Timothy Lamar Staples

Maggie Zellner

Petonio Griggs

The post Who are the SOMA regulars? appeared first on Soma security Alliance.

People regularly defecate and urinate on the street in South Downtown.

Holiday wreath made by South Downtown resident out of empty gin bottles littered along the streets.

The post Why do people dispose of trash so carelessly in South Downtown? appeared first on Soma security Alliance.

This new law requires all street vendors north of Marietta to house their goods in the new green stands. Most word class cities, including New York City and San Francisco have been doing this for years.  It provides consistency for Code Enforcement and City revenue and plus it just looks good. Tourists  love it  and provides more revenue for the city.

However, once again South of Marietta was excluded as a result we have street vending that looks like this. Why is this kind of street vending only allowed in certain neighborhoods in Atlanta.

We believe that this continues the exclusionary tactics that are being used by the city to exclude us from the rest of downtown.

Atlanta City Code requires that all vendors maintain a 10 x 10 space.  This is enforced in North Downtown however, it  is not enforced in South Downtown.  Atlanta City Code requires that vendors allow the right of way to be accessed by pedestrians this is also not enforced.  Right now sales tax is not collected from street vendors that operate independent of the new vending laws.

We estimate that the city is losing between 30K to 60K in tax revenue annually by not collecting tax on street vendors that operate in front of Five Points Station alone.  If we include the vendors that operate at the Underground and other locations in South Downtown we estimate an additional 10K to 20K in tax revenue.

In addition to the fines that could be levied against the vendor owners we estimate that the city is losing  a total of 40K to 100K in tax revenue and fines. 

Please read the perspective on this from a business owner that is negatively impacted by this vending in South Downtown

A Case for Improving Street Vending in South Downtown

We support the rights  of vendors to retain their rights to conduct business and provide for their families.  We support  the vendors in the Miller vs City of Atlanta Case. However other South Downtown business owners don’t think that its fair that these vendors don’t have to pay sales tax and do not have to follow the same set of laws that other business owners do.

His name “BigMouthBen”. It says it on his bike. His hustle, mobile convenience store. His favorite place of business, Five Points

His name “BigMouthBen”. It says it on his bike. His hustle, mobile convenience store. His favorite place of  business, Five Points

Vendors regularly block the right away with their signs.

Non-Enforcement of Codes and Sales Tax and  inconsistencies in the vendor laws encourage people to sell anything and everything in SOMA. Watch as this man  peddles socks in Barbara Asher square.

Why doesn’t this vendor have to pay sales tax or abide by code laws?

The post More money for South Downtown and Atlanta – regulate street vending – and stop discrimination appeared first on Soma security Alliance.

There is a new Partner for Hope Campaign that is being sponsored by Central Atlanta Progress. Here is a reprint of a letter I received please attend if you can by sending an Email to Dan Williams.

Lining up for feeding

he homeless is through the area shelters and non-profits that are adept at handling the complexities of this intown problem.  We feel this is the best and most effective way of eradicating homelessness in the city. For church groups that do not want to work with the other resources in the city we encourage you to feed the homeless in your

area churches in your neighborhood.

There are very inexpensive options that can be arranged to bus the needy to your churches.

Trash left over from the feedings.

People who are well meaning often litter the streets with their angelic offerings

 Feeding the Homeless with Dignity. This is not feeding the homeless with dignity.

1. The homeless should be fed with dignity in a supportive environment that is owned and operated by the people that are serving the homeless.(i.e inside of churches or homes of those providing the service)

2. All food served should meet Atlanta Health Code Standards.

3. Food should be a part of a large array of services that should be provided to eradicate homelessness. Local churches should partner with other homeless and county services in their areas.  These services should be provided by qualified personal.

Meal Donation Sites

Homeless Shelters

Reprinted from Huffington Post by

Mark Horvath

Several years ago in Atlanta, Ga., I met a woman living under a bridge who completely changed my life and how I viewed homeless services. You didn’t have to be a social service worker or medical professional to see that Angela was dying underneath that bridge.Meeting Angela broke my heart, but it was what happened behind the scenes that changed me. I was with a group of Christians. I turned to them and I asked, “What are you doing for her? How are you helping Angela?” They responded that they were bringing her sandwiches – that’s when I realized that sandwiches are not enough. People need housing, jobs, and health services.

I once spent two hours In Tompkins Square Park in the East Village of New York City. During those two hours, five churches came and fed the same people. I am guessing that if I stayed most the afternoon over twenty churches would have come and fed the same people that day. Interesting enough, the Bowery Rescue Mission is right around the corner. If all of those churches had taken their food to the Bowery Rescue Mission (also the same Jesus) the Bowery Rescue Mission could have saved on their food budget and spent the money saved on housing, jobs, and health services.

I realize it’s not as sexy to stand up in front of the church folk on Sunday morning saying that you “helped another organization” rather than saying “you fed the lost.” But the truth is, if churches would simply coordinate and work with other organizations, together we’d make a serious impact in fighting homelessness and getting people off the streets.

I will be point blank honest — public feedings often do more harm than good. Yes, it makes the person giving the food feel especially good, and there is merit in that; we should feel good about our charitable works. But public feedings do very little to end homelessness. In fact, in many ways public feedings maintain homelessness.

