Day: July 8, 2011

July Openings Around Decatur

A couple of openings of note coming up.  The first comes from Patti Garrett’s blog…

Owner Marc Brennan says that the Oakhurst Market should officially open by next week. Located in the old Real Source real estate office at the intersection of Oakview and Eastlake, the market will have: Butchered high-quality, grass-fed meats, In-house roasted turkey, beef, pastrami, Steinbeck’s signature pimento cheese, In-house baked bread, To-go dinners, Fresh herbs and vegetables from the Oakhurst Garden and Sugar Creek Farm, a seven-foot wine wall, and Growlers

Now over to Twitter.  Decatur’s new Italian spot No. 246 says it should open next week.

Looks like we’ll be opening for you on Wednesday, July 13 – thanks for your patience! We’ll keep you posted when it’s confirmed!

Heard good things about the new interior of this space.  They’ve got a couple of teaser pics up on Tumblr if you’re interested.  UPDATE: Also, I just noticed their menu is now online!  Check it HERE.  Also, a just posted blurb on the AJC Food and More blog implies that foodies are jazzed about this new spot.

And finally, Trackside’s Facebook page is promising a July open.

Am I missing anything?

 

 

Decatur is now one big, happy LCI.

In years past, Decatur had previously had two LCI districts. Now we only have one great big one. In fact, we are one great big one.

What’s an LCI district, you ask?

The Livable Centers Initiative is a program of the Atlanta Regional Commission that encourages local jurisdictions to link transportation improvements with community development in order to create more sustainable communities (yes, in fact, that sentence is straight from the ARC website). The LCI program, which has been around for about twelve years, disburses funds to cities, counties and communities around the region to plan for activity centers, town centers and transportation corridors to bring, according to the ARC, “a new level of livability to the region.” To date, ARC has allocated more than $141 million in planning and transportation funds to 96 distinct areas in the Atlanta region.

My favorite Decatur LCI was a planned mixed-use development for that little area around the Avondale MARTA station, in 2002. I went to all the charettes and meetings (they had cookies). The resulting plan was pretty, and it had a pocket park, which was my favorite part. You can read all about it here, on the City’s website. I think my park was supposed to go about where a big kudzu patch still is, nine years later. Planning is such fun. It’s the implementation that will bite you in the . . . pocket park.

Now, rather than pursuing additional optional districts, the City of Decatur received the Atlanta Regional Commission’s approval to make the entire city a single LCI district, making a larger area of the city eligible for LCI grants for transportation related projects such as intersection improvements, bicycle lanes, streetscape improvements, etc. The approved LCI ten-year update will soon be available on the City’s website. Maybe this will make implementation as much fun as planning!

 

ATL Transportation List Trimmed, Decatur’s Clifton Corridor Still On List

As the chief Atlanta watchdog of the transit-pocalypse noted yesterday, the latest version of the Atlanta transportation projects list submitted by Atlanta Regional Commission staffers to the transportation roundtable of excellence (which includes Decatur Mayor Bill Floyd), includes many a cut to proposed transit projects around Atlanta.  So many in fact, road projects now account for a larger % of funds than transit projects.  Here’s an ARC summary of how the monies would be divided up:

  • 6 aviation projects costing $28 million
  • 15 bike/pedestrian projects costing $138 million
  • 165 road projects costing $6.6 billion ($5.6 billion new capacity, $1 billion preservation)
  • 31 transit projects costing $5.5 billion ($4.3 billion expansion, $1.1 billion maintenance and modernization, $0.1 billion other related infrastructure)

Al points out that the only project still on the list submitted by Decatur are the bike/pedestrian and safety improvement project for the Clifton Corridor (TIA-DK-007) at a cost of $10 million.  He also points out that the ARC document references how the project relates to another still on the list: the MARTA extension from Lindbergh to Emory/CDC.

Decatur Voting Districts to Remain Unchanged for 2011 Elections

As most of you astute and informed DM readers know, because the 2010 US census indicated a demographic shift in our town that has led to a 7.97% deviation between Decatur’s two voting districts, the City Commission is pondering amendments to the City Charter to redraw the districts for city elections to comply with the “one-person/one-vote standard” of the United States and Georgia Constitutions. According to the US Department of Justice standards, election districts should not exceed a 5% deviation.

It’s rather a big, complicated business, however. Due to the small window of time to get paperwork to the Department of Justice this year and the fact that more recent data indicates a mere 5.75% deviation between Districts 1 and 2, the city will continue to use its current district configurations for the 2011 elections.

The plan is to consider changes (most likely in August City Commission meetings) that will bring the deviation to less than 3%, to be enacted by Jan 1, 2012.

Free-For-All Friday 7/8/11

Feel free to use this post to make comments and ask questions about local issues not discussed here over the past week.  Comments close Monday.

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This week’s Free-For-All Friday is sponsored by Fido’s Finery…

Show off your neighborhood pride with these handmade bottlecap dog tags. Available neighborhoods includes Decatur, Oakhurst, Kirkwood, Avondale, L5P and East Atlanta.
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