I don’t know about you all, but every time we drive down Scott Boulevard towards Stone Mountain, we wonder what the future holds for this long-vacant Oldsmobile dealership (MAP).

Well it looks like there’s now a plan to build a three-story restaurant and bar on the site.

The Medlock Area Neighborhood Association posted a notice over the weekend about a community meeting next Monday on the site to discuss a request for a special land-use permit for the site to allow a three-story building on the site.  Here’s a small sketch of the proposed restaurant being designed by Restaurants Consulting Group, who also designed Atlanta area restaurants including Eclipse di Luna, Lotus Lounge and Re’Past.

With the Suburban Plaza Walmart quickly taking form at Suburban Plaza, you may be wondering when it’s going to open and what it will ultimately look like.

Well, the Medlock Area Neighborhood Association is here to help.  They have posted the above rendering looking at the project from Scott Boulevard/N. Decatur Road/Medlock and a list of facts about the coming Suburban Plaza Walmart on its site.

• The store is projected to open in November 2015. 
• Walmart reserves the right to open 24 hours/day but the current plan is to open 6am – midnight. 
• 150,000 sq ft super center that will offer merchandise and groceries.
• The store will not have an optical center or a tire/lube center
• The store will not carry guns but will carry ammunition
• the store will include a small garden center with some outdoor and seasonal merchandise
• the store will employ 300 people. Hiring for this store is now in progress (scroll to end of this post)*
• trucks servicing Walmart will enter from North Decatur Rd. at the new traffic signal, proceed to the back of the building and on to the loading docks there. The trucks can back directly into the loading docks. Trucks will exit onto Medlock Road, and proceed to Scott Blvd. We should expect 3-5 trucks per day
• improving the intersection and the light timing (for Medlock Rd.) are part of every discussion

According to the Medlock Area Neighborhood Association website, the owner of the Chevron Station property at Scott Boulevard and North Decatur Road wants to redevelop the site to include a 6,000 square foot retail space at the intersection.  See the proposed site plan above.

MANA states that the site requires variances for side and rear setbacks and goes before DeKalb’s Zoning Board of Appeals on Wednesday, August 12th.  The owner has expressed an interest in gaining support from the Cross-Neighborhoods Committee and the community before the meeting.

The post states that MANA is concerned about…”sidewalks, improved landscaping, minimizing curb cuts, minimal signage, maintaining a buffer with the adjoining condominiums and adding a comfortable bus stop.”

I guess we’ll have to wait and see what modifications are made to this plan between now and then, but for now know that the Chevron Station may not be long for this world.

A new post on the Medlock Area Neighborhood Association website sums up the recent approval of Decatur Crossing Phase II rezoning request by the DeKalb Commission and points out a few, very notable nuances in the agreement – which includes 27 conditions negotiated by the Cross-Neighborhood Committee.

Among the most noteworthy changes coming, Fuqua will add a new traffic light on Scott Boulevard at Blackmon Drive, as shown in the map above.  Fuqua will also extend Blackmon Drive as the “the main road” through the development.

In response to concerns about cut-through traffic on the existing stretch of Blackmon Drive, a condition passed that Blackmon Drive would be partially closed to traffic with no entrance from Scott Boulevard and only a right turn allowed off of Blackmon onto Scott.  See the map below for detail, courtesy of MANA.

MANA also provided an updated timeline on the Decatur Crossing project…

Demolition for Phase I has begun and is expected to be completed in August. Construction on the new apartment building is expected to begin in September and last 18 to 20 months.

As for tenants, none have been announced yet but MANA sums it up thusly…

The site plan includes a “natural grocery store,” restaurants (one with a patio on the park), including one drive-through restaurant which is conditioned as a “deli-café,” banks, retail, office, and 450 apartments. A portion of the apartments will be reserved as workforce housing** as negotiated in our contract. The development also includes tree-lined sidewalks around the entire perimeter and throughout the development as well as an almost one-acre park…Jeff Fuqua has said that it will be a mix of local and national retailers. Please note that this site plan was modified before the final hearing and differs slightly from the final site plan included in the private agreement with MANA.

