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DEL.ICIO.USVisions 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.
Comments
Commenting is now closed for this entry.
By Spicer
November 5, 2005 09:25 PM | Link to this
Mr. Badie, Thirty-five years ago the corner of Jimmy Carter and I-85 was a cotton field. It may have been a mainstrean area in 1982 however, I remember moving to Gwinnett and I saw trash everywhere and thought to myself that, southerns are slobs. I moved to Barrow County in 1984 because of the traffic not because of immigrants. Believe me EVERYONE was white in Gwinnett. I can remember the exact day, April 28, 1987, because I adopted my son the following day. I was at a meeting with the Barrow County Commissioners and we were discussing how NOT to become like Jimmy Carter Boulevard. At that time there were no foriengers, no illegal immigrants, it was just filthy with trash and fast food American restaurants. You can not blame its blight on anything other than laziness. You have to fight for anything of value. Barrow County, in 1982 was a rural community with chicken farms, now it is, with the help of home builders using illegal immigrants, a bedroom community.Areas change. These bedroom communities are basically all white with nothing to do there but go to WalMart. Everyweekend they will be wanting to come down to the Village where they can let their hair down and they can go back to their village and go to church. What happens in the Village, stays in the Village. You talk about goats being tied up in the yards of people well I remember roosters in the back yards of people on Beaver Ruin and they were there with razor blades on their back legs and they were being used for c** fighting, by white people. Believe me, that is stranger than goats that someone might eat. Gwinnettians are backward people who need to become a little more worldly. Open your horizens.
By Bruce Wilcox
November 6, 2005 06:12 AM | Link to this
I don’t understand Rick’s agenda, it’s almost a repeat of what he ran a few days ago against the plan? The responses seem more in support of it than not, maybe Rick feels if he beats the issue into the ground enough he can gain support against it?
The lead story in the Gwinnett section today is about “Urban blight hot election issue” in places like Berkeley Lake, Norcross and Lawrenceville.
Should we give up on Berkeley Lake, Norcross and Lawrenceville too? Will Rick write column after column how hopeless it is in even attempting to save these places?
I doubt it, Rick has a problem with the name the group organizing the effort picked. Until the group changes the name to something Rick will accept, he’s on a crusade.
By Michael H. Smith
November 6, 2005 11:54 AM | Link to this
Maybe Rick and I share the same basic mistrust in our government. Take a look at things from this prospective. The Federal government fails to enforce and rightly execute uniform immigration laws to naturalize future Americans. The State government only compliments this failure. The County government defers any and all responsibility and neglects to as much as enforce its’ occupancy code for years. And now the County defers responsibility to a quasi-governmental body, a CID, or CIA, gives it taxation powers, and to a degree enforcement powers, all to do a job the County should have done many years past.
Now, best-case scenario:
This JCB Barrio is going to change that is a forgone conclusion and from Rick’s column, as I knew, changing the demographics were in the pre-planning. Probably from day one is my guess. Keywords: Adios Don Taco welcome back American Pie.
Now the question remains, will this be like squeezing the proverbial balloon: squeeze one end of the county and all the displaced problematic inhabitants’ shift to the other end?
Hopefully the dispersing will not result in another segregated ethnic lump. While the Federal, State and Local governments carry on business…. Oops, failures as usual?
True enough this prospective is highly over simplified, failed to encompass all the overlapping issues only for this purpose, to demonstrate: Repeat, Repeat, Repeat!
Steps have to be taken to break some very viscous cycles. Else, all that has been accomplished is creating another level of government in quasi form, a new tax, and a Gwinnett Village, which at some point in time is subject to decline.
Broken Windows by any name needs to remain as a fixed solution in lieu of a short lived campaign to clean up the community of crime, gangs, occupancy code and other code violations etc. The other parts to this solution belong to the Federal and State governments to implement.
Can’t say what Rick’s agenda is but I think it concerns more than just a name. Mine is, don’t apply band-aids on hemorrhages when truncates are apropos.
By Bruce Wilcox
November 6, 2005 04:23 PM | Link to this
I know it’s easier to blame everything on ‘those’ people, but look what Spicer said in the first comment, it wasn’t all that great in 1982 when it was all white.
