I was in kindergarten when my family moved to the little street within a street, just off of the bustling main road we call home, Buford Highway. As proud Cross Keys High school alumna, I’ve called this area home all of my life and only moved to Stone Mountain last year when my family was displaced due to gentrification. This uprooting cost me $1,200, my mother incurred steeper expenses. We weren’t evicted. We were paying our rent, we had paid our rent every month for over a decade, even when it increased, we were paying our rent. Yet, this new rental company gave tenants four weeks to move, quickly bulldozing the apartments I had called home all through my childhood and into my adult life.
A project is being kicked off to make positive real estate, transportation, environmental and community based changes on the strip of Buford Highway that sits between Chamblee city and Doraville. My peers and I were excited to attend the first open forum community dialogue about these changes on October 12th at The Canton House. On the car ride there I recall saying, “It’s not like there’s gonna be a PowerPoint.” We were jarred when we walked into the “community meeting” There was a clear disconnect between the presenters and this community that I knew and loved. The meeting led by the team of planners administrating this LCI that’ll be orchestrated by the ARC, had spent weeks researching our community. Yet this team of experts were dressed for business, had us sign in, wear name-tags, and lead us through a PowerPoint presentation about what they “knew” about our community.
I felt like I was in a board meeting for investors. I felt that I wasn’t the kind of “community” they had intended on inviting. They had great data, yet, none of it could strip away the strong message that they were outsiders telling us how to restructure our community. Our city leaders had requested that they start this project. The city of Chamblee and Doraville feel that our cities need an aesthetic shift if we’re to keep up with new local real estate giants like Brookhaven. Yet, this meeting didn’t alleviate my concerns that my home was spiraling toward following the same pattern of social injustice as had occurred with the construction of the beltline or the development of Brookhaven (where my former home was located.)
The PowerPoint was right, Buford Highway was a poorly constructed and developed area, a 4.5mi strip of retail is not sustainable and a lot needs to be done to decrease pedestrian mortality rates in this area. There is one thing that can’t be stated in a PowerPoint presentation about what truly makes Buford Highway great and that’s that it remains untouched by those that would mark it as just a great place to find “exotic” food. My colleague Ricardo Hernandez said it best, “We have to put people first, when we want to change a community’s infrastructure we can’t look at it through the scope of environmental sustainability alone. We have to look through the scope of the people, the culture of the community and operate from their perspective on what the issues are and improve those issues.”
I think it would be beneficial to have a real community meeting with translators from local NGOs like CPACS or the LAA which both had representatives at this meeting. I think the developers in this team need to reevaluate all the things they’ve been taught about approaching members of the community. Tactics like dressing for business, presenting to us before asking us for our opinions, and limiting our opinions to fit within the scope of your questions all send signals that this entity has its own agenda and only wishes to appear to be listening to us. After speaking with Aaron Fortner, I feel that this isn’t the way that this group of planners intends for the community to feel.
In this next meeting I would strongly suggest that the facilitators not prime us with a PowerPoint, it was difficult for me to remember my personal concerns because I had seen what you all had laid out for us as the “true” concerns. It would be in their best interest to dress casually, create a more open space, and to present the audience with an open mic opportunity. It is imperative in this next meeting that there are translators present. Translators that are introduced in the beginning as translators- it can be student volunteers from the local high schools-but there should be someone that people can go to with their questions and have them answer in their native language. In the presentation you all highlighted excellently the immense diversity of this community so please acknowledge it next time.
My partner, Marco Palma, reflected a most poignant observation about the community event, “There were not a lot of things wrong with the meeting, it was actually very well coordinated, however the things that were wrong, were very important if this group wants to avoid the mistakes in development that the GAA (Greater Atlanta Area) has seen perpetuated ad naseaum.” This is why I believe December 14th is too late to have the next meeting. We need another community meeting. A real community meeting that shows us that we can trust you all with formulating this recommendation.
I do want to thank Aaron, Nathan, Joel, and Marian for all answering my questions openly and honestly. The business you all have attracted thus far to our community has been positive and we are grateful. I also want to thank those members of this esteemed team that were not present and the present members that I did not get the chance to interview. I know you all are working hard to try to find real solutions. I also want to thank all of the local teachers, community leaders, the Director of CPACs, and various other valuable stakeholders-it is so important that you all continue to represent the voices that would otherwise go unheard.
