Sometimes they don't even know what game is being played.
Since first meeting resistance to the Pave Paradise scheme of the [Shining] PATH Foundation, the mayor has been trying to get the cool kids, and only the cool kids, to show up for a pep rally. No Boo-Birds need attend. To the mayor's dismay, the Boo-Birds will not stay away. And it is as if the Shining PATH is feeding the seagulls at the beach with expected results. Not only have the Boo-Birds flocked to the events, and not only have they displayed their dismay, the breadth of their issues and the intensity with which they are presented is growing. Not what the mayor and the other elected cheerleaders had in mind.
In addition to previous pushback around poor location and planning seemingly catering to non-residents more than anyone else there was significant pushback against destruction of quality of life. As it turns out there remain Dunwoody residents who purchased a home for peace and quiet, to live in privacy, perhaps even cloistered. And yes, that means these communities, often with HOAs are likely to have barriers in place including walls, fences and private ownership of neighborhood roads. The Shining PATH and their mayor (ostensibly our mayor) doesn't really give two shits about that. They intend to open up these neighborhoods, tear down the barriers and destroy the privacy these neighbors hold dear.
The usual suspects have also shown up in support, notably the Bike Brigade. First they got their bike lanes whenever, wherever pavement was re-striped and now they are all in on the plan to add just under 4.4 Million square feet of impervious surface to "Tree City," some of which will likely intrude on stream buffers. But when you are monomaniacal like the Brigade and the mayor, well, nothing else really matters, does it?
Makes you wonder what happened to the not-so-distant era of Going Green, since concrete is one of the most environmentally unfriendly synthetic materials in the world, whose manufacture alone is responsible for 5% of global CO2 emissions. This doesn't account for the trees and other vegetation destroyed for the installation of a series of interstate-highway-scale lanes. It will destroy not only trees in the way, but those beside with suffer and many die due to inevitable root damage. Apparently there is even less concern about runoff and the harm that will cause to the local ecology.
And when did Shining PATH take ownership of Dunwoody? Really. Who died and made them Local Control? What little pushback there was came from King John and was dismissed by the Shining PATH Planning Priest as inappropriate and requiring too much specificity. Apparently in their view a "Master Plan" is little more that a commitment, a contract if you will, with little specificity beyond "costs will be exceeded." Yet there was enough specificity to tell some residents their privacy was about to be obliterated. Seems like someone was blowing smoke, perhaps in the wrong person's face. Exactly what is it that King John does for a living? Who does he work for? Is it possible he is a bit of a domain expert when it comes to paving our way out of paradise? Hmmmm...do you really think it is a good idea to mansplain to to him?
In reality this "path" thing is just a stepping stone to a greater destruction of Dunwoody, at least the Dunwoody that attracted most residents in the first place. The ultimate goal is to add as much ultra-high-density housing to Dunwoody as possible. High Street is just the beginning with plans already forming to bring Stick Frame Over Podium housing to the Village and any other cluster of shops developers set their sights on. After all, who wouldn't want to live five or six floors above E. 48th Street Market? You'd have great views of the golf course sunbathers around that backyard pool. These "paths" along with parks are a way of deflecting obvious negatives about this ultra-high-density. The developers' bureaucrats at city hall will point to these and suggest access to "paths" and parks makes up for living like a sardine. If they dare suggest this will add to the tax base you know it's too late to save the shoes as the Developers' Authority will keep these [re]developments off the tax rolls. And that Stick Frame? Well, that is planned obsolescence at its best. These will not outlast the tax handout before needing to be re-developed, with, wait for it, another tax handout. And they are hell-bent on doing this. After all, they had no problem whatsoever stealing property from a church.
A few folks, most probably more Dunwoody than you, remember going to GaTech football games in the early '80s. If so, you may remember the cheerleaders, who seemed too clueless to attend Tech, had this bizarre cheer that somehow involved bananas. They trotted this out for a couple of games in a row, much to the crowd's displeasure. Booing and razzing did not seem to get the point across so at the next home game students smuggled in bananas and when the cheer started those cheerleaders were pelted with enough fruit to feed a troop of chimpanzees for a month. And the student section was never subjected to that odious, totally forgettable cheer ever again. Maybe it is time, metaphorically speaking, for residents to ask our elected officials "how much they like them bananas?"
Posts