When I was producing a weekly TV show on homelessness, we were featuring a ministry that fed people under a bridge. We met a large homeless man with an established camp under a bridge to interview. The man’s name was “Bear”, and he had clearly been there for quite some time. He had a few tents and the camp layout was setup rather nicely. After I got the video gear ready and Bear’s dog to be quiet, I started to ask him questions. The optimum goal I needed was for this man to talk about how he’d go hungry if this ministry didn’t bring him food. I asked “So Bear, if Billy didn’t bring you food what would happen to you? Bear’s response shocked me. He said, “Well, the nuns bring me breakfast every day, and those guys in the warehouse over there give me a burrito at lunch.” You just had to look at Bear to see he wasn’t going hungry and now, out of his own mouth, he told us proof that we were enabling him (and others) to remain homeless.

Now please realize that I understand that there are lots of people going hungry in this great country of ours. I get that. The point that I am trying to make is that just feeding people in a park can actually hurt homeless people more than it helps them. Food is a powerful motivator. Many homeless services provide food, mail services, showers and laundry, which are touch point services so our homeless friends can visit and connect with us on a regular basis. Often we can begin to establish relationships that will help that person get out of homelessness. In addition, our homeless friends often have medical needs that go unattended. By having to connect with a homeless services agency every so often, if a homeless person is hurt, a case manager can help that person connect to needed services. Like with Bear, when people are merely given food in the park, there is little motivation for them to connect with places that can help. It’s actually OK to feed people in a park as long as you’re also taking tangible actions to help them get out of homelessness.

Much of my work is based on the belief that homeless people should be treated like everyone else. We are all people! I can’t speak for your community, but here in Los Angeles, restaurants are graded. Often you’ll see a big “A” in a window and occasionally a “B”. The rating lets consumers know the food is healthy and prepared using sanitary conditions. For me, it’s important that the food I buy in a grocery store is inspected. Heck, even that hotdog vendor on the street has to be licensed and inspected to sell food. But there is no regulation on public feeding to homeless people — and there should be!

Whenever a community tries to pass laws to govern or ban public feeding, all the homeless advocates come out and scream about how such a ban would be wrong. However, if they really had the best interest of everyone, they would support public feeding regulations. Seriously, it’s a heath and public safety issue! In St Louis, years ago, I heard about a few college kids going around putting feces in sandwiches and giving them out to homeless people. As sick as that is, at the time, public feeding was not regulated so there were no laws to stop such abuse. Many faith based groups receive food donations after the food is expired and cannot be legally sold. Much of the food is still fine, but churches often do not have the proper storage facilities, so the donated food quickly gets worse. If public feeding is not regulated, then anyone can feed anything to our homelessness friends. To me, that is simply unacceptable.

I have also watched churches leave public parks in a complete mess, with trash everywhere. Often times faith based groups will pull up in their vans and open the doors to feed people. The areas that the feedings take place become trashed quickly. And let’s be very real here – homeless people will congregate where there are public feedings. As a formerly homeless person and someone who has given their life to help homeless people, I don’t want to be panhandled when I am walking through a park — and neither do you! I’d honestly love to see the people who are so strongly advocating for keeping public feedings unregulated to simply invite all our homeless friends over to their house to eat. But the truth is that they don’t want our friends in their neighborhoods — just in yours!

NOW PLEASE HEAR ME! I am not asking everyone to not feed hungry people. What I am saying is that we should also coordinate with other services to form a community effort to help get people out of homelessness. The agency where I work has “guest chefs” come in every night to cook meals. It is a ‘win-win situation’ as the guest chef gets to interconnect with homeless people and also do good works , while our agency also saves the funds they would have spent on food to instead spend on helping people find housing, jobs, and health services. There are many opportunities like this where working as a team with a local homeless service provider, your donations and time could have the greatest impact.

Perhaps the biggest need for food that often goes completely overlooked is found in low income or no income people that are housed. If your church, Rotary Club, or Girl Scout Troop wants to feed people and really make a difference, connect with a local organization that is housing people. Once a person is housed, they have very little money for food. These days I have seen a huge increase of people who are not homeless that have taken up panhandling simply because they do not have enough money to get by. If a person is on disability after they pay rent, they are often left with a few hundred dollars for utilities, bus passes, clothes, food and everything else. It’s never enough and food is what’s usually skimped on. This really is probably the biggest crisis of food insecurity in the United States.

I will never agree with any law that discriminates against anyone for any reason. But when it comes to public safety, I support regulating public feedings. We all want our food healthy and inspected; well, it should be the same for our homeless friends too.

If you’re feeding people randomly in a park, I challenge you to think differently and start networking with others in your community. Your efforts should go to helping people have a better life and not inadvertently maintaining homelessness. It is fine to feed people in a park as long as you are also doing something to get them out of that park!

Here is the copy of the Atlanta City Council letter in regards to the Feedings in Woodruff Park.  We support the City Council that public feedings are NOT the way to address the homeless problems in the City of Atlanta.

The post Please Please help the homeless by working with charities instead of street feeding appeared first on Soma security Alliance.