It’s time to take responsibility for electing the ‘Good Old Boys Club’ we call the Board of Commissioners year after year. At the national level I can remember a campaign promise made six years ago to address the immigration problem, so far zip. And the state, if we didn’t worry about a flag so much imagine what could have been done.
Give it labels, blame all woes on ‘those’ people and the next time election day rolls around, put the blame where it really belongs.
By Michael H. Smith
November 6, 2005 05:37 PM | Link to this
First, I lived in that area from 68 till about 83. The version I lived is somewhat different from several of Spicer’s observations. If you read carefully I blamed governments. As to “THOSE PEOPLE� it may be hard for you to absorb this Mr. Wilcox but your favorite bigot might just turn out to be the best Supreme Omnipotent Being “THOSE PEOPLE� will ever have as a friend.
Next time you operate to remove the mote from my eye please remove the beam from your own eye.
By Deborah Lee
November 6, 2005 07:51 PM | Link to this
The village will be attracting people from Sugarloaf Country Club because my real estate agent told me that the make-up of the Sugarloaf Country Club is many, many, many nationalities, these people just happen to have more money. Money that they like to spend. She also told me that I should expect that an Asian will probably be buying my home, in Duluth, across from the Sugarloaf Country Club. Gwinnett is finally growing up and it will have areas like the cities up North such as Little Italy, Little Mexico, Greek Town, China Town,or Little Egypt. The Duluth Area has attracted the Asian community. Many of these Asians are from California whose families have been in the U.S. for 3 generations. They have made great profits on their homes there and moved to our great state. They come here and buy a really nice house and start a business with their profits. That is the American way. Also,I read today in the paper that Athens is working on a plan to attract Barrow Countians to their town for entertainment. Seem to me that THE VILLAGE has just as much chance to attract the Barrow Countians in the next few years for their entertainment dollars. Why would anyone try to sabbatage a great opportunity. Tourism is big business. It would be a short drive down I-85. If anyone gets a chance read Sundown Towns by James Loewen, it is an amazing account of how towns form or are not formed in the United States. My grandfather was an originally HONKY which was a Hungarian laborer who probably took a job away from an Italian because he would work for cheaper. He was forced to leave Youngstown, Ohio. Do you really think that you could round up all illegal Mexicans now and force them to leave? What have you been smoking? The Mayberry live is still available, unfortunately you have to move to find it. May I suggest Utah or Idaho.
By Michael H. Smith
November 6, 2005 10:24 PM | Link to this
You got a lot of questions Deborah. But to cut through to answering them all, no I don’t intend to round them all up. Some of those people are legal immigrants some are U.S. Citizens. Legal immigration I welcome with open arms, it is the renewing vitality of our nation. Illegal immigration I will never accept. Especially when it concerns Mexico because I know so many Mexicans and why they had to come to this country. I really liked what Spicer said about “USING� the illegal aliens. I know it’s hard to understand what I’m doing. But did you know over 40% of the Mexican people now live in poverty. Now 46 % of the Mexican people would immigrate to the U.S. about 20 % of that number would do so illegally. All this, after years of NAFTA, thousands of American jobs gone south to Mexico and still hundreds die in the desert trying to make it across the border. Mexico’s chief export is their people, producing more revenue than their oil exports, even with gas cost now so high. Vicente’ Fox’s cheap labor sends $20 billion yearly back to families whose lives have barely been improved.
End result many of these people have to live in counties like Gwinnett 15 to a house in order to cut costs (game the system) to be able to send money back to their families while Chicano gang members prey upon them – they hate these gangs as bad as any of us but they dare not oppose them to openly.
These and many more are reasons why I’m so dogged. I’m fighting to reform immigration, for Americans and Mexicans – and hopefully pressure corrupt Mexico to make progressive reforms to raise the standards of living for their people. If the Mexican economy had jobs paying just $10 an hour on every street corner, 90% of the Mexican immigrants probably would not be here. When immigrants come to our country I want them to become U.S. Citizens as quickly as we can assimilate them into Americans “not because they had to come here� but because they truly want to be an American.
Carry this thought with you Deborah, do you want to continue to allow our prosperity to depend upon and feed on, the poverty of Mexicans and Central Americans?
I don’t!
No I’m not smoking anything and I’ve not been to the mountaintop and seen the promiseland — but I am claiming.
