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MARCH 2020 • VOL. 14 — NO. 3
Section Two
Buckhead Reporter COMMENTARY
Local leaders react to GDOT’s toll lanes plan P10
MARCH
Dunw oody
►A
piano man in a department store P25 ►Donna Lefont helps keep film history alive P25 ►STAR students and teachers P33
Livable Buckhead plans green and grounded new home
SEE STORY PAGE 15
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Employerpaid housing idea gains traction, but discrimination is concern
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Pianis t in the David Reeb Von Ma sits at PHIL MOS his ur sto re at Per instrume IER nt imeter Mall.
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BY JOHN RUCH
An architect’s illustration of the Tower Place courtyard where Livable Buckhead would make its new home.
SPECIAL
250 police cameras were dead for months in contract blunder
BY JOHN RUCH
Around 250 surveillance cameras in the Atlanta Police Department’s vaunted “Operation Shield” crime-fighting network were dead for months starting last fall, with some still down in early February, after a maintenance contract blunder.
“They were all over the city… Certainly, some of them were in Buckhead,” said Dave Wilkinson, president and CEO of the Atlanta Police Foundation, the private group that helps fund and manage Operation Shield, about the dead cameras. The problem was the city’s failure to pick up the maintenance duties and bills after initial, three-year conSee 250 on page 22
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BY LA
UR EN LE AT HE RS When Donn worke a Lefont d at a was loc often took his al movie the 8 years old , her ater. As would childr en run fre a single father ely aro to work wit dad, h him und the , where he theate they r. Lefont ’s favor-
CENSUS
ReporterNewspapers.net
A depa pianist rtment stor entert in the key oe aining customf ers PAGE 26
Cinem
Donna
The pirates who bring Mardi Gras to Buckhead P12
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AN INTE THRILLE RVIEW WITH HARLA R NOVELIST N COBE N
Buckhe ad
BY JUD ITH SC HO NB AK Music is Von partm Maur’s ent sto tradem re at woody ark at Perime . On its deter fully pla any given day, the Mall in Du yed pia nthe thr sounds no mu ee floo of ski rs. The sic carries at the throug llkeys sit piano hout and at on the first floo the foot of the the musici an chairs r, with escala nearby tor an are . a of com bank Pianis fortab t and le broad compos ran er Dav way dur ge of tunes id Ree b plays fro ing the The Geo a midday m classical to hours rgia nat four day Broadplayin g for Von ive is marki s a week. ng ployee s alike. Maur custom his eighth yea His fing ers and keys wit r ers sto hout a re emmove sur pause even wh ely over the en a sho pper Continu ed on page 28
AROUND TOWN
It’s time again to get counted P20
2020
Sandy Spring s
Brookh aven
An age-old marketing tactic of offering rent discounts to employees of certain companies could be boosted into corporate-subsidized housing in a concept that is gaining political traction among Buckhead leaders. But such “preferred employer programs” may shut other people out of the housing market and were banned in Seattle as discriminatory. The idea of super-sized preferred employer programs was raised last year in a housing affordability study commissioned by the Buckhead Community Improvement District and the nonprofit Livable Buckhead. The study looked at the affordability crunch and ways to preserve middle-income housing closer to Buckhead’s employment centers to cut down on commuter traffic. As the first concrete step from that study’s recommendations, Livable Buckhead now seeks to study preferred employer programs and is awaiting word on a grant to conduct it. “We haven’t even started the conversations yet,” said Denise Starling, executive director of Livable Buckhead. It remains to be seen whether the concept is viable, she said. But the gist at this point is anything from a company covering an employee’s security deposit to the “employer actually buying housing units and having them available to employees,” she said. Some local apartment complexes offer
See EMPLOYER on page 23
TURN YOUR GOLD March... INTO GREEN
This
(See Page 8)
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