Social Shutter: Atlanta’s Redevelopment Rap Sheet

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Atlanta’s Redevelopment Rap Sheet

Photo Credit: Hunt Archbold

Posted by Terrence C. Wall, ATLANTA, GA – This city keeps destroying and building and ignoring blight. Now there are plans for a new Georgia Dome to make sure the Falcons don’t move to the suburbs. At the same time since the Braves announced that they are leaving Atlanta for Cobb County, the city has said that Turner Field, a stadium that’s not even a quarter of a century old, will be demolished and replaced with middle income housing. All of this destruction and redevelopment costs money. I really don’t have a problem with that as long as the neighborhoods surrounding these huge projects benefit. Unfortunately Atlanta’s rap sheet on redevelopment doesn’t include supporting the poor surrounding neighborhoods.

For the ‘new’ Georgia Dome the city is tearing down two historic churches. Less than a mile away is the now abandoned Morris Brown College, a Historical Black College that fell on hard times about four years ago. The city is talking about purchasing the campus. Will this be another tear down? I recently visited the campus and found that many of the buildings boarded up closed and a dilapidated football stadium. It looked terrible. I cannot believe the city is willing to build a Billion dollar stadium without addressing the blight and poverty that will surround it. The Georgia Dome we have now is not ugly looking or old, which begs the question as to why we need a new one. Maybe it will be state-of-the-art but it will still be in the same situation the existing one is in if things around it are not fixed up.