Please take a look the link below and also help improve the quality of life in Downtown Atlanta by passing this to anyone who will take one minute to sign the petition.

http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-crack-from-hurting-downtown-atlanta-the-community

Thanks

The post This is not Buckhead but our quality of life does matter in South Downtown appeared first on Soma security Alliance.

1. Darius Suttles – He has been arrested four times in Fulton County. His latest arrest was for aggravated assault.  He likes to spend his time on Broad Street where he is often seen with his pants loosely fitting below his buttocks.  This is a style that is popularized by prison culture and made famous by notable rap artists crossing over to other genres of music.  His most noticeable feature is a HUGE overbite and long mouth structure resembling an ant eater.

2. Gregory Jones – Is a repeat offender who started his career of collecting arrest records in Fulton County in 2004.  Since then he has been hell bent on contributing to the cycle of drug addiction and dependence in the black community. He is a poster child for black on black crime.  He has been arrested numerous times for allegedly selling crack cocaine, aggravated assault and armed robbery. He can be seen on Broad Street loitering for the purpose of selling drugs.  After wearing the short cropped afro he has transitioned to dreadlocks.  It’s safe to say that even though they share the same hairstyle, Bob Marley would not be happy with his antics.

Update Gregory Jones – has been sent to prison with the help of Sharla Jackson and our Courtwatch Program. He has also been banished from Zone 5 for 20 years

3. Mark Morris – He has nine arrest records in Fulton County and all of them are drug charges. You can find him walking around on Peachtree Street with gold teeth and ‘pants on the ground’.

4. Aamirr Philpot- He is young man at age 23 with only two alleged drug offenses.   However we are concerned Aamirr because you are kind of  cute and we still think you have an opportunity to contribute to the community. Plus your Muslim name which means ‘prosperous’ indicates a pseudo connection to morality.  Have you graduated from high school?  We have GED courses to assist you. As a matter of fact Waverly Barber College is currently enrolling for the fall.  Please get yourself together and make the community proud. You can turn your life around.

5. Tyrone Gates – He has twenty arrest records in Fulton County.  This proves that a life of crime does horrible things to the skin. Look at how this guy has aged. Thirty years old looks like fifty on him. It’s safe to say there is no going back for this guy. A suit and tie are definitely not in his cards anytime soon.  We are watching you!

6. Aiesha Lovett – Loves to smoke crack and have babies ‘at the same damn time’.   Her earliest arrest record for crack possession was in 2001. This woman has lived quite a life since her early days. She can be as sweet as a Georgia Peach when she panhandles unsuspecting tourists in Downtown.    Other times she can be downright mean when she is asked to move her crack den from the doorways of businesses. Compassionate givers when she asks you for food and you give her a sandwich she has allegedly been seen selling these sandwich for crack. She has been arrested on terrroistic threats and simple battery possession along with possession of crack cocaine. She continues to victimize the neighborhood and you can find her sleeping in the piss stained doorways of Downtown Atlanta.

Criminal Rada research – When a problematic individual comes to our attention, we first work on identifying the individual. Once we have a name, we research public records for that individual. The most common sources of our information:

• The Fulton County Jail website
• The Georgia Department of Corrections
• Dekalb County jail records

As a rule, the Atlanta Police cannot furnish official criminal histories except directly to the patrol officers for their use only.

The post CRIMINAL RADAR – WE ARE WATCHING YOU – YOU ARE NOT WELCOMED IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD appeared first on Soma security Alliance.

Street Vending in Front of Five Points Station Needs to Change to Improve South Downtown

Following are a few reasons why the vending operations in front of (and on the side of) Five Points MARTA station are doing some serious damage to Downtown Atlanta/Five Points/Underground area.

• Aesthetics Issues:

From the way their products are displayed/stored, to the lack of uniformity of the tents/canopies used to cover them, the way their tables are set up, the random signs/posters/print materials they put up, and the unsanitary conditions they’re in, the first thing you notice about these vending spots is how, by any reasonable standard, horrendous they look (Please see attached images for reference). The millions that come through the Five Points train station, or all that walk on that Peachtree St. corridor, are greeted by these unsightly vendors. This gives the whole area a bad image, making it look lawless, disorderly, and lacking supervision and enforcement. Some might think this is not a serious problem, but aesthetics happens to be one of the most important features in the development and maintenance of a city and civil society. One of the crucial reasons cities have ordinances regulating and licensing street vendors and other types of businesses is to preserve the character and aesthetics of the area they’re operating in. The vendors’ failure to maintain clean and orderly operation has directly impacted the property values of adjacent properties and hurt adjacent businesses, as the reputation and image of the whole area gets tarnished by these unsightly operations. Aesthetics/image is everything. It is a show of civility, character, identity, order, and safety.

• Sprawling outside their designated areas:

For those who have been watching the vendors the last few years, it seems as if they’re getting larger and larger by the day.  They sublet extra tables, at will, on their sides and fronts, clearly outside their designated areas.  At this point, it seems like they’ve gotten large enough to block the whole sidewalk. When walking by those vendors, people have to use the outer edge of MARTA property to go past them. This is more prevalent on weekends, especially Fridays and Saturday. During the peak of these subletting activities, you can’t even tell where one vendor ends and the one begins. The vendors also freely allow people to put up signs, outside their designated areas, advertising businesses that have nothing to do with the vendors, (these businesses being advertised are often located at least a block away from where the vendors are located). If other brick and mortar businesses put up signs, fixtures, or product outside their premises, encroaching on public sidewalks, they are quick to be fined. (Please take a look at the image provided as an example).

