Earlier this week Decatur’s city commission voted unanimously to purchase the Samuel L. Jones Boys & Girls Club, an Oakhurst cornerstone for over a half century that closed in mid-March for COVID 19.
If the news isn’t quite as earth-shattering as the 2017 purchase of the 77-acre United Methodist Children’s Home (now Legacy Park), the Jones property serves as a complementary piece for a population-dense city desperate for more recreational green space and a gym.
The 5.4-acre property includes an outdoor football/soccer field, a rec center (with a gym), a garden, a mini-teen center, computer lab, art center, learning center, a game room, the city’s best-manicured dog park and a pool which the city renovated and has been running since 2017. The city’s also been maintaining and upgrading the field for about 15 years.
In late July the Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Atlanta announced that it wasn’t reopening the Jones branch. Chief Operating Officer Claire Guitton said at the time that COVID was one reason, along with the anticipation that 2020-21 would be a difficult fiscal year for the organization.
But she also cited the area’s changing demographics. In 1990 Oakhurst was 82 percent Black, or about the same as when the Jones Club opened in 1972. By the 2010 census Oakhurst had shifted to 63 percent white and it’s likely 80 percent or higher by now. Meantime, over the last 10 years Oakhurst’s Area Median Income has skyrocketed.
“It wasn’t that our numbers [at the Jones Club] were down,” Guitton said this week, “but we were having to go further and further out to get kids. Right now, we have a board committee searching to find a [new] location in DeKalb, probably somewhere in South DeKalb.”
Several years ago Decatur had negotiated the rights to make an offer on the Jones Club prior to its getting put on the market, or a right of first refusal.
The purchase price, with closing set for Nov. 30, is $4,940,000 or about $915,000 per acre. This appears something of deal considering that several local realtors have valued commercial real estate within Decatur between $1.5 million to $2 million, although a portion of the Boys and Girls club property is flood plain.
“We will be refinancing old bonds,” City Manager Andrea Arnold said this week. “In other words, we will borrow and pay [the $4.9 million to] the Boys and Girls, and the interest we pay back on the loan should be minimal. I don’t know how much it will be right now, but there won’t be an impact on the taxpayer.”
The Legacy Park purchase did increase taxes, with the 2017 millage rate of 13.49 mills jumping to 13.62 mills in 2018, an increase of 0.13 mills, or $27 on a $500,000 home. In 2019 it jumped further to 13.92 mills, an increase of 0.30 mills, or $64 on a $500,000 home.
The Jones purchase includes everything on the property, but it doesn’t include operating and maintenance costs, which may prove considerable. Arnold said she might have a better idea of those costs when the city executes its first property inspection on Friday (Sept. 25).
The Club’s official statement released in late July points out, “The facility is also in need of significant updates.” Guitton, however, said she couldn’t speculate on those renovations because, “We didn’t go out and get an estimate.”
Long-term use for the site, along with a possible name change, will emerge from a citywide Facilities and Greenspace master planning process scheduled for 2021.
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