A coalition of Atlantans who oppose renaming city streets has filed a lawsuit to stop Harris Street from becoming John Portman Boulevard.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday, follows a 9-5 Atlanta City Council vote Monday to go ahead with the renaming of the downtown street despite opposition from historic preservationists and neighborhood associations.
The lawsuit contends the City Council violated its own 2003 law to make renaming streets difficult. It also contends the council and a commission it established to honor developers John Portman and Herman Russell violated the state Open Meetings Act by not advertising meetings and opening them to the public.
"It is time to send a message that they cannot violate their own laws and waste taxpayer money in doing so," said Wright Mitchell, a lawyer for The Atlanta Preservation Center and five individual plaintiffs. "It is time to put an end to the arrogance of the City Council."
Mitchell noted the council has a history of renaming streets in spite of a 2003 city law aimed at making renamings difficult.
Mitchell contends the council cannot simply waive its own laws at will, especially to do something the law was designed to stop -- in this case the capricious renaming of streets. The council approved the 2003 law by a nearly unanimous vote after a public uproar followed the renaming of several prominent downtown streets.
Council President Ceasar Mitchell said Friday that the council didn't waive its 2003 law when it acted to rename Harris Street John Portman Boulevard.
The council president said he hopes the council will soon create a commission to develop guidelines and methods for honoring deserving citizens, but added it would only be advisory. "From the beginning I've thought we should look at other ways of honoring folks," he said. "But at the end of the day, it will be something that rests with the council."
Ceasar Mitchell, who favors the Harris Street name change, said Portman's contributions are worth what he calls the highest honor a city can bestow. Portman, 86, is a renowned architect and developer who's responsible for building Peachtree Center downtown and the SunTrust building.
"The neighborhoods are just against street-name changes altogether,"Ceasar Mitchell said before the council vote.
The vote this week was the second time the council had confronted the Harris Street issue. In January it balked at renaming the street for Portman amid an uproar from opponents, who included the Urban Design Commission.
The resurrected renaming this week caught opponents unaware because it had resurfaced in a meeting of the council's utilities commission -- which oversees street renamings -- the previous week without appearing as an action item on the agenda. Councilman C.T. Martin, a proponent of the name change, brought it up.
At that meeting, committee member Councilwoman Yolanda Adrean -- who later voted for the name change -- called bringing up the Harris Street proposal without listing it on the agenda "sneaky."
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