Members of the Turner Field Benefits Coalition were on hand at Monday’s Atlanta City Council meeting to encourage the council to move forward with the Livable Centers Initiative Planning Study (LCI) process before negotiating any development deal on the property. Coalition member and Peoplestown resident Sherise Brown said the community around Turner Field had “seen a lot of development that has not benefited us. This land is more than just a bunch of parking lots. It used to be homes and shops.” Matt Garbett of Neighborhood Planning Unit-V also encouraged the study to move foreword. “We are reminded that it is harder and harder to retrofit a city than getting it right the first time,” Garbett said. The Atlanta Braves announced they would vacate Turner Field by Dec. 31, 2016. Georgia State University has indicated it is still interested in pursuing the site for a sports complex and mixed-use development, but Coalition members said they want the planning study completed before any development is approved. Local architectural design firm Perkins+Will was selected by the city council to complete the LCI.
A proposed $55 million office building in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward that would replace a cluster of dilapidated homes along North Avenue has been denied by the Atlanta Zoning Review Board. According to the Atlanta Business Chronicle, 165,000-square-foot office building called 525 North was meant to echo Ponce City Market in its design features. The project still has to go before the Atlanta City Council for a final yes or no vote.
Two former employees of the Atlanta Department of Watershed Management have filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the city, saying they were wrongly fired after reporting incidents of fraud and mismanagement inside the troubled department. According to a report in the AJC, the lawsuit was filed last week in Fulton County Superior Court one year after the two employees — Gwendolyn Winston and Loren Yarbrough — were terminated with about a dozen others in what city leaders say was a massive clean-up of the department.
