If you haven’t yet done so, you might want to check out Thomas Wheatley’s cover story in Creative Loafing this week, which does a most excellent job of summing up the unresolved “problems” with Atlanta’s biggest revitalization project – “south downtown”.   After detailing the area’s vibrant past…

Grocery stores sold everything a person would need to make three meals a day, as well as specialty items such as pig’s feet to pig heads. At Roy’s, where you could select a live chicken, get its head chopped off, and watch the decapitated fowl run around the store. Another shop sold “rat cheese” — cut from a block of sharp New York cheddar — for rodent traps or sandwiches. Yet another bar-be-qued chicken.

…and less vibrant recent past…

Nearly 30 homeless men and women huddled together, resting underneath the long ramp leading to the Garnett Street MARTA station. Others slept on the steps of the police department headquarters in the shadow of the city jail. Even more wandered the streets, asked motorists passing through for help, or stood alone in parking lots.

…Wheatley starts to think about possible solutions and dives head first into a Pandora’s Box of urban fun…

Everyone’s in agreement about the key ingredient needed to help south downtown grow: more people. Which raises the obvious question: How do you coax new residents and tourists to a historic area that has very few vestiges of its glorious past, offers little in the way of decent shopping, and which becomes a ghost town after workers hop in their cars at 5 p.m. to head to the ‘burbs? How do you build retail when the number of residents hasn’t reached critical mass and probably won’t if such basic amenities as grocery stores aren’t nearby? It’s a chicken-or-egg scenario, one that leaves many interested parties scratching their heads.

h/t: ATL Urbanist

Rene writes in…

SafeShred, Decatur’s only Data Security and Document Destruction firm, announces it will be hosting a community Shred Day on November 5, 2011 at Glennwood Elementary School.  The event will be conducted between 9AM and 1PM.  All donations will go directly to the Glennwood Elementary Parent Teacher Association.  If you have any questions, please contact SafeShred at .

• Cakes & Ale – and its bakery – “excellent” [Atlanta Magazine]
• Decatur Venetian Blind Company circa 1948 [GSU]
• 100,000th Peach Pass issued [Gwinnett Daily]
• More Beltline eastside trail “porn” [Fresh Loaf]
• DeKalb Commishs consider supporting a 10-year  transportation tax – instead of a $6.1 billion one [Champion]
• Michael Pollan’s hardcover ed. of “Food Rules” includes 19 new rules [Berkleyside]
• How soda caps are killing birds [NPR]

Rendering courtesy of Fresh Loaf

The Medlock Area Neighborhood Association website has photos of the six concept sketches displayed at last night’s Medlock/Suburban Plaza/Walmart meeting last night of both the new Walmart and the rehabbed Suburban Plaza.