Just when you thought you couldn’t read another word about annexation without losing your local, organic, free-range lunch, Dave at InDecatur posts a letter sent to him that seems to indicate that the DeVry folks have had a change of heart and now want to be rezoned and annexed into Decatur.

I’ve pieced together this story as it’s developed but honestly can’t remember where I read/heard any of it anymore.  But here’s what I remember…

Essentially, when DeVry first moved it’s campus into the “Birdcalls From Hell” building downtown, the owners didn’t have any interest in having the old campus, which abuts the Decatur city limits, annexed because of high taxes and blah blah blah.

However, the city of Decatur has been very interested in bringing this property into the city limits so it has some control over it’s redevelopment, not to mention tax revenue for a new mixed-use district, so they courted DeVry with seductive calls of  “Yes, you may have to pay more in taxes BUT you’ll receive a lot more technical assistance from your local government if you become part of Decatur.”

And it looks like DeVry finally came around.  In this economy, developing and/or selling that piece of property must be a daunting task.

I’m hoping that all of my assumptions about Dave’s letter are correct, because honestly it is kind of vague on details.

Lyn, I’d really appreciate it if you can confirm/deny this.

From NPR News…

Anthropologists have come up with a theory about what kicked off a series of “creative explosions” in human ingenuity during the Stone Age – from about 90,000 to 45,000 years ago – and it doesn’t involve some sudden improvement in brain power.

Instead, the flowering of intelligence that brought sophisticated tools, better weapons and art came about because of population density: More people started living in bigger communities.

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The latest Decatur Focus arrived in my mailbox yesterday, and in addition to warning me that the Fire Dept would be testing hydrants in June (Yay!  Brown water!), the June issue listed all the building projects in town that received Decatur Design Awards this past year.

That got me thinking about the diversity of our city’s commercial building stock.  Needless to say, it is unique.  While many of our residential areas, like much of metro-ATL, are relatively intact (with the very large exception of Beacon Hill), the commercial districts have been seriously altered over the years.

So, I wonder, is there any consensus on a favorite commercial building?  And I think we’ve gotta exclude the Old Courthouse from this discussion just to make it a bit more interesting.  Which is your fav and why? I can be old, new, borrowed, blue, whatever.

And no, even though the High House is currently used as office space, I don’t think it qualifies.