If Sally Fields lived in the Branches, either of the Winters, Creek or Hall, Redfield or a few other unnamed residential areas adjacent to or very near the Village, you could imagine that is exactly what she would say. And she would be right.
This comes about because there has been a bump in the road on the developers' path to total destruction of our suburban shopping centers, Dunwoody Hall and Dunwoody Village. The planning commission has deferred a vote. Not voted the matter down, just waiting for a more opportune time. One might excuse this as incompetence that the planning commission did not already know of and have in hand the documents in question, or maybe they do and have and there is something else afoot. Maybe they really, really hate us.
And there is good reason to think that. After all, developers and profiteering businesses are openly shameless in their greed. They don't give us any consideration, let alone hate us. They are in love with money and that is merely the root of the evil afflicting us. We need to consider the trunk and the branches. And that lies with the bureaucracy at city hall.
While developers and profiteers have molded Dunwoody to their liking since the very first day and the city is structured to allow this, the real hatred emanates from and festers within the city itself. It is at city hall where we find the intense hatred of suburbia and yes, the irony of this coming from what was created as a suburban city is lost on no one. And our shining example of successful suburbia is the thriving, vital shopping and business district known as Dunwoody Village. For several decades this center has well served the community and in return has been equally well supported by that community. Yes, developers are eyeing the lucrative opportunity to replace the Village with a mega-development high density retail and multi-story apartments to generate the footfalls. But make no mistake, in city hall's genocidal lust to destroy the Village the surrounding communities will not be just collateral damage-they have become secondary targets.
The situation appears hopeless and helpless. Loyal opposition has either passed or swum off to warmer waters. The DHA was a staunch proponent of city formation and one has to wonder if anyone in that organization was aware of the deliberate structural flaws in the city they helped create. Initially DHA did positioned themselves as the conduit to power, a stepping stone to city office, or more lucratively, membership on one of the many bureaus, administrations or boards. More recently they seem to have come to a fork in their road: continue as a remora clinging to the power-hungry sharks at city hall; or advocate, as they once did so long ago, for the residents of Dunwoody.
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