OK…I know, not much notice! But its good food and wine, so I figure you don’t need much convincing.

If you missed it here’s my review of Tastings from a few weeks back.

And here are the Grand Opening details…

Tastings, Decatur Grand Opening,
July 25th and 26th

Join us at our Grand Opening for the debut of the inaugural release of the Mondavi family’s return to fine wine with Continuum. Tastings is the only place in town where you will be able to enjoy Continuum by the taste or glass.

Continuum celebrates the Mondavi family’s proud history in Napa Valley. The grapes are hand harvested into small lug-boxes, hand sorted and fed by gravity into small oak tanks for fermentation. The wines are aged in 100% new French oak barrels and bottled unfined and unfiltered.

For all the details, click the continuation… Read the rest of this entry »

…but it doesn’t seem all that dense in comparison.

Asst. City Manager Lyn Menne has crunched a lot of numbers for us and compares the 315 W. Ponce project with other well-known past Decatur condos in terms of scale and density.

• 335 W. Ponce – 70 units- This site is exactly one acre. Density is 70 units per acre and abuts the R-60 zone.

• Artisan Phase I – 77 units – Phase I and II are both located on the same 1.9 acre tract. This tract was zoned for 70/acre, and with the 20% density bonus for affordable units the total approved unit count was 162 which works out to about 85 units per acre with the density bonus. The demand for larger units resulted in smaller units being combined so the final product is about 77 units instead of 105 units in Phase I and about 50 units in Phase II instead of 57 bringing the total to 127. The final density of the project as developed is around 67 units per acre. While the number of units did decrease, the size and scale of the building remained unchanged.

• Artisan Phase II – 50 units – Same as above

• Decatur Renaissance – 168 units – Harold A. Dawson/Lane developed this 2.67 acre site. The City calculated the site including the existing office building and parking deck associated because it was considered one site — similar situation to the 315 W. Ponce project. It works out to 63 units per acre. The height variance was important to us because it was so close to the out of scale office building and we wanted to blend the height difference to help “hide” the earlier grandfathered structure. Because it fronted Ponce we had the ability to encourage the taller structure.

• Townsquare Condos – 105 units – Developed by Ultima Properties with 105 units on 1.9 acres. As built, it is 58 units per acre but the property is zoned for 70 units per acre. This project was originally approved for more units and therefore a higher density but they ended up combining some smaller units into larger units to respond to market demand so the unit count went down to 105. While the total unit count went down, the size/scale of the building remained the same.

• Although the 315 W. Ponce site is zoned for 70 units per acre, the developer isn’t close to that density. The site is 4.9 acres so the project is actually closer to 44 units per acre making it less dense than every example above.

Geez…I didn’t realize the site was so much larger than the Artisan’s!  But if I think back to that large, grassy, fenced parking lot…it actually begins to make sense.

For some reason yesterday, Google deemed my posting “DeKalb Boil Water Advisory In Effect” to be one of the top search results when anyone typed in any variation of “dekalb water advisory”, “decatur boil water”, etc…  Higher than WSB, higher than Fox5, higher than the AJC…

Weird, huh?

As a result, the posting…which garnered nearly 1,500 hits in a single day, ranked as 36th most viewed posting of the day among all WordPress blogs.  Seriously…click here to see!

No wonder Google makes so much darn money.

CL’s Scott Henry did some digging yesterday and unearthed two Sembler donations to the Burrell Ellis’ CEO campaign.  $1,300 each from both Mel and son Brent Sembler.

Now I’m not trying to stir up any conspiracy theories.  It’s perfectly legal.  And certainly less shady than giving $20,000 to Lakeside’s nonexistent cheerleading squad with a Elaine Boyer connection.  And as I pointed out in response to a previous comment, I think it says more about Sembler’s future intentions than Ellis’.

But its good to know.  Perhaps Merry Hills residents opposed to the now much smaller Briarcliff/North Druid project want to make a similar donation to the Ellis campaign.  One dollar is worth the same declining amount as the next!