Meeting notes from May 10, 2011

Atlantic Station Plans

Mark Toro, Tom Miles, and Liz Gillespie spoke about changes to come at Atlantic Station. Atlantic Station is managed by North American Properties and CBRE. The focus of Atlantic Station is to provide service with a focus on the customer experience.

Improvements that have been/will be implemented by Atlantic Station:

-Plans to emulate Midtown Blue public safety aspect; new public safety center for APD officers to be opened this summer, cameras (pan, tilt, zoom) for safety to be installed

-Parking garage will include better signage and lighting (in June parking will change)

-Expand marketing and new media

-Night club operations have been removed

-Selection of retailers and restaurants will be expanded

-Public spaces will be reprogrammed and used in non-traditional ways

-New market will be open on 17th street, local handmade items to be sold

-'Food Truck Fridays' has been launched

-Focusing more on students

-Will be having 'Tech Town' (aimed at tailgaters) on Saturday before Georgia Tech football games, looking into possibility of shuttles

-Visit www.atlanticstationcentral.org for more details on events and changes.

Ideas from the Home Park community to further improve Atlantic Station:

-Accessibility from neighborhood, would like to be able to walk more easily

-Add post office / mail drop

-Include coffee shop that stays open later, Starbucks closes at 6pm

-Add bookstore

-Add places for children to play / playground

-Improve quality and selection of produce at Publix

-Validate parking if customer has patronized store/restaurant, etc

-Add awnings (in some areas) to protect from rain

-Put shelter over ticket stations off 16th

-Add security cameras to Home Park

-Turn empty lots into green space

Substation

-The site will have the grade elevation reduced by 2 feet, which allows for the wall to be approximately 16 feet at its highest

-The wall height will vary around the site in order to balance the need to hide the interior equipment with the desire to make the wall as 'non-massive' as possible

-Plans are on the website and can be viewed at http://homepark.org/substation

-Send suggestions regarding the community benefit agreement (CBA) to Eric Jones at EJones@esjlegal.com

-Will Hazelton, Eric Jones, and Shaun Green are looking for help to finalize the CBA and work with Georgia Power for agreement

-If you would like to help please contact Will Hazelton at willh@workerscompgeorgia.com

APD Zone 5 Commander Situation

-Major Khirus Williams, the commander of APD Zone 5 (representing Home Park) resigned due to issues stemming from a proposed change in the policing activities for the zone.

-Ultimately the patrol changes were dropped, but Major Williams was 'forced' to resign due to his email seeking neighborhood involvement in petitioning Chief Turner and Assistance Chief Finley to not make the changes.

-All of the neighborhoods in NPU-E (Ansley, Sherwood Forest, Midtown, Home Park, Loring Heights, etc.) banded together and made a variety of efforts to keep Major Williams in place; however, ultimately the efforts failed.

<Post-Meeting Development> The new commander of Zone 5, Major Chris Leighty, has recently been installed and will be attending the next HP Community Meeting in June.

Parking

-Bill and Kathy met with Park Atlanta and the City of Atlanta to challenge the two-hour non-resident parking allowance. They were successful, so Park Atlanta should have stopped ticketing people who are illegally parked in the neighborhood until they have been there for greater than two hours.

-Last week at the NPU meeting it was announced that there has been new legislation introduced to remove the two-hour parking allowance for non-residents.

-Stay tuned for further developments.

APD Crime Alerts

-The APD Crime Alerts system is available online. You can register for email or SMS notifications at http://www.atlantapd.org/alertregistration.aspx.

-So far the people who have signed up for the notifications have yet to receive any.

Tax Assessment Error

-The Fulton County Tax Assessment error reported over the listserv is indeed an error. The issue has been widely reported in the news media and the tax commissioner has indicated that corrected statements will be resent.