Mayoral Candidates Q & A

Editor's Note: In just a few short days, the city of Douglasville will elect the 40th person to hold the office of nayor since the first city election held in March 1875. The candidates for mayor—Terry Miller, Harvey Persons, Rochelle Robinson andRon Wilson—have been meeting with citizens and making appearances at various forums to answer questions and explain their position regarding the issues. Douglasville Patch had some Q&A time with them as well.

1. Lifelong residents of Douglasville have seen the city limits expand as areas like Thornton Road, Kroger at Chapel Hill, and Tributary were incorporated. What can be done to help downtown residents and citizens in these incorporated areas feel as if they are all in the same city?

Terry Miller: We must make sure that our signage is consistent throughout the city, and that services are provided at the same level in every incorporated area. Also, our city leaders should make the effort to participate in town hall meetings in each Douglasville neighborhood.

Harvey Persons: Our city has grown over the years and we need a mayor that will work to help all of our citizens feel that they are a part of one community. I will do several things to help each area of our community feel connected as one. We will start with Town Hall meetings to listen to the thoughts, needs, and ideas of our citizens. This will allow City Hall to better respond to the needs of our citizens. We will make better use of technology and communicate with our citizens to let them know what is going on in all areas of our community. This exchange of information and communications will help foster a better sense of community and oneness of purpose.

A Primer Regarding Brownfields

Word of warning - this is not my typical column, but it does fall into the realm of history since so many historical properties are also classified as brownfields because of their past use.

A brownfield isn't what you might think at first. They don't necessarily refer to fields, and they aren't necessarily brown, but brownfields do concern real estate.

The first instance of the term "brownfield" being used in any way was during a U.S. congressional hearing in June, 1992. That year also saw the first detailed policy analysis regarding brownfields by the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission for the Cleveland Ohio area. Cuyahoga's Sunar Houseman project was the first brownfield pilot project in 1992. The Sunar Houseman focused on redeveloping an industrial plant that had been in business since 1913. Once the project was completed the site became home to several businesses, created 81 new jobs and generated more than one million in annual revenue.

One of the largest brownfield sites in the United States that has been successfully redeveloped is Atlantic Station in Atlanta. The site originally saw light industry when the Atlanta Hoop Co. produced cotton bale ties and barrel hoops as early as 1901 and then more heavy industrial use and contamination by Atlantic Steel. The EPA awarded the Atlantic Station project their Phoenix Award as the Best National Brownfield Redevelopment in 2004.

The Environmental Protection Agency defines a brownfield site as "real property, the expansion, redevelopment, or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence of hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant." Today, the National Brownfield Association estimates between 400,000 and 1 million properties across the United States might qualify as a brownfield site. They estimate up to $2 trillion in real estate is undervalued because of contamination.

Typical contaminants include hydrocarbon spillages, solvents, pesticides, heavy metals such as lead based paints and asbestos. Brownfields also include properties that are underutilized for various socioeconomic reasons such as abandonment, obsolescence, tax delinquency and/or blight.

In 2002, Congress passed a bill to put an end to excessive regulations and litigations many entrepreneurs incur when revitalizing dilapidated fields called the Small Business Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act.

The act provides for funds to assess and clean up brownfields. Financial incentives and regulatory requirements are included in other related laws and regulations.

Per the EPA, the Brownfield Program has increased residential property values by 2 percent to 3 percent when nearby brownfields are addressed, leveraged 72,434 jobs nationwide, and promotes area-wide planning.

Think about sites that have been abandoned or underused industrial and commercial facilities that might be available for reuse. Think about old textile mills, industrial plants, gas stations, drycleaners, places that look like illegal dumping grounds, junkyards and other abandoned commercial or industrial properties. The key to remember is sites do not have to be identified. They only have to have the potential of meeting the brownfield descriptors to be included.

So, do you think we might have a few brownfield sites in Douglasville?

Well, of course we do!

I wasn't surprised at all when I received a notice from the city regarding a community meeting to discuss their brownfield program last week.

The notice I received from the city advised, "Douglasville has many brownfields that offer an opportunity for redevelopment. The city is working on a strategy to redevelop these properties. The first step in that strategy is to apply for grant funding from the EPA to assess these properties and determine if contamination is indeed present. The grant application is being prepared and will be submitted to the EPA for consideration in November, 2011."

The EPA will announce which communities will receive the grant money during the Spring or
Summer of 2012.

The meeting attended was led by Joe Morici, a consultant with CTC Public Benefit Corporation. The City of Douglasville is using CTC to assist them with the grant application process. CTC specializes in EPA brownfield grants and has handled 50 such grants since the program began in the mid 1990s. You can view their online brochure here.

The application is for up to $200,000 regarding hazardous substances, pollutants, or contaminants and up to $200,000 regarding petroleum contaminants. The process is very competitive, and I've been told community involvement is the main component the EPA looks for when reviewing applications.

Initially the City is looking at the Lois Cotton Mill site and the County Jail that will be vacated soon as locations to include with the application. Other properties can be included as well, and suggestions from citizens would be most appreciated.

As many of you know the cotton mill site is most certainly on my radar as a missed and ignored historic site for our city. In my view it is the most historically significant location in the City of Douglasville. As I stated in August in my column titled Demolition by Neglect, "It's a shame that a unique and proud cotton mill with such a rich history ended up as a sad and lonely piece of Douglasville's history." I also gave a complete historical background regarding the mill and it's unique Charles Praray design here. 

