Inside
Buckhead Reporter
Winging it
A, B, C
Nonprofit builds reading proficiency COMMUNITY 3
Red means stop
www.ReporterNewspapers.net
When school buses are running PUBLIC SAFETY 19
AUG. 7 — AUG. 20, 2015 • VOL. 9 — NO. 16
We’re in the weeds
OUT & ABOUT 14
Pharr Road gets new lanes, but real test yet to come BY JOHN RUCH
johnruch@reporternewspapers.net
Rogelio Macias, right, and Morgan Lakeman, bending, along with more than 50 other volunteers, gathered at Chastain Park on Aug. 1 to help clear invasive plants between Chastain Memorial Parkway and West Wieuca Road. The cleanup effort was to make way for a new playground. See additional photos on page 24.
PHIL MOSIER
Pharr Road finally has its new car and bicycle lanes after a long summertime painting project that bewildered some drivers with overlapping lanes. It remains to be seen whether the new lanes will do their job of easing traffic flow. “I think, from my point of view, it’s doing well,” said Brian McHugh, the transportation and planning director at the Buckhead Community Improvement District. “I’ve driven it several times and observed good, controlled traffic flow.” But, McHugh added, road changes only truly prove themselves once the school buses start running. “The background traffic’s still not heavy… the test comes when school’s back in,” McHugh said. Not everyone is convinced the new lanes will pass that test. “It’s a terrible idea,” said north Buckhead resident Jim Cosgrove. “It’s far worse than what we had before.” Cosgrove predicted real traffic problems will show up next spring, when Buckhead Baseball begins its busy season at Frankie Allen Park, which opens onto Pharr. He predicted traffic jams will force some drivers who use Pharr to cross Buckhead to use nearby neighborhood streets instead. BCID proposed the restriping project earlier this year, targeting most of Pharr SEE PHARR ROAD, PAGE 5
New park offers ‘perfect solution’ on PATH400 BY JOE EARLE
joeearle@reporternewspapers.net
A couple of years ago, Denise Starling spotted a problem at one point on the route being considered for PATH400. As executive director of Livable Buckhead, Starling was looking at where the planned bike-and-pedestrian trail would go as it ran alongside Ga. 400. A problem arose where the trail would meet Old Ivy Road. It made a T intersection. “I was looking at it from a parent’s perspective and thinking, ‘I’ve got a kid who thinks he’s competent on his bike and he’s not, and ... yes, he’d go right off into the road,’” she recalled recently, sitting in her Buckhead office. “We wanted a curve.” At the site, she stood where the trail would hit the street, trying to imagine a safe intersection. When she looked up
the hill, she got a pleasant surprise. The house next door was for sale. “Why didn’t we think of that?” she said. They bought the house. Problem solved. The trail could make its turn on a piece of the less-than-an-acre lot the house sat on. And as part of the deal, north Buckhead residents got a new city park. A small park, but a new spot of publicly owned greenery in the middle of a part of Atlanta that has been identified as home to too few parks. “It ended up being the perfect solution,” Starling said. Livable Buckhead bought the property for about $594,000 and then turned around and sold it to the city of Atlanta, Starling said. Now, the house is demolished, and neighbors on Old Ivy are helping the nonprofit group deSEE NEW PARK, PAGE 2
JOE EARLE
Robert Sarkissian, who lives next door to the new park at 519 Old Ivy, says the green space is needed.