• Public safety and quality of life issues:
  

These deplorable vending operations have naturally become magnets for aggressive panhandlers, loiterers, and other questionable characters. Numerous individuals just hang around these vendors making it their staging ground for whatever it is they’re engaged in. Some stand around harassing women walking up and down all day, others aggressively panhandle or scam pedestrians/MARTA riders, and plenty others sell cigarettes in singles (or who knows what else), all using these chaotic vending operations as their camouflage.

That particular area has also become a magnet for the people that aggressively preach cults and conspiracy theories. Though people who engage in that are protected by the First Amendment, many are overly aggressive in the way they go about it, some even get in screaming matches with people who disagree with them (use of profanity is very prevalent), they harass women walking up and down, and they sell product without vending licenses (books, magazines, incents, oils, images) and call it donation.

The lawless nature of the area where the vendors are located attracts criminal activity and disorderly behavior. This is a classic example of the Broken Window theory that states that a disordered environment attracts criminal activity and disorderly behavior because individuals think nobody is watching or nobody cares. Walking by these vendors, people are tired of being exposed to vulgarities, getting harassed (mostly the women), accosted, and illegally solicited to. We should see these vendors for what they have become, a harbinger of crime.

• Inhibiting new business, killing existing ones, and hurting property values
  

These vending operations gave the Five Points area a reputation of lawlessness and chaos. Their condition and presence has contributed to the detriment of downtown.  Legitimate, serious, law-abiding, and tax paying businesses are suffering because people are appalled by what they see, tired of what they have to go through in this area, and therefore are leaving downtown for better, safer, and more pleasant parts of town. Businesses in the Five Points/Underground area are closing at an alarming rate, the ones that are around are struggling, and property values have a taken a huge hit. Unlike these vendors, these businesses that are hurting are legitimate taxpaying operation that employ hundreds of people, pay premium rent, comply with rules, regulations, codes, and operate in a relatively orderly manner that’s mindful of the community that surrounds them.

Potential new businesses and residents that are scouting this area for investment are also turned off by what they see in these vendors. This is one of the reasons why this area has not been able to attract quality businesses. This has some serious consequences for our City, as it’s losing millions in potential tax revenues from this vital area.

• Unfair competitive advantage
  

Many brick and mortar operations around the vendors are clearly at a disadvantage when it comes to doing business in this area. These vendors, though operating in the same area and selling the same products as the storefronts, are not subject to the same property & sales taxes, rent, and strict regulation & code enforcement as their counterparts. The way they’re operating and presence undoubtedly hurts adjacent brick and mortar businesses.

Conclusion:

Atlanta is a business friendly, ambitious, progressive, and international city that should not allow these type of operations to be run on the doorsteps of it’s busiest train station (Five Points), on its most iconic Peachtree Street, in the heart of its Downtown that accounts for the highest foot traffic of any other place in the city. This is a key part of our city where tourists, visitors, and conventioneer impressions are formed. Cities have regulations, ordinances, and codes specifically to maintain order, preserve highway safety, promote business, protect the welfare of the pubic, protect property values, and to preserve the character and aesthetics. The way the street vendors in the Five Points area have been operating has serious implications and consequences for the City of Atlanta in terms of its attractiveness to business, property values, public safety, and tax revenues. We urge the City of Atlanta to address this issue once and for all.

Why South of Marietta Needs to Change

The Forgotten Part Of Downtown Atlanta  The community, often referred to as the “forgotten part of downtown,” is plagued with an out-of-control vagrancy crisis and all the associated problems therein, including public begging, intimidation, loitering, public drunkenness, public nudity, destruction of property, burglary, squatting, public urination, and public defecation. These activities persist, largely uninterrupted and unchallenged, and are directly responsible for the destruction and disintegration of SOMA.

The activities of these individuals adversely impact SOMA in many ways. Residents and visitors are persistently pounced upon by beggars ─ sometimes aggressively. Quality of life needs, including the need to feel safe, have taken a backseat to the will of derelicts.

Quality Of Life Concerns In The SOMA District  Part of the derelict population consists of down and out individuals without homes, and drug-addicted individuals. A sizable part of the derelict population, however, is composed of drunkards, beggars, hustlers, drug dealers, and other criminals. Brazen drug dealing and drug use is commonplace in the area and can be observed at any time of the day or night.  The fears, concerns, comfort and safety of tourists and residents is secondary to the desire of criminals to operate in the open, as they please, whenever they please. It is not uncommon for visitors and residents who move through SOMA’s streets, to have to fend off offers for drugs, cigarettes or jewelry for sale.

SOMA is fast becoming a colossal embarrassment to the city of Atlanta. After all, this formerly great downtown neighborhood has steadily transformed into the menacing slumlike microcosm it is today. One look at Yelp or Trip Advisor reveals this plainly. The sentiments expressed on these websites impacts tourism here. Many visitors avoid this section of downtown.