Amidst an annexation update on the Medlock Area Neighborhood Association website is this note…

Because many residents continue to voice an interest in being annexed to Decatur, we have arranged another meeting with the City of Decatur the week after Thanksgiving.  Both Mary Margaret Oliver and Elena Parent have indicated that they will at least try to attend; Rahn Mayo is unavailable for that meeting. Decatur was very clear in their lack of interest in annexing the Medlock neighborhood when we met last September 25 and the MANA Board does not believe that we will receive a different answer.

The Medlock Area Neighborhood Association has a new post up on its site that provides the final tallies on a recent neighborhood-wide survey regarding annexation.  The survey showed that Decatur is the preferred option, but it isn’t shared by a majority of residents.  The post calls Decatur’sannexation plan to annex only the commercial areas to the north and east of the city as “unreasonable” and says that MANA will continue to fight it.  The DeKalb Tax Commissioner’s Office estimates the tax contribution to the DeKalb County School System of the A and B zones of Decatur’s Master Plan are as follows…

Zone A – $759,816.06   [N Decatur Rd / Clairmont Rd]

Zone B – $4,747,637.06  [Medline LCI, etc.]

The post concludes with this…

• Whatever its source(s), we must fight the pressure to make uninformed decisions. We are still in a position where not enough information is available and must be very careful and measured in our movements: decisions made blindly will cost us dearly. 

• MANA recommends that we continue to actively explore all our options. MANA will continue to facilitate meetings, track developments, share information as quickly as possible, and encourage our residents to contact elected officials to ensure our neighborhood’s concerns and wishes are well represented.

OK, so there are a lot of moving pieces in the ongoing annexation saga, especially in the neighborhoods to Decatur’s north.  We’re pregnant with updates, so here are many of them all in one place.

Medlock

The Medlock Area Neighborhood Association just released the first results of an ongoing survey that shows residents who took the survey most preferred to be added to the city of Decatur (66%) vs. being added to the city of Briarcliff (60%) or the City of Atlanta (~45%).

At a recent meeting with Former Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver and State Senate candidate Elena Parent, the message sent to regarding Decatur’s disinterest in annexing Medlock was “it ain’t over”, do not accept defeat today.”  They continued…

City of Decatur is likely to get commercial areas but there is an unspoken rule that commercial annexations should also include residents

We would need Representative Rahn Mayo to write legislation to propose that our neighborhood be annexed to City of Decatur. Even if the legislation is approved and a referendum is mandated, the Decatur Commission could still say no.

Druid Hills

Over to the west in Druid Hills, the main annexation effort continues to focus on Atlanta.  The Civic Association recently released a map, using the current Briar Vista and Fernbank Elementary School boundaries as the first proposed boundaries of a Druid Hills annexation into Atlanta.  See map below (courtesy of Druid Hill Civic Assoication website).

The Civic Association has also provided a tax analysis of the potential changes if incorporated into Atlanta.  In regards to Emory, the site says they continue to monitor the situation and hope the process remains open so they can evaluate their options.

Clairemont Heights

Between Medlock and Druid Hills sits Clairemont Heights, which has been relatively silent on annexation preference up until now.  However, this past week the Clairmont Heights Civic Association blog noted that some residents of the neighborhood had recently filed a petition with the city of Decatur requesting annexation.  The petition claims the support of “at least 68% of homes” in Clairmont Heights, though some discussion on the Association’s Facebook page about how widely the petition was circulated.

At the same time, Clairmont Heights current President noted recently that Druid Hills’ latest annexation map (above) incorporated some of Clairmont Heights in their annexation plan.

Of note, if Clairmont were to incorporate into Decatur, it would eliminate an Atlanta annexation from Medlock’s array of choices, since it would have no way of being congruent to the Atlanta city limit.