I’ve been meaning to post this ever since the Decatur City Commission meeting in late May when Commissioner Fred Boykin asked Planning Director Amanda Thompson about the status of the project.  Looks like Ralph beat me to it!

Tonight, the Decatur Planning Commission will consider rezoning the south parking lot at Avondale MARTA station as Mixed Use, under the 2009 changes to the zoning ordinance.  (Meeting materials HERE!)  We mentioned this revised plan back in March, in case you missed it.

MARTA and Decatur have done this dance before, resulting in the confusingly named Avondale LCI Master Plan.  According to sources a few years back, the plan was never executed because MARTA backed out, but now there’s a new MARTA-stration (MARTA + adminstration – get it?) and they have already publicly stated that they’re more aggressively pursuing transit-friendly development around existing stations.

The Patch article linked to above quotes Asst. City Manager Lyn Menne saying that there’s no current developer for the site, and that this rezoning just defines what the city “wants to see happen at the site.”

Rendering from the 2005 Avondale LCI Master Plan courtesy of the City’s Website