Woodland Hills is a neighborhood of 450 homes that borders the north side of the CSX rail line between Lenox Road and Briarcliff in DeKalb County. MARTA’s proposed design for the Clifton Corridor — a light-rail line connecting the Lindbergh MARTA station, the Emory University campus and on to Avondale — is drawn to parallel the CSX route on the Woodland Hills side of the railroad.
The Woodland Hills Neighborhood Association along with surrounding neighborhoods and the Lindbergh LaVista Corridor Coalition have worked with MARTA to establish a “Locally Preferred Alternative” for the light-rail line.
The alternative calls for the line to travel under Woodland Hills through a deep bored tunnel, greatly reducing the impact on local properties. However, MARTA recently presented an additional alternate design. This design reduces construction costs, but has the Clifton Corridor line traveling above ground through Woodland Hills, threatening to take portions of residents’ yards and possibly entire properties.
This configuration could mean the forced acquisition of 35 to 44 homes by MARTA to make way for the light rail.
Most residents see this project as needed. We welcome the alleviation of the traffic that cuts through our neighborhood every day as employees of Emory and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention make their way to and from work. What we will not embrace is our residents losing property and possibly their homes. We oppose any design that could lead to this outcome.
This light-rail line is a valuable project to MARTA, Emory, the CDC, the Atlanta Veterans Affairs Hospital and other entities along the proposed route, which ultimately ends at the Avondale MARTA station. It’s a project that deserves to be done in a respectable manner to residents faced with hosting the rail line in their neighborhood.
Neighborhoods like Woodland Hills give Atlanta its in-town charm. It is a community created more than 60 years ago when homes were first constructed here. To this day, the neighborhood contains original residents plus new families who call it home, as well as an elementary school.
We encourage MARTA, Mayor Kasim Reed, Gov. Nathan Deal and anyone else to figure a way to work with CSX to allow this line to use part of the railroad’s right of way. It does not seem appropriate to use federal funding to remove residents from their homes. We are confident there is a solution that will not cost our homeowners their property, and we look forward to finding that solution.
