Chairman of Planning Committee Suggests 8-story Apartments in Dunwoody Would be Okay?

Our city council members live here among us and have always had the best interest of the homeowners.  Since inception of the City of Dunwoody ten years ago, no new multi-family units have been approved, and no zoning changes have been made to allow new multi-family units.  But elections have consequences and there's a new leadership in the city.  We will soon know if this new council will keep Dunwoody as is, or change zoning for 165 acres in the heart of Dunwoody, paving the way for condos. apartments, and subsidized rent-controlled affordable housing.

Two years ago four council members, all of who are still on council, voted to create a task force on 'affordable' housing.  You can read about it HERE.  You'll also see in the article comments from Dunwoody's Planning Commission chairman.   Expect this task force to be soon created.  The former mayor of Dunwoody failed to actually appoint members of this newly proposed task force, and the current planning commission members were all appointed/retained by this same former mayor.

In Brookhaven: Workforce (Affordable) housing. For-sale or rental housing units that are affordable to those households earning no more than 80 percent of the median household income for the Atlanta MSA, as determined by the current fiscal year HUD income limit table. 

Last night local residents were entertained by the monthly Planning Commission meeting.  I didn't stay for the entire meeting but did review much of the footage this morning.  I encourage you to watch it HERE. Last night's soup at Vintage Pizza was ham and potato, thus the early egress from said meeting.  Vintage has nightly soup specials and they are always tasty.  Don't bother posting about Vintage on the Dunwoody Restaurant Group Facebook page as that page is for bashing and attempting to ruin every food place in Dunwoody.  Vintage is great.  And so is Novo, NFA, VB, and Marlow's.

So back to that meeting.  Fast forward to the 1:30 mark.  A committee member asks to city staff, "why are we going this route?".  He was basically asking why all of a sudden is it necessary to rezone the Village for apartments?

Side Note: There are three things going on with the Village.  One is allowing an open-container entertainment district and another is allowing breweries in Dunwoody. See HERE.  I fully support both of these items. These are two things that will make the Village a nicer spot to visit for current homeowners.  These items do not include changing the zoning to allow for new housing in the Village area. These items, if approved, will create new opportunities for property owners and will, for some people, add to the quality of life in Dunwoody.  These items will not directly put more kids in our schools and will not significantly affect rush-hour(s) traffic.  Full steam ahead on these items.  Council and staff have done a good job here. The third item is huge - it involves changing the zoning classification for the entire Village. It's this third item that should be of major concern to all homeowners in Dunwoody.  At last week's DHA meeting, the DHA voted to oppose all new residential zoning for the Village.  Opposed. All.

So back to that question from the committee guy to the city's Community Development Director, a proud resident of .... Woodstock. The CDD replied, "A lot of people came to me and said 'we want to make it better' " "you have the zoning code, then you have the master plan.  But the zoning code rules."  "I felt like we should examine the Master Plan, and add to it."

I seriously doubt any homeowner said "go build some apartments and condos in the Village".  But here we are.  City staff telling a room full of homeowners from The Branches and Dunwoody West that some people came to him with something so he's moving ahead.  Homeowner be damned.  Most likely anyone who went to him asking for new zoning was a developer. Go watch the exchange on video. We also heard this gem from city staff - "before we met with the public, we met with Regency (largest landowner in Village) and other property owners".  In case you are still wondering where you stand, in the eyes of city staffers, it's right behind local businesses.  What started out as a zoning code writing task resulted in city staff and the consultants overstepping their role and added Master Plan items including five-story apartment buildings.

Will the planning commission and council side with the majority of homeowners or commercial interests?

Now head to the 2:06  mark in the video.  The PC chairman suggests that 8-story apartments are okay!  Go look at some, he tells you.  He then compliments Chamblee and Brookhaven on all their stick built apartments.  "Do we want the school tail wag the dog of good development?" he continued.  He doesn't believe that new multi-family will result in more trailers and even more overcrowded schools.  He blames one small single-family neighborhood on Vermack.  Perhaps he should look at the huge increases of school-aged children living in the apartments across Dunwoody.  Although new apartments have not been built, the number of kids living in these properties HAS increased, a lot.  Now image when 75% of Dunwoody Village (yes, the details of the plan clearly allow for this, despite anything else you read or hear) has new apartments.  Are we attracting young singles to move here to enjoy the pleasures of a couple of farmhouses (sans actual farm animals) and the ultra-cool late nights at the Dunwoody Tavern?  No.  These units will be filled with families with kids, more kids, and more cars.

For the best public comment of the night, go to wonderful lady at the 2:11 mark.

winner

Ariel and The DES 4th 5th Grade Academy, Take 2

Careful what you ask for.  DES wanted relief from overcrowding, and that's what they got.  Parents are freaking out over this Academy plan.  This same thing happened 11 years ago.  No need for too  much of a backstory, but when DES opened in 2009, nearly everyone argued over the new attendance zones for each school.  The unwanted compromise was the DES 4th and 5th Grade Academy.  No one wanted to leave Austin or Vanderlyn.  So, 4th and 5th graders from Chesnut, Austin, and