Work starts on North Buckhead’s Master Plan

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Periodically, NBCA conducts on-line surveys on various topics. We want feedback and direction from our neighborhood. We ask for the input of all homeowners, whether they are NBCA members or not through our printed newsletter which is mailed to every homeowner in the neighborhood (over 4,000 of them).

A main thrust of our survey October 2013 survey, above, was to ask residents on which areas of neighborhood life should our association set high, medium, low or no priorities. The responses are clearly shown in the graph. 255 citizens responded, of whom 68% were NBCA members, 28% were non-member residents and 4% were non-residents. Of those 255 who answered the multiple choice questions, 49 respondents added copious text comments. All results were published in the December North Buckhead Newsletter and/or on our web site.

Note in the graph above that all the survey areas other than social events received high or medium support levels from over 80% of respondents. Feedback to NBCA is that we do a good job addressing communications and crime reporting. The other issues (except social events) are largely outside of NBCA’s control and more intractable. Since we got those results our board grappled with what to do.

In December a subset of the NBCA board began special monthly meetings to research the idea of preparing a neighborhood master plan. Such plans have been prepared by other neighborhoods, mostly in central Atlanta. Andrea Bennett, our NBCA board member, who also chairs NPU-B, was familiar with the planning efforts of some of those neighborhoods and the results they achieved through their plans. She encouraged the rest of us to consider the idea of a North Buckhead plan. Monthly meetings continued for four months, ending with interviews with several private planning experts who had successfully guided other neighborhood’s plans. We voted in March to sign a contract with one of the planning firms, TSW Planning.

Work starts on North Buckhead’s Master Plan

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On Friday, May 9, a half year to the day after our first plan meeting, we met with leadership in the city’s Planning and Community Development Department, Councilmember Howard Shook and staff, and TSW at City Hall.

Our meeting Friday ended quite optimistically, having lasted longer than expected. We had a detailed discussion of the problems and opportunities we see for North Buckhead. The consensus reached was that our neighborhood needed a formal plan to address those problems and opportunities and a broad array of city departments would fully support the plan’s development. Ours will be the first neighborhood plan in Buckhead. Meeting participants are shown below. We are deeply grateful for their guidance and their constructive support of this project.

Organization Representative Title/Role

Atlanta Department of Planning and Community Development

Charletta Wilson Jacks Director, Office of Planning

Jessica Lavandier Assistant Director, Strategic Planning

Atlanta City Council Howard Shook Councilmember, 7th District

Sally Silver Office of Councilmember Shook; former NPU-B Chair

TSW Planners | Architects | Landscape Architects

Caleb Racicot Senior Principal

Garrett Hyer Community Planner/Designer

North Buckhead Civic Association

Gordon Certain President

Dieter Franz Treasurer

Andrea Bennett Vice-chair Land Use and Zoning; NPU-B Chair

At the end of the meeting I was told I needed to be able to explain in one sentence to our residents what is about to happen in North Buckhead. That’s not so easy given the months of effort to get to this point. That said, here’s my sentence:

North Buckhead, Atlanta’s fourth most populous neighborhood, is experiencing spectacular growth and success but needs a broadly supported plan to guide it to even greater heights and better quality of life by addressing our growing traffic congestion; our limited pedestrian access to parks, schools, and shopping; our speeding; our areas where land use should be better; and other aspects which diminish our quality of life.

Three things will happen next.

First, our neighborhood association will sign the contract with TSW Planning, a highly regarded planning firm which will provide us with expert guidance. That contract will empty NBCA’s bank account of the money we had set aside for a rainy day. We’ve reached that point where we believe using our money this way will make a lasting difference to the neighborhood’s future.

Work starts on North Buckhead’s Master Plan

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Next, Councilman Howard Shook’s office will coordinate a bus tour of North Buckhead including key city officials representing those units to be involved in North Buckhead’s plan. These include representatives of the city’s Planning, Transportation, Public Works, Watershed Management, Code Enforcement, and Police organizations. Others to be involved in the tour may include representatives of the Buckhead CID, Georgia GOT, Livable Buckhead, and representatives of the neighborhood’s business community. The intent of the tour is to provide these key leaders with a first-hand understanding of North Buckhead’s plusses and minuses.

Then, we will reach out to our all residents (single-family home, condominium and apartment residents) and businesses so we can meet, organize a steering committee, and work to achieve a consensus. Many public meetings and working sessions will be required. Participants will include representatives of the business community, city, and homeowner and renting residents, making sure all views are considered. We don’t have a schedule yet but we hope to align the plan’s completion with city comprehensive plan schedules. That means we could complete the plan as early as November or, more likely, in March 2015. When the plan is completed, it will be reviewed by the NPU system and City Council’s Community Development/Human Resources Committee before it is approved by the Atlanta City Council for incorporation into the city’s Comprehensive Development Plan.

To be worth the time and expense, the plan will take real work and real involvement by our residents and our area’s business community. It doesn’t mean every one of you must be equally involved but does mean that we get enough people to step up and speak for the rest. It does mean that some people who never come to NBCA’s Annual Meeting will need to get involved this time. Including a generous contribution from Councilman Shook’s office, we have supposedly set aside enough NBCA money to do the job, but there are often unanticipated needs that must be addressed. We’ll probably need some more monetary support.

Are there solutions to North Buckhead’s traffic/quality of life challenges? Maybe; maybe not. We won’t know until solutions are proposed and evaluated to see if any are feasible, effective and affordable. Developing a plan will take much work and its success depends on open communications, transparency and broad participation. We’re counting on you to help. If you have ever asked “Why doesn’t someone do something to fix our terrible traffic/etc.?”, I hope you feel some obligation to work with us this time to make sure something happens.

Gordon Certain NBCA President May 10, 2014