Driving south on I-285 from Dunwoody Tuesday morning was a breeze, a drive made more satisfying by seeing the gridlock headed north to the busy side of the county. I buzzed along until spotting the 3,000-bed, four-tower edifice which looms along the interstate like a hellish, muted-color City of Oz.
Some see the southwest intersection of I-285 and Memorial Drive as a grubby 150-acre plot dominated by DeKalb County’s jail and the old police station with a helicopter sitting on the roof.
DeKalb County’s Interim CEO Lee May sees opportunity, an underutilized tract that needs some TLC and a few hundred million dollars to turn the area into The Region’s Next Big Thing. Earlier this year, May, in his state of the county address, called for an ambitious redevelopment plan to turn the long-neglected area into a live-work-play community. It would be one that could compete with live-work-plays popping up like mushrooms throughout the (northern) metro area.
DeKalb recently called for urban-planner types to put forward their best dreamscapes to describe how the living, working and playing might one day occur on that spot. Currently, there’s lots of working going on there. The county’s land is busy with dump trucks, garbage trucks, pickups and heavy machinery all buzzing about in their various daily activities. Traffic court is there, too, so there’s lots of grumbling.
May, AKA the Man With a Plan, is an ambitious pol still trying to shake the Interim that prefaces his title. He got the job after his predecessor was sent to the pokey on corruption charges and is trying to stake out his own path. One way to do that is a big plan.
“Multitudes of young families will buy homes in the area and a new generation of active retirees will find that Memorial Drive has everything they’re looking for in a vibrant community,” he said earlier this year announcing his plan.
This week, he talked about the Vision Thing, admitting that “we’re pushing the envelope” with the plan.
The pie-shaped plot of land is book-ended by two MARTA rail stops (the Kensington and Indian Springs stops), I-285 and Memorial, all which would help feed visitors and 3,000 government workers to the 20-story government complex, as well to Arthur Blank’s soccer fields, the new convention center, hotels and the concert hall, the public green space/square with fountains and retail/mixed use buildings, the apartments and condos, as well as a recreation center.
Remember, May ain’t thinking small here.
‘It would not be pleasing’
Sonya Gibson, a Lithonia resident walking through the future Downtown DeKalb, shrugged when she heard the plan. “If they’re going to sweep everything out, then that might be a good idea,” she said, considering the idea. “This is an ideal location with the MARTA stations and the highway.”
Then she considered it some more, “The problem is the jail. It would not be pleasing to bring my family over here with a jail right there.”
“That,” May conceded, “is a major weakness.”
The plan does consider that shortfall, saying the jail could be converted into an office or high-rise apartments.
That, indeed, might be a stroke of genius because urban planners have learned that millennials love to look out from narrow slit windows in their sparse, concrete-walled rooms.
Maybe the county will knock it down, May said.
“We’re looking at all kinds of things,” he said. “We’re not looking to accomplish Downtown Decatur by ourselves.”
He’s talking public-private partnerships, tax allocation districts, working with MARTA, whatever he can pull out of the Big Project Playbook.
“Heh, heh, heh,” was the reaction of former Sheriff Tom Brown when asked about the plan.
A new jail? The old one cost $100 million
Brown, a three-decade county employee who also headed DeKalb’s Public Safety Department, said the jail is barely 20 years old and cost $100 million. Building a replacement could cost almost twice that based on inflation since 1990, the year construction bonds were being prepared. And that’s not taking into account the cost of consolidating government services into the new DeKalb tower and moving the fleet of county maintenance machinery elsewhere as the work yards are replaced by soccer fields.
“I think Lee is trying to make something happen in his short stint as CEO,” Brown said.
Precisely, said Steve Labovitz, a lawyer who was chief of staff of Atlanta in the 1990s. Sometimes, he said, the growth is organic, as has happened in some intown Atlanta neighborhoods.
“And sometimes government is the one to initiates it,” said Labovitz, who worked on the Atlantic Station project from both the city’s side and the developer’s.
Atlanta, he said, is “doing a great job of redeveloping up Memorial Drive (from downtown). They (DeKalb officials) want to move development down Memorial Drive.”
Maybe the two redevelopment teams will meet at Candler Road, just like the crews building the Transcontinental Railroad once connected.
‘A seedy little backroom deal’
But ultimately, May might have a bigger obstacle than moving the jail.
It’s trust. The county has taken it on the chin for ongoing corruption investigations and convictions. Even things like the rush-rush job on approving $12 million to win the soccer team to DeKalb has soured many.
More residents than not rolled their eyes or muttered something about DeKalb government when asked about the plan Tuesday at the site.
Terry Pride, a lifelong DeKalb resident who owns a weed-control business, said the soccer agreement “was thrown together as a seedy little backroom deal. The public should have had a voice in it. It was like the Braves moving to Cobb. It wasn’t transparent.
“It could be above board, but forgive me for being a little gun shy for what has happened.”
The first thing the CEO must rebuild in DeKalb is trust.
