Sandy Springs Reporter www.ReporterNewspapers.net
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Mark the calendar City Center targets 2017 opening COMMUNITY 3
Heating up Chamblee seeing development boom PERIMETER BUSINESS 9-14
MARCH 20 — APRIL 2, 2015 • VOL. 9 — NO. 6
Brookhaven Cherry Blossom Festival
Flower power
A SPECIAL SECTION PAGES 15-18
Sandy Springs prepares to present City Center plans BY ANN MARIE QUILL
annmariequill@reporternewspapers.net
PHIL MOSIER
Volunteer Rebecca Pinchney, back, teaches Sereniti Benavides, 3, all about flowers during the “Turtle Tours” program at the Sandy Springs Heritage Museum on March 14. The monthly series, geared for children age two through five, provides an educational outing for youngsters. See more photos on page 5.
Police investigate, even after a trail grows cold BY ELLEN ELDRIDGE
elleneldridge@reporternewspapers.net
Eight years ago, a 12-year-old boy walking along Applegate Lane in Sandy Springs found the body of a baby boy in a gym bag left beside the road. “It was established by the medical examiner that the baby was born, and then exposed to the elements, thus ending his life,” Sandy Springs police spokesman Sgt. Ronald Momon said recently. That made the case a homicide. Still, there was little for investigators to go on and the child was never identified nor the circumstances of his death discovered. Now, the baby’s death is the only Sandy Springs homicide that is classified as a “cold case” since the founding of the city’s police department. Recently, the department sought to revive public interest in the investigation. It issued a new call for help from the public and released a photo of the gym bag that had contained the child’s body.
Fourteen acres. Three hundred apartments. A thousand-plus seats in a performing arts center. Those are some of the numbers floated around as plans for Sandy Springs’ City Center begin to take shape. But what will it all look like? City officials and planners say final sketches will be made public for the mixeduse development once they assess resident input on the appearance of the future civic center, performing arts center and residential units located at the intersection of Roswell, Mount Vernon and Johnson Ferry roads. City spokeswoman Sharon Kraun said that at least 700 residents had responded to an online survey about the look of the project. “We do feel like the character of [the residential units] is going to be somewhat more contemporary,” said Greg Blaylock of Carter/Selig, which is developing the private portion of the complex. “This is a new civic center and we’re in the 21st Century, so we feel driven by that.” He spoke at a recent event at City Hall where residents were invited to give feedback on the potential look of the development after hearing a presentation from the site’s developers and architects. Planners showed examples of mostly glass facades, brick facades and a combination of both. Mayor Rusty Paul said that ground will be broken on the site this summer, with a soft opening in November 2017, and plans to “be in the new facility” New Year’s Eve SEE RESIDENTS, PAGE 6
The case went “cold,” in that police had no leads to follow, almost as soon as it was reported. But what makes an investigation an official “cold case” varies by department. “There’s no black and white definition of what a ‘cold case’ is,” Dunwoody Detective Sgt. Patrick Krieg said. Departments also handle their cold cases in different ways. Krieg said the way police approach cold cases usually depends on the size of a department and the number of active cases its officers pursue. The Atlanta Police Department, for instance, has a cold case task force of five detectives who regularly review case files as far back in time as the 1970s, Capt. Michael O’Connor said. But Sandy Springs, Brookhaven and Dunwoody, which all have much smaller departments, have no detectives assigned full time to cold cases, department offiSEE POLICE, PAGE 4
SPECIAL
Planners showed examples of mostly glass facades, brick facades and a combination of both.