Even one of the centerpieces of SOMA ─ the once glorious, now decaying urban junkyard, The Underground, is little more than an eyesore these days, in desperate need of revamping or dismantling.

Unlike the remainder of downtown Atlanta, SOMA is not family friendly, and fails as a destination setting for children and seniors.

Reprinted from the Creative Loafing

Joeff DavisOVERLOOKED: Built in the mid-1940s, the former home of the Atlanta Constitution (and later Georgia Power) along Forsyth Street could be demolished, despite preservationists’ pleas.

Last Tuesday evening, as Atlanta Police mobilized to march into downtown’s Woodruff Park and arrest Occupy Atlanta protesters at the foot of the city’s skyscrapers, the blocks south of the park were mostly silent.

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. A skinny man standing at the corner of Forsyth and Nelson streets lifted his sweatshirt to a passing motorist and pointed to his penis bulging through green underwear. Newly waxed SUVs and luxury sedans rolled up to the Magic City strip club. The only businesses still open were bail-bonding agents.

Were it not for the occasional conversations that took place in the shadows of buildings or shrill recordings warning parking-lot customers that no attendant is on duty, south downtown — the area bordered by Five Points to the north; I-20 along the south; “the Gulch,” the massive parking lot and rail yard, to the west; and City Hall to the east — would have been dead quiet.

On Broad Street, one of Atlanta’s oldest streets, a large catering truck served chicken wings, pork chop sandwiches and corn dogs to night owls looking to party at a nearby gay club or walking up from the Greyhound station to Five Points. The truck’s owner, A.C. Bolden, has been working south downtown for about eight months. It’s a good spot, but less busy than the Midtown location where he also sets up shop. On Saturdays, he can be found slinging hamburgers until 5 a.m. to clubgoers looking for a late-night meal. But business could be better.

“We need more people coming through,” Bolden says.

Today, south downtown — the launching pad of Morris Rich, Walter H. Kessler and others of Atlanta’s so-called Merchant Princes; birthplace of her newspapers; and the one-time commercial heart of the city — is a drab landscape of lifeless surface parking lots and loiterers. Stores that aren’t vacant peddle gold teeth, candy bars or offer to charge your cell phone for $2. Business owners complain that drugs are openly sold and used, sidewalk salesmen hawk cheap merchandise and homeless people gather to pick up free hot meals from out-of-town churches. Says one service worker in a nearby outreach organization, “This place is like the forgotten end.”

There’s a reason that early episodes of “The Walking Dead” were shot in south downtown: it took minimal effort to make the area resemble a post-apocalyptic urban wasteland.

Numerous parties share the blame for the neighborhood’s long, slow decline. The culprits include highways, MARTA, the “urban renewal” trend of the ’60s and ’70s and the inattention of elected officials — even the city, county, state and federal workers who fill its office spaces every day. Despite the efforts of longtime and new business owners, urban pioneers, and forward-thinking developers, the neighborhood — which has all the hallmarks of a tree-lined, walkable, transit-oriented community that should have caught fire long ago — is stuck in limbo. Meanwhile, the area north of Five Points just a few football fields away undergoes a grand rejuvenation.

Everyone says south downtown, which Atlanta architect Richard Rothman in 1975 called the “most interesting and misunderstood square mile” in the city, has potential. That’s been the line for decades. So when is it going to prosper? And can downtown Atlanta, which in recent years has seemed close to realizing its revitalization dreams, really say it’s come back while its south portion languishes?

“It needs more attention from all of us,” says A.J. Robinson, president of Central Atlanta Progress, a downtown civic booster group. “I don’t know if it’s the city or us. We need to constantly reinforce the potential that’s there … There are very few of these kinds of areas left.”

• Joeff Davis
• PLEASE COME AGAIN: Shops along South Broad Street, once a bustling area for black-owned businesses and customers, are mostly boarded up.

Ask any of south downtown’s longtime business owners what stands out about the good ol’ days, and you’ll hear a constant refrain.

“When I started 54 years ago, when you walked on the street, there were nothing but people,” says Bruce Teilhaber, owner of Friedman’s Shoes, a Mitchell Street landmark located in a former hotel that specializes in selling mega-sized footwear to a clientele that includes pro athletes such as Shaquille O’Neal. “You had a square block with a bank. A square block with Southern Railway. The people created a wonderful atmosphere for the businesses. People felt safe on the street.”

Darren Amato, owner of Rondo Distributing Co., a Mitchell Street spiritual shop and Atlanta treasure that sells lotions and oils to ward off bad juju, says the once-crowded streets were reminiscent of New York City.

“Atlanta wasn’t just the center of business and banking, but people came down here to do their errands,” he says. “You could look down Broad Street, you’re looking to the Five Points MARTA station, you’d look down and see hundreds of people.”

In early maps of the city, Peachtree Street between Memorial Drive and Decatur Street was still called Whitehall Street. In the 1850s, amid conversations about erecting lampposts and building a jail, the city adopted its first street-grid layout in the area, a simple, walkable marvel — most of which still exists. The city’s oldest existing church, the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, sits at the corner of Central Avenue and Martin Luther King, Jr., Drive. The Atlanta Constitution, which in 2001 would merge with its north downtown rival the Atlanta Journal, was housed just a block or so southwest of Five Points.

