Category Archives: Decatur

Martin’s bread and circus

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The hammers have stopped swinging in Decatur, Ga., and the city’s white middle class hegemons have returned to their McMansions. Another municipal Martin Luther King Service Project has concluded and the back-slapping congratulations have begun. “The 13th annual MLK Service Project is the most ambitious yet,” blogger Dan Whisenhunt wrote. The annual spectacle attracted hundreds of volunteers who made repairs to 31 low-income homes in Decatur’s Oakhurst neighborhood. Continue reading →

Of cupcakes and dog parks (updated)

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Many folks see dog parks, cupcakes, bike lanes, and coffee shops as markers for gentrifying neighborhoods. Once these places begin appearing, many longtime residents think: “there goes the neighborhood.”

Dog Park

Oakhurst Dog Park.

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Racialized land use: Decatur, Ga.

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It is a safe bet that few Decatur, Ga., residents know Cotis Weaver and Atef Mansour. Despite their relative anonymity, both men occupy important places in the city’s land use history. In 2003 Weaver and a handful of residents in the city’s Oakhurst neighborhood fired the first shot in Decatur’s 21st century gentrification wars when they sued the city over a proposed rezoning and subdivision. Mansour, in 2005 and 2006, made headlines when he demolished a 1,450-square-foot one-story Lamont Drive home on the city’s north side and began building a 5,000-square-foot two-story replacement. Both cases illustrate one role race plays in Decatur’s hot real estate market and the different outcomes of opposition to new development. Continue reading →

Riffing on the Trail of Tears

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I’m a troll, so say residents of Decatur, Georgia’s Oakhurst neighborhood.

Why? Because I spoke and wrote on taboo topics: gentrification and racism in their neighborhood while I lived there.

Whether folks see the redevelopment taking place in Oakhurst as destructive gentrification or beneficial neighborhood upgrading, most people on both sides agree that the neighborhood is changing, taxes are rising, and residents are being displaced. If you’re on the neighborhood conservation and social justice side of the table, it’s bad. If you’re on the other side and a property rights defender or work in the real estate/construction business, it’s good. The commentary from both sides may be found in local blogs, community listservs, and in testimony before the city commission.

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Racism is alive and well in Decatur, Ga.

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Isn’t that In the Heat of the Night? Wasn’t that in one of them old movies? This is 2014. Racism is alive and well. — Joel Drew, statement to the Decatur City Commission, April 21, 2014.

The evening of April 21, 2014, a handful of Decatur residents presented testimony before the Decatur City Commission on racial profiling by the city’s police department. Local journalists ignored the appearances (e.g., the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Creative Loafing). One local blogger glossed over the specific allegations of racism in Decatur. Even the Decatur City Commission minutes from the April 21 meeting failed to capture the remarkable narratives from the evening.

This post contains verbatim transcripts made from the April 21, 2014 meeting. The source audio and video used is archived on the City of Decatur website. Each entry below begins with the city’s official synopsis of the comments entered into the meeting’s official record (meeting minutes) followed by the verbatim transcript. The entries are presented in the order in which people appeared.

For more on racial profiling in Decatur, read A Lesson in Racial Profiling and Historical Relevance (National Council on Public History, History@Work, April 10, 2014). Continue reading →

Decatur urban renewal plan: 1963 map

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BeaconHill1963cOn October 14, 1963, the Decatur, Ga., City Commission enacted a new urban renewal plan for the city’s historically black Beacon Community. The new plan included land use restrictions and zones targeted for new commercial development and housing. The plan included building height, setback, and parking restrictions and it limited the types of business that could operate in the urban renewal area.

Two zones for new businesses were created: a “Local Commercial Area” and a “General Business Area.” The former allowed 22 business types, from “apparel shops” to “tailor shops.” The latter permitted 26 additional uses, including “Any use allowed in local commercial use areas within this project.”

Souper Jenny restaurant in urban renewal area along West Ponce de Leon Ave., March 2014.

Souper Jenny restaurant in urban renewal area along West Ponce de Leon Ave., March 2014.

After meeting resistance to the proposal to relocate African American families to an area in unincorporated DeKalb County, Decatur designated part of the new urban renewal area for multi-family housing. Density in the new housing — which became the Gateway Apartments (now slated for redevelopment) — was limited to 21.6 “dwelling units per acre.”

Gateway Apartments, 2014. Slated for demolition and redevelopment.

Gateway Apartments, 2014. Slated for demolition and redevelopment.

© 2014 D.S. Rotenstein

The 1,000 year house

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Decatur, Ga., builder Clay Chapman boldly claims that he’s building what he calls a “Thousand Year House” in a project he has dubbed Hope for Architecture. I first reported on Chapman’s project in a December 2013 post, Day Zero: Brown is the New Green.

@1000yearhouse tweet.

@1000yearhouse tweet, May 14, 2014.

Chapman’s construction project is part publicity stunt, part marketing campaign for architect Steve Mouzon’s “original green” concept. Since breaking ground last year Chapman has published regular blog posts and tweets illustrating progress at the site. And, he has hosted high profile visitors, including noted new urbanist architect Andres Duany and local leaders.

Chapman describes the new 5,300 square foot house built where he demolished a 1,541 square-foot home as “sustainable” and affordable. To date, the new house has required more than 124,000 pounds of concrete and has taken delivery of more than 100,000 bricks.

I rode by the “1,000 Year House” earlier today and here’s what I saw:

241 Maxwell St., Decatur, Ga. May 11, 2014.

241 Maxwell St., Decatur, Ga. May 11, 2014.

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Making history relevant

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I have worked in and around historic preservation for more than 30 years and I don’t how many times I have tried to explain why historic preservation is relevant to life today. The examples I cited in the past always came from work done by others. And then I encountered Decatur, Ga.

As Decatur systematically erases its black history from the urban landscape and the city continues to hemorrhage African American residents, the linkages between how the city’s white privilege renders past and present residents invisible become more evident. One former black resident agrees that Decatur’s treatment of African Americans and their history is tantamount to ethnic cleansing.

Read “A lesson in racial profiling and historical relevance” on the National Council on Public History’s History@Work site. The day the article appeared, the Decatur-Avondale Estates Patch site asked to reprint it. As a historian who practices public history, this underscores how the NCPH defines the field: “public history describes the many and diverse ways in which history is put to work in the world.”

An isolated historical marker outside the former African American school describes Decatur's Beacon Community. Photo by author, February 2012.

An isolated historical marker outside the former African American school describes Decatur’s Beacon Community. Photo by author, February 2012.

Former equalization schools after about 90% demolition. March, 2014.

Former equalization schools after about 90% demolition. March, 2014.

Beacon Demolition, April 2014.

Beacon demolition, April 2014. The orange construction barrels are parallel to the point where the historical marker shown in the first photo was located.

 

© 2014 D.S. Rotenstein

History at face value (Updated)

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Former Antioch A.M.E. Church prior to demolition in early 2014.

Decatur, Ga., blogger Dan Whisenhunt has been covering the impending demolition of a former African American church by a developer who proposes to build 20 townhomes on the site. Built in 1965 by Decatur’s oldest African American congregation after it was displaced by urban renewal, the building housed the former Antioch AME Church until 1995.

The church was not included in Decatur’s 2009 citywide historic resources survey despite widespread knowledge of its transcendental historical significance among the city’s longtime African American residents. Whisenhunt has been reporting on residents in nearby homes – many of them built during and after the 1960s urban renewal project – concerned over the new density coming to the parcel as well as the developer’s plans to cut down an old tree on the property to comply with City stormwater detention requirements.

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