The mill site was sold on the courthouse steps in September. The City of Douglasville now retains control of the property, and I strongly agree that including the mill property on the EPA grant application is the best course of action to move forward.

While contamination and deterioration have made the structure of the mill impossible to save it is still my fervent hope that the unique and historic Praray wall -  or just a section of it - that is still standing can be saved in some way and not merely ground up to serve as filler for the road bed for the Highway 92 realignment project as some officials have suggested.

Several dozen of you recommended my original column regarding the tragedy of the mill site on Facebook, some of you commented here at Patch, and I know the column inspired many of you to email me and others regarding the situation. Please get the word out regarding the brownfield application. The application process isn't just about the mill property, but is about identifying other sites within the City of Douglasville that might fit the descriptors I  provided above.

So, do you want to help shape Douglasville's redevelopment? Do you want to have input in transforming abandoned or underutilized property into new uses that benefit the community?

There are several things you can do to help. You can attend future community meetings, voice your concerns, ask questions, spread the news, and participate in the redevelopment plan once it's in place.

For more information please contact Marcia Hampton, community and downtown services director for the City of Douglasville, at 678-715-6091.

This post first appeared at Douglasville Patch October 17, 2011.

Let's Explore the Bowden Plantation

As I’ve stated here before we drive by places everyday in Douglas County never realizing the significance the place holds in our historical record. The place I have in mind to examine this week was once the hub of a thriving plantation containing 5,500 acres.

I can’t even imagine what 5,500 acres looks like. Can you? Perhaps we need to put the number in terms we can understand. 

640 acres of land is equal to 1 square mile. So 5,500 acres figures out to be an area encompassing approximately 8.5 miles. 

Soaring Through Life

My Papa Blanton loved his family and friends, loved his Bible, and loved to tell stories concerning his youth. After begging him to tell me about the olden days, he would launch into tales regarding growing up at the turn of the century telling me about courting young ladies at ice cream socials and explaining the proper way to prepare a turtle stew for a gathering of men. He seemed to enjoy watching my nose crinkle up in disgust regarding the details concerning de-shelling that poor sweet turtle. Then one afternoon he told me a new tale about seeing his very first airplane as it flew low over his father’s fields and eventually landed. 

I was mesmerized by the story. 

Can you imagine a time when a plane was an oddity–a cause for excitement?

Make Your Mark

It’s rare to find someone content with passing through life quietly.  Most people want to leave behind a legacy–some sort of proof they were here and their life mattered.  The character Brooks in Stephen King’s "Shawshank Redemption" comes to mind. After serving more than 40 years in prison an elderly Brooks is paroled, but can’t seem to make it in the real world. He takes his own life, but before doing so he feels he must make his mark on the world by scrawling “Brooks was here” on the wall. 

Yes, making our mark seems to be so very important to humans.

Today it seems we have many different ways to make our mark just to say, “Hey!  I’m here.” These are ways that can be argued as being negative or positive depending on your point of view. We have vanity plates for our cars; people earn a particular status for what they do or say, and for what they wear. People become notable just for being on a reality show, we can have a blog, a website, and it’s not totally lost on me that we make our mark by having a Facebook profile. We can even make our mark anonymously by donating to charity, working behind the scenes for a needy family, or even invent a screen name to post anonymously on a message board. 

Douglasville History Is a Big Deal

I had someone the other day ask me why I waste my time writing about Douglasville history since nothing of any value ever happened here. 

Yes, that person is still in an upright position and walking around, but I did briefly think about smacking them. 

I let the person continue with their statements, and they actually made a few decent points arguing that on the whole Douglasville and Douglas County has made a pretty good practice of allowing our local history to be demolished, thrown away, neglected, and forgotten, but then he spouted some more fighting words stating state and local history was irrelevant since most folks grow up and move away. Why teach it?  We don’t use it. 

You never really need local history later in life, right?

I’m glad curriculum experts across the country don’t follow that way of thinking. If they did I would have never been taught any Geometry. I can state emphatically I have never had to solve a geometric proof in any of the three careers I’ve had since my teen years. Throw out the reading of Poe, Melville, and Whitman because students who might grow up to be policemen really have no use for early American literature. Perhaps we should delete teaching students Linnaean Taxonomy because very few ever have to know the species, genus, or family of every animal they encounter.

Taking a Minute for the Masons

I hope you are having a great Labor Day so far. Today we tend to think of the day as summer’s last hurrah with one more trip to the
beach, barbeques, and parades, but there’s more to it. 

Early citizens of Douglasville would have known about the meaning behind Labor Day since it became a federal holiday in 1894, but it
would be a few years before labor unrest touched Douglas County.  The passage of legislation creating the official holiday was a political overture by President Grover Cleveland’s administration. They were responding to public outcry after the U.S. military and U.S. Marshall’s fired upon workers during the Pullman Strike killing thirteen and wounding fifty-seven.  The legislation creating Labor Day passed unanimously to reconcile the government and labor. 

As I put this column together there is talk that the 48^th annual Labor Day parade sponsored by theSweetwater Shrine Club might be rained out. I know we need the rain, but it would be the first time the Shriners would fail to lead the parade down Broad Street since 1958.