Wachovia Building – East Ponce de Leon Avenue, Decatur GA (pic submitted by Clark)

Sure Barrow County isn’t part of the Atlanta “transportation district”, who’s voters will determine whether to levy a 1-cent sales tax upon their own hides to fund new transportation efforts in the metro.

But it IS a neighboring county.

And in a straw poll taken during this past Tuesday’s primary vote, 79% of voters voted “NO” to this question, according to Online Athens…

Would you favor an increase in local taxes in order to help passenger rail service from Athens to Atlanta?

What does this say about a potential regional tax for Atlanta?  Probably not too much.   Barrow isn’t actually a representative sample of Atlanta opinion.  But still, it is only a skip and a hop from Gwinnett County.

It probably says a bit more about the potential for statewide support of any larger, far-reaching public transportation goals within Georgia.

Something along the lines of, “Hell no.”

h/t: That’s Just Peachy

Scott sent me this link to the Atlanta Business Chronicle a week or so ago, but the full text of the article wasn’t yet available to the viewing public.  After getting the link from Jeff this morning, it now seems like it’s open for viewing.  (Free information! Gimme Gimme Gimme!)

Anyway, the claim in the post title is taken from an ABC article entitled “Restaurants in ‘reluctant recovery’ from recession“.  Here’s the BSP mention…

Two Decatur fast-casual restaurants, Brick Store Pub and Leon’s Full Service, are seeing better sales, said co-owner Tom Moore.

Brick Store is located in Decatur Square. “We have picked up over the past year and that might be the price category we are in, Moore said.”

Moore believes customers are “protective of where they go” in a down economy. “They will go where they know their dollar will work for them.”

Leon’s, which opened last year at Church Street and Ponce de Leon Avenue in Decatur and has a large outdoor patio, saw softer sales while the weather was bad earlier this year, Moore said. “Once the bad weather was over, people came out in droves.”

A sign out in front of the 315 West Ponce de Leon Ave. office building – aka Decatur Court – announces three upcoming city meetings to consider a parking variance for the site.

The last time the developer – Easlan Capital – requested a parking variance for this site to build multi-family residential at the rear of the site and retail along West Ponce de Leon Ave, it resulted months of negotiation between the surrounding neighborhood, the developer, and the city.  In the course of negotiations, the retail building facing West Ponce was dropped to appease neighborhood worries that a retail building would result in more parking along residential streets and increased traffic through the neighborhood.  The plan for the apartments in the rear and a parking deck were ultimately approved by the city commission on December 15th, 2008.

The whole process was covered extensively on this site back then.

Now it looks like the developer is looking to bring back the retail portion of their plan and needs a variance of 59 parking spaces (401 vs. 459) to move ahead with construction.  The developer’s letter requesting the variance says that the new building would have 9,000 square feet of restaurant and 7,900 square feet of retail space.  The building would comply with the 35 foot height restriction of the site and give restaurants the option of rooftop dining.

The letter to the city employs the same argument that was used back in 2008 in requesting the variance:  basically that the retail/restaurant building and the existing office building require the greatest number of parking spaces at different times of day – the retail/restaurant in the evening, office during the day.  Therefore, parking space would theoretically be shared resulting in a need for fewer total spots.

As for next steps:  There are four upcoming meetings regarding this potential development.

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