur Business Association and others like the Beer Festival Folks earmaked projects like the Greenspace iniciatives, community charities to make life good in Decatur. Things like that didn’t just happen magically . The Downtown Decatur Development Athority run by women with degrees in Managment development and marketing have made Decaur a model for small towns all over the country. They want to be like Decatur! Peggy Merris , Lyn Menne and Linda Harris and may more folks have worked to bring Decatur to where it is today.
They dedicated their lives and gave countless hours to Decatur and deserve better than to have someone, who probably never even met them or served on a committee or did anything for the communitee, make some stupid remark just to hear himself talk.

Menne must GO??? We would be lost without her.

As I understand it, based on previous comments by Lyn Menne, the Church St. corridor between Ponce and Commerce has a redevelopment plan, its just a matter of getting developers to commit.

Marketing ourselves as a “mallternative” is setting our sights so laughably low…We don’t want people to think of Decatur as just a bunch of shops; we should be a real town that gathers together in comfortable and beautiful public spaces in our free time. This weekend, during the Arts festival, I think we see a bit of that potential. If we were like that all the time (i.e., folks strolling through the square after dinner, kids playing around the gazebo, young couples eating picnics by the statue, stands selling interesting things, locals playing music, etc), people would gravitate to Decatur and – amazingly – I think we would see our restaurants and stores boost profits. More importantly, it would be really fun to just walk around and hang out (and even, perhaps, meet other people) on a weekend night and people-watch. Give people a bustling square (including the streets surrounding it) as a destination and they will spend more time there – and likely more money – than they would otherwise. But it takes several coordinated steps to make a public space into a shared living room.