By Bruce Wilcox
November 6, 2005 11:49 PM | Link to this
The grand illusion some have of JCB being a thriving, vibrant commerical district till the so called invasion turned it into a Barrio is nothing but a myth, an easy cop-out. The decline started the minute they turned the key on the Gwinnett Place Mall and Pleasant Hill replaced JCB as the place to go and it’s been downhill ever since.
The counties uncontrolled urban sprawl feeds the need for cheap labor, illegals provide it. We replaced one commissioner who promised to halt the sprawl only to find he is just a clone of the one replaced.
The Mexican government is at fault, NAFTA, which has worked out well with Canada, was suppose to allow the Mexican government to build it’s own industries and be able to trade with us on equal footing, they never bothered. Thankfully this weekend the CAFTA free trade agreement was rejected by the South American governments which felt it was a one sided deal.
But back to JCB, it needs a new identity and the Village is a great concept. Call it what you will now, but wait a few years, you can always come back and say I told you so.
By Michael H. Smith
November 7, 2005 01:19 AM | Link to this
The area was still prosperous in 85 and there were immigrants who lived in the JCB-Singleton road area. I worked with Mexican guys, some who lived in Lilburn at the time. We built many of the outlets around the Gwinnett Place Mall. Sometime later around 95 a Mexican friend of mine who lives in the JBC area told me unsolicited there are too many [Mexicans] here. His words Mr. Wilcox not mine. No copouts here.
Yeah and we’ll replace as many commissioners as it takes till we get the job done. I’m voting for a young man running for city council in Lawrenceville who is signing onto the broken widows initiative for the City. In fact, make that two young men, Wasserman and Johnson.
You are soooooo right FTTA and Bush took a drubbing, I’m still laughing. The South Americans for the most part said exactly what I’ve claimed and told Bush his Free Trade plan would destroy their jobs and create more poverty. Why did Canada prosper under NAFTA and not Mexico? Answer in one word, CORRUPTION. Mexico is the most corrupt country in this hemisphere according to an international body monitoring corruption among the world’s nations. Cuba is less corrupt than Mexico. What do you think I’ve heard out of the mouths of hundreds of Mexican and Guatemalans as a chief complaint about their native country, CORRUPTION.
Now could this uncontrolled sprawl exist without cheap illegal labor? I doubt it.
Could Mexico avoid making reforms if 7 million illegal aliens returned tomorrow demanding an end to $2 an hour American factory jobs located in Mexico?
Vicente’ Fox would have a heart attack…. Jorge’ por favour ayuda mi!
There is going to be some pain in this before it is all over but that is the price that has to be paid when people are treated and traded like a commodity.
The Village is going to be successful so you don’t have to wait to tell me so. Sweeping things to the side and repeating past failures is my concern locally.
By Tommy Woodsmall
November 7, 2005 06:41 AM | Link to this
“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.�
Since you probably do not understand what it takes to develop property I decided to address the above part of your comment.
The storm water requirements for the county are so much more stringent than they were when these original projects were built 20 years ago that to demo these old shopping centers, then try to meet the new storm water requirements in these areas is very tough. It makes it very costly and hard for a developer to come out ahead with a new development! So therefore, until something changes and these areas are looked at in a different way by the county where storm water requirements are relaxed. The woodlands and the fields to the north will continue to beckon the developers. It don’t take no rocket scientists to figure that one out…
By brandy
November 7, 2005 08:30 AM | Link to this
Immigration needs to come in to norcross and get that problem taken care of first. then that will clean most of norcross gwinnett’s “village” out and then we can start from there. i want to know why there is so many mexican men standing around outside on the corner? i know people can come by and say the word “work” and then they will jump in for a day of work at a very low cost per hour. we need someone to run through there and clean that main problem,i have nothing against mexicans but anyone here that should not be should be cleaned out of norcross, as well as buford!!
By Bruce Wilcox
November 7, 2005 09:45 AM | Link to this
It looks promising as an article in todays paper reports, “Deal could mean revival in Norcross”, the area being discussed is the corner of I-85 and JCB, ” And builders are waiting in the wings with plans for mixed-use projects at the site to rival Atlantic Station and Peachtree City, Everyone has said that this could be a billion-dollar project when this thing is done,”… “”We’re not building a Taco Bell.”
The upside property values will rise and slumlords will sell, with them it’s all about the money. Cash checking places will be replaced by banks and the pawn shops will follow the crowd it takes advantage of.
The downside as Mr. Smith has pointed out, the problem will just appear in another location. So watch out brandy the problem in Buford may become worse.
By Deborah Lee
November 7, 2005 10:19 AM | Link to this
An article in the New York Times today tells of people in high real estate areas such as California and Washington D.C. selling and packing up and moving to Georgia. They sell their 1000 square foot homes for $600,000 without a yard and can come to the Village buy a house for under $200,000 with a yard and buy a Lexus, pay off bills, send their kinds to college, start a business. You will not recognize the Village in 7 years. Also, the illegal Mexicans are already being called to the Florida Panhandle for the next hugh building boom.
By Rick Badie
November 7, 2005 11:23 AM | Link to this
Good morning. It’s great to see conversation continue about “Gwinnett Village.” And that, Mr. Wilcox, is why I continue to write about it. The subject deserves scutiny, whether you support the goal of the southwest association or not. We should never just accept as gospel any proposal by govt. or some quasi-institution. And there’s no limit to the number of times a topic can be broached - your e-mails prove that. My Sunday column was not a repeat of the first one. The first one dealt with the name - its idiocy and how it was (and is) a stretch, right now, to call an area that encompasses so much real estate and ugliness a village. I wrote Sunday’s column to give Van Gundy, the executive director of the southwest association, a chance to share the group’s views on what’s envisioned for the area. I’m not trying to get people not to support the idea. Hey: I live on the shallow end of JCB. And even if I didn’t, I would like to see it in better shape than it’s in now because I am a Gwinnett County resident. Tommy, you’re right. I do not understand what it takes to develop property. Never said that I did. But I suspect this: When and if this proposed CID starts popping, those same developers will, somehow, find it within their budgets to meet the storm water requirements for the county and those old shopping centers will be developed. It doesn’t take a rocket science to figure that one out, either, brother. PEACE.
By Tommy Woodsmall
November 7, 2005 01:43 PM | Link to this
Rick, I am really fusing at the county, not you. I don’t expect you to know anything about development. I would like for the county to take a friendlier approach to development in these rundown areas. Some of the things they are requiring are not necessary and could be eliminated. It would be simple enough to offer incentives to developers to develop something like a 20 year old vacant shopping center. It’s just that government has a hard time giving up the red tape.
By Bruce Wilcox
November 7, 2005 02:10 PM | Link to this
You’re right Rick, let us be politically correct and not call it a Village until the dream is actually completed. While we’re at it lets stop calling that huge hole in the ground in New York the World Trade Center until the least beam is hoisted in place.
We should do it all in secret, it may take the concept, the vision, the dream of it out of the attempt, but at least we’ll be politically correct.
CID’s have a proven track record all around the Atlanta area, there’s no reason to believe that it wouldn’t work here. But how do you sell the idea of a CID without a concept or a vision I have no idea.
By MJK
November 8, 2005 09:32 AM | Link to this
Rick’s suggestion that its almost comical calling the area a Village is right on. Its not politically correct, its logic or common sense.
I worked in the Oakbrook office park for over six years. My company frequently had visitors stay in hotels in the area like the Courtyard, Drury, as well as those on Oakbrook Parkway. Unfortunately some of the villagers enjoyed breaking into cars in the hotel parking lots (as well as our cars in the company parking lot) and we ultimately had to steer them to the Mariott at Gwinnett Place.
I’d love nothing more than to have a great mixed-use site there. Heck, I’d settle for a couple more nice restaurants like Pappadeaux. But referring to this area as a Village? Please.
By Bruce Wilcox
November 8, 2005 03:37 PM | Link to this
MJK, it seems that Mr. Badie and you are focusing too much on just one small section of the CID area. It covers far more than the area of JCB. The map may be found at the organizations web-site.
I live within the CID area, it’s a very neat, clean older neighborhood where people have maintained their properties. And within the CID area you will fine many neighborhoods like mine.
Instead of a snapshot of the CID area take a look at the overall picture. I do not live in the barrio and I take offense with labeling of my area with that of JCB.
I used to enjoy a visit to the old Steak and Ale on Oakbrook so I understand where you are coming from, I hope you now understand my position.