Health & Fitness
4 Reasons to Slow the Development of City Center
Please help me return to blogging about gardens and local history. Tell City Council to slow their headstrong rush into the development of City Center so they can do it right.
City Center is moving too fast. Be warned Alpharetta. Consider this before you let this Council move another step on it:
1. Mayor and Council voted to significantly alter the plan after giving residents only 2 weeks notice. Quite a change from the months of citizen input that precipitated the 29 mil bond referendum. I recall in 2011, when Belle Isle was asked why he started his mayoral campaign so early, he said, “Our residents need time to digest the facts and formulate their own informed decisions.” I’d like to see the Mayor apply this standard to all his deeds, particularly now that he actually represents Alpharetta.
2. We have a shaky economy and a wary consumer. With recent headlines like “America the Anxious” (Newsweek) and “Hard Times Spread for Cities” (Wall Street Journal) we might want to take a minute. And an analyst I follow pointed out a technical observation about the S&P 500: it is nearing an ominous massive triple top. Why is Council in such a rush given market conditions? Is Avalon giving them a false sense of confidence? But, Mark Toro’s NAP is not developing City Center – we are, via our politicians.
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3. We need to be absolutely certain Council member’s involvement in the process is ethical. Why - because they are bad people? No - because they are human. Do you really want to blindly say, “We trust our leaders to do the right thing” when they are in the drivers seat on a 29 million dollar project that makes them the darlings of businesses clamoring to profit on it? In the immortal words of the O’Jays: “For the love of money, people don’t care who they hurt or beat”. Yea, I gotta have it. You gotta have it. But for a little piece of paper, it carries a lot of weight.
4. The impact on the environment matters. There is a big picture with trees and green-spaces that includes the aesthetic but also the impact of development upon natural resources, homes and lives. By putting a City Hall and a parking lot onto the only 2 existing green-spaces at City Center this Council makes an emphatic statement that they don’t care about green-spaces, ergo, your wellbeing. And what’s next? Thompson Street is next because Thompson Street will necessarily connect Avalon to City Center and will be developed with the same standards as City Center. No one is really mentioning this. It’s the big Red Elephant in the room.