Into the 20th century, south downtown established itself as a retail destination. Though shops came and went, large department stores moved in, including Rich’s, Kessler’s and Davison’s, which would later move north on Peachtree and be bought by Macy’s.

In low-rise buildings along Broad Street and to the south, shopkeepers sold everything the residents of a growing city could want. Upstairs, workers toiled or residents kept homes. Hotels that catered to railway workers and businessman popped up along the western end of Mitchell Street, earning the block the nickname “Hotel Row.”

The foundation of this once-bustling neighborhood was Terminal Station, the soaring, art deco train depot built in 1905 on the neighborhood’s western edge. Designed by P. Thornton Marye, the same architect responsible for the Fox Theatre, the station became the Southeast’s regional rail hub and made south downtown Atlanta’s front door for tourists, businessmen, railroad workers, celebrities and dignitaries.

Once outside, visitors could walk just a block to find a diverse collection of shops, factories and offices that stretched as far south as where I-20 now sits. Or they could hop on Atlanta’s extensive trolley network that ferried workers, visitors and shoppers around town and into such then-suburbs as Inman Park and the West End. Families would come from across Georgia to pick up clothes and supplies.

“You never saw a store go out of business,” says Teilhaber of the area’s mid-century heyday “In those years, you had four shoe-repair shops, all on this one street. How many people do you need to have four shoe shops? And it was all while-you-wait business.”

Richard Miller started working at his uncle’s Rexall Pharmacy on Broad Street in 1965 as a 12-year-old. Every Saturday, he’d attend synagogue and then take the No. 16 bus from Virginia-Highland to work for seven hours at the store, which he later bought. 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.

“It smelled so good,” Miller says as he leans on the counter. “The street was so vibrant.”

• Joeff Davis
• FOND MEMORIES: Richard Miller, the owner of Miller’s Rexall, started working at the Broad Street pharmacy as a 12-year-old boy in 1965.

Today, nearly all south downtown — most of the buildings and just as much of the retail energy — has vanished. While the area was humming along, a series of events, some big, others scarcely noticeable at the time, chipped away at its foundation.

Atlanta’s streetcar system was dismantled in the ’50s. Terminal Station met the wrecking ball in 1972, long after cars and airplanes surpassed trains as the primary means of travel. The creation in the mid-1940s of the metro region’s expressway, later to become the interstate system, helped city dwellers leave Atlanta for good. Transportation planners and developers began to cater to motorists rather than pedestrians, by retrofitting in-town streets for volumes of cars along and building high-rise office buildings with parking decks.

The exodus not just of people, but of commercial development, north into Midtown and Buckhead and even out into the suburbs, caused retail centers to pop up in far-flung places. Mom-and-pop stores began to succumb to the chains. The exit of Rich’s in April 1991 from its flagship store overlooking Five Points was a crippling blow to south downtown.

Attempts to spark renewed interest in that part of town, including the late-’80s renovation of Underground Atlanta — the subterranean mall that includes original storefronts buried when viaducts were constructed downtown during the late 1800s and early 1900s — never took off. In 2007, the World of Coca-Cola moved to a new location north of Centennial Olympic Park, taking with it many of the tourists that nearby retailers depended on.

“There’s plenty of foot traffic,” says Frank Kim, owner of Nelly Sports, a men’s clothing and shoe store in the Metro Mall on Peachtree Street. “But people aren’t spending money.”

click to enlarge

• Joeff Davis
• GOD’S WORK: Pastor Angelina White from Union City’s True Faith Ministries spends as much as five hours cooking meals she serves every Friday in parking lots to south downtown’s homeless.

Helping to keep paying customers away, business owners say, is the combination of panhandlers, homeless people and the perception of crime that has cast a pall over some parts of the neighborhood. Out-of-town churches, many of which, area homeless people say, come from as far as Hall County nearly 60 miles away to set up mobile soup kitchens in surface parking lots surrounding the Garnett MARTA station. Neighborhood residents, businesses, CAP leaders and even some homeless outreach centers consider the churches’ efforts to be well-meaning but misguided, creating dependence among the homeless and helping to stifle investment in a run-down part of town.

“There are already places where the homeless can get a hot meal every day,” says Chuck Bowen, the executive director at the Central Presbyterian Church Outreach and Advocacy Center. “Instead of just feeding them, they should try to find out why they’re homeless and whether they can help them recover from homelessness, whether it’s something as simple as helping them find an ID to getting into a shelter, or getting a coat. Feeding the homeless one time is not helping them.”

One entity that never left south downtown — and actually grew — was government. Large office buildings housing city, county and state bureaucrats and elected officials formed a barrier between south downtown and Five Points. The Sam Nunn Federal Center, which then-Mayor Maynard Jackson said would help revitalize the area south of Five Points despite government studies predicting the massive facility would not generate substantial economic growth, absorbed parts of the old Rich’s building, opening in 1996.

According to a 2006 CAP study, more than half of the property in the area is publicly owned. That concentration is convenient for politicians, bureaucrats and judges who’ve filled up office space surrounding the government buildings. But it hasn’t created an ideal environment for a thriving, 24-hour neighborhood.

In fact, some of the south downtown government buildings, like many corporate buildings, have been described as urban fortresses, self-contained monoliths containing cafeterias, fitness centers, day-care centers and other amenities that give workers little incentive to step out on to the street.

“Can you imagine 10,000 employees on the streets for lunch every day?” Miller asks. “Can you imagine thousands of people walking around downtown Atlanta? It’d be fantastic. That’d revitalize this area.”

Shyam Reddy, regional administrator of the General Services Administration, the federal agency which oversees the properties, says he hears from tenants that they’d love to have reason to leave their buildings during the day, and that he’d be willing to sit down with elected officials and business leaders to make that happen. But in contrast to Ivan Allen Plaza, where federal employees at Peachtree Summit can walk to different restaurants for lunch or after-work drinks, there are few such options in south downtown.

“I’d love to encourage people to go and frequent and support local business,” he says. “But the problem is I don’t have any down here.”

• Joeff Davis
• URBAN LIVING: Kyle Kessler and wife Kristin Halloran moved to south downtown in 2006 to be near MARTA and enjoy downtown life.

In the early- to mid-’80s, a team of investors from Singapore had a vision: convert 19 blocks south of Mitchell Street into, according to a 1985 AJC article, an “international town” comprising high-rises where more than 30,000 people would have lived, worked and played.

When one of the investors, the late A.C. Toh, heard interest from only half the area’s property owners, he knew the team would have a hard time assembling land. It stalled, but he still hoped to push forward.

“Your downtown needs life,” he said, but the project eventually fell through.

Had Toh’s proposal been given the green light, it’s quite feasible that south downtown, rather than Buford Highway, could have become metro Atlanta’s epicenter for international cuisine and culture. Longtime business owners sometimes mention his proposal in passing, calling it yet another of the ambitious plans that have come and gone over the decades.

The past hundred years has seen a litany of proposals — from a grand plaza on top of downtown’s railroad tracks to a branding campaign centered on the district’s 9-to-5 government offices to a mixed-use development in the old C&S Bank building on Mitchell Street. And don’t get folks started on the proposal to build a casino in Underground Atlanta.

“Every five, 10 years we get letters saying this might be happening, this is gonna happen, we might take your building and turn it into this or that,” says Rondo’s Amato.

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.

Some urban pioneers, both residents, businesses and nonprofits like the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition, have flocked to the area — especially historic Mitchell Street — for its lower rents, historic feel and authentic grittiness.

“I couldn’t do this in Buckhead,” says longtime Atlanta chef Paul Luna, who in 2009 opened up Lunacy Black Market, a “Mediterranean-Southern” restaurant serving Euro-sized dishes in what feels like your cool uncle’s living room. “I couldn’t do this in Midtown.”

Kyle Kessler, an architect, community advocate and amateur historian, moved to the Kessler Lofts (no relation) with his wife Kristin in 2006 to be near MARTA and downtown life. Their spacious, top-floor condo looks out onto the Nunn Federal Center and enjoys easy access to the roof patio, where the couple can watch a dozen different Fourth of July fireworks shows from East Point to Buckhead.

“We’ve got great MARTA connectivity,” Kessler says. “We’ve got great interstate access. There’s plenty of parking. You can still get your Peachtree address. All that exists here and there’s no reason, technically, that something couldn’t happen. But there is some reason, psychological or some other hindrance, as to why it’s not happening.”

“The big challenge now is how to repurpose areas that maybe don’t serve the traditional function they once did,” says Haddow, the real estate consultant. “We had two department stores at one time. You’re not going to get them back. It’s just as unlikely as a major law firm is going to move back to Five Points. At some point you have to accept change and find a new role.”

Making things difficult for developers is that the neighborhood has historically been home to mom-and-pop stores, which has left the area carved into small parcels. Some property owners have become accustomed to sitting on their slivers of land waiting to cash in on a large-scale redevelopment that never comes.

• Joeff Davis
• SHAQ-SIZED SHOES: Turning his shoe store into a destination for pro athletes has helped Bruce Teilhaber, the owner of Friedman’s Shoes on Mitchell Street, stay in business.

John Sweet, an attorney who converted a former sewing machine factory at the corner of Peachtree Street and Trinity Avenue into his law office nearly 30 years ago, thinks neighboring Castleberry Hill’s energy and momentum will eventually span the Gulch and help transform south downtown one building at a time. But when it does, he says, expect government services — more specifically, lobbyists and lawyers — to flock to the area and snatch up the space.

“This is more of a special-use community,” Sweet says. “This is about the government, the legal system. This is where all the courts are — the bulk, and I do mean the heavy lifting, of the court systems, is here.”

Tim Crimmins, a Georgia State University history professor, however, thinks another downtown property owner, one credited with breathing new life into the area north of the tracks, will play a larger role.

“The catalyst for change is going to be the continued residential expansion of GSU,” he says. Since the mid-2000s, the one-time commuter school has expanded its downtown footprint with the purchase of the SunTrust building, two former hotels and dorm construction, among other properties.

Emory Morsberger, the Lawrenceville developer and downtown booster whose plans to build a mixed-use development on Mitchell Street were shelved when the economy choked, agrees — and even thinks Georgia Tech could eventually consider expanding its footprint from Midtown to the south downtown area.

“You got 50,000 students within two to three miles,” Morsberger says. “That population is growing. That population attracts other people. It’s just a question of time before Georgia Tech and Georgia State bust out of their seams and expand into that area. It’s an area that will have no choice — it’s going to take off.”

Business owners have recently received letters from the Georgia Department of Transportation informing them about the area’s Next Big Thing: the long-promised multi-modal terminal, where commuter rail, buses and streetcars would converge. Though designs are nowhere near being finalized, the project could essentially cap the 100-acre-plus Gulch, creating new real estate that could include mixed-use development and park space. CAP has also proposed the Green Line, a series of walkable plazas over the railroad tracks that could connect Castleberry Hill to south downtown — and possibly to areas north of Five Points. Business owners and residents, while supportive, say they’ll believe it when they see it.

In the absence of construction, commendable efforts have sprung up to improve south downtown’s quality of life. This summer, the city’s Office of Cultural Affairs launched Elevate-Art Above Underground, a two-month public-art showcase centered on Underground Atlanta that included murals, public performances and site sculptures. Murals painted during Living Walls have added color at street level. The Nunn Federal Center has held a farmer’s market that’s open to the public.

There are other possibilities. Mayor Kasim Reed’s recent proposal to convert Underground Atlanta into an arts district is, a spokesman says, still in the “ideas” phase. Reddy would love to see a south downtown street closed during the lunch hour for food trucks to serve downtown and federal employees. The surface parking lots are ripe for a multi-day concert festival a la Music Midtown or large-scale arts performance. The long-awaited re-opening of the Mitchell Street bridge could bring back customers. Jerry Miller, chairman of the Capitol Hill Neighborhood Development Corporation, a nonprofit founded by three south downtown churches to pursue projects that could help rebuild the area, says his group is currently working with planners and architects to imagine what the state could do with the old World of Coca-Cola building. Also on its list: to see if the state’s Georgia Plaza Park at Central and Mitchell avenues — where a restaurant with outdoor seating served workers decades ago — could be “re-energized.”

“We can’t say we revitalized downtown when we have a kind of soft underbelly adjacent to it on the southside,” says Miller. “We have to have a 360-degree view of downtown.”

The post Editorial Perspectives from Neighbors appeared first on Soma security Alliance.

These still exist in Atlanta

The post Why does the city rely on flop houses instead of real solutions to help the homeless in Atlanta? appeared first on Soma security Alliance.

What is a nuisance neighborhood store?

1.  A building owner or store owner that has a consistent history of above average 911 calls and arrest records in relation to other liquor stores in the area.
2. A building owner or store owner  that has been cited for breaking the liquor license laws (i.e. Selling to a minor)
3. A building owner or store owner  that refuses to install security cameras, hire security officers or police to address the ongoing criminal behavior at their location
4. A building owner or store owner  that refuses to work with the at large community to provide a mutually beneficial store that is profitable and benefits that members of the community that reside in the area (i.e. frequently these owner’s product line caters  to people from outside the community that are coming to buy drugs, etc)
5. A building owner or store owner  that has a continuous history of code violations including (i.e. food stamp fraud, selling expired food, broken windows, etc)

Update:  The owner of the liquor store was fined $1000.  Kwanza Hall had this to say on his District 2 Facebook page.

What Does It Take to Shut Down a Nefarious Convenience Store in the ATL?

Ongoing Challenges with 90 Broad Street Fox Market

Together with the APD and our NPU (Neighborhood Planning Unit), we are working to revoke the liquor license of a Broad Street storeowner who operates a business supportive of drug dealing and other criminal activity, including prostitution and sales of alcohol to minors. 90 Fox Market has contributed to a host of problems that advance the decline of Broad Street, between Mitchell Street and MLK. In the past four years there have been over six-hundred and fifty 911 calls to 90 Broad Street, Fox Market. There have been over seventy arrests (most of them 16-13-30, drug offenses)

The post Why do bad business owners seem to flock to South Downtown? appeared first on Soma security Alliance.

Update

We Won. We are hoping that new metered parking will be installed by the end of the year.

Per established policies set forth by the Atlanta City Council, public notification is required prior to the installation of new parking metered spaces.  In accordance with 12-O-1140 a public hearing will be held during the November 28, 2012 Transportation Committee meeting.  The Department of Public Works has requested through the Department of Planning and Economic Development, that the following caption be placed on the November 27, 2012 NPU-M meeting agenda.

NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING

NOVEMBER 28, 2012

10:30 A.M.

12-O-1140:  A SUBSTITUTE ORDINANCE TO REVISE TAXICAB STANDING ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF

MARTIN L. KING, JR. DRIVE BETWEEN PEACHTREE STREET AND BROAD STREET AND TO

REPLACE SOME OF THE TAXICAB STANDS WITH METERED PARKING; AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES

The post Park Atlanta installs more meters – more revenue for the city appeared first on Soma security Alliance.