Sandy Springs Reporter www.ReporterNewspapers.net
OCT 30 — NOV. 12, 2015 • VOL. 9 — NO. 22
Inside
Perimeter Business
‘Battle royal’
MARTA seeks bite of sales tax COMMUNITY 4
Hindu holiday Diwali is all about lights FAITH 16
Needle in a haystack?
PAGES 7-11
Pill Hill housing delayed by new roadway talk BY JOHN RUCH
johnruch@reporternewspapers.net
“I’m confident we will have a very good briefing on this,” Sterling said, adding that “there’s no possibility of losing the big parts [of City Springs].” City Springs is the massive redevelopment under construction on Roswell Road at the Mount Vernon Highway and Johnson Ferry Road intersection. It will include a new City Hall, a performing arts center, parks, housing and commercial space. The bond issuance and a finalized budget were supposed to happen at the same time, but they are separate efforts. Mayor Rusty Paul and several councilmen expressed satisfaction at the bond issue details.
A controversial Pill Hill apartment plan was deferred again by Sandy Springs City Council Oct. 20, pending renewed talk of a new roadway through the area. The Perimeter Center Improvement Districts are moving ahead on an old plan to extend the “flyover bridge,” Councilman Tibby DeJulio said. That bridge takes Perimeter Center Parkway across I-285 to Lake Hearn Drive. “I think we really need to see what [PCIDs] have in mind,” DeJulio said, and not “eliminate the possibility of doing this [connection] in the future” by approving redevelopment on part of the possible site. PCIDs President and CEO Yvonne Williams said in an interview that engineers are doing a 60-day “feasibility study” of the roadway extension. “We’re in an information-gathering mode,” she said. Both the road and the apartment project—planned on Emory Saint Joseph’s Hospital land at Johnson Ferry and Old Johnson Ferry—are pitched as partial solutions to the traffic tangles in the medical area at Johnson Ferry and Peachtree-Dunwoody Road nicknamed Pill Hill. Mayor Rusty Paul revealed that on Oct. 19, he had his long-planned traffic-planning meeting with administrators of the three hospitals in the area, Emory St. Joseph’s, Northside and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. “What keeps me awake at night is [the idea of ] an incident like a tornado or something where we can’t get people in for treatment,” Paul said of Pill Hill traffic. The hospitals’ meeting also included traffic consultants from the firm Nelson/Nygaard, according to Emory Saint Joseph’s spokeswoman Mary Beth Spence. “At this initial meeting, all three hospitals committed to working with the mayor and the consultants, and the consultants also shared that they will provide information about best practices from other cities,” Spence said in an email, adding that those meetings will continue. Dane Peterson, the president of Emory Healthcare Hospital Group, attended the meeting. In a written statement, he said, “We are eager to enter this collaboration with our neighboring hospitals to make improvements for our patients, families, employees and the community we serve.”
SEE DEMAND, PAGE 4
SEE PILL HILL, PAGE 3
PHIL MOSIER
Cooper Foushee, left, and his brother Brooks, 3, dig around looking for prizes in the Haystack Hunt, during the second annual Heards Ferry Elementary School Harvest Festival on Oct. 24. The event featured games, inflatables and plenty of food choices.
Demand exceeds supply for City Springs’ bonds BY JOHN RUCH
johnruch@reporternewspapers.net
A $159 million bond issuance to fund the City Springs project was approved Oct. 20 by Sandy Springs City Council. Now the project just needs a final budget—in this case, a complicated spending plan that confused members of the council earlier this month. City Councilman Gabriel Sterling was among several councilmen who asked for a better budget explanation from members of the city staff. He said he believes the explanation is coming soon and that core City Springs features are not at risk of budget cuts. “I feel very comfortable with where we are,” Sterling said in a recent interview.