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Saturday, November 5, 2005
Visions of ‘Gwinnett Village’ a dream too-long deferred
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
B.J. Van Gundy doesn’t want to be the village idiot.
In recent weeks, though, some people may have wondered. You’ve seen the signs: “Gwinnett Village.” They appear in the most unappealing part of the county — southwestern Gwinnett. Definitely more barrio than village.
There, laborers solicit work on the streets. Check-cashing stores and pawnshops are ubiquitous. Not very villagelike.
Take a drive down Jimmy Carter Boulevard like I did last week. The village moniker doesn’t fit. Too many pawnshops. Too much traffic, grime and grit.
Van Gundy’s group is trying to breathe life into Jimmy Carter and several other ugly sections of the county. The Southwest Gwinnett Village Community Improvement Association is trying to set up a community improvement district, or CID, a self-taxing entity that would raise money to pretty things up in and around Jimmy Carter, Indian Trail Lilburn Road, Beaver Ruin Road and Singleton Road.
On Friday, Van Gundy and I toured the area. We started off in a neighborhood off Pirkle Road, then cruised parts of Jimmy Carter, Singleton and Beaver Ruin. Van Gundy is Mr. Positive.
He told me some of the houses off Pirkle Road had been a mess. One man kept two goats tied up in his front yard. Dozens of bags of trash littered a vacant duplex. And one guy was basically running a used-car lot in front of his house.
“I sicced the county on them,” Van Gundy said.
We eventually made it to Jimmy Carter Boulevard, the heart of the village. It used to be a hub for big-box retailers and mainstream businesses. Van Gundy’s wife used to manage a Bennigan’s on the strip. Now it’s called El Imperio. An old Krystal is now a Don Tacos restaurant. Laborers had taken up residence outside a Dunkin’ Donuts in the Horizons shopping center. The neon lights of a check-cashing store flickered from across the street.
Van Gundy saw everything I saw. Only he saw it differently.
He envisions Jimmy Carter as the county gateway, a destination point. He’s thinking street lamps, sidewalks and shops that attract folk from Sugarloaf Country Club and the Hamilton Mills area.
He’s a dreamer.
“Nothing will happen overnight,” he said. “This is massive. Not some itsy-bitsy project. The key is getting the CID formed, and that’s what we’re doing, signing up property owners.” If enough agree to tax themselves, then the real cleanup begins. And Van Gundy is right — it will be massive.
Maybe too big.
Too much has changed. Van Gundy is trying to take us back to something that was lost a long, long time ago. A mainstream area.
For Van Gundy’s dream to come true, you would force massive displacement of businesses and people, a way of life.
Stranger things have happened. But Gwinnett’s growth has occurred where trees and grass once stood, not where recycled strips, pawnshops and check-cashing stores cater to a new Gwinnett. Show Gwinnett a couple hundred acres of woods, and next thing you know, you’ve got a mall or a school and a thousand homes.
Show Gwinnett a run-down area and they move, and they never come back.
• Rick Badie’s column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. He can be reached at rbadie@263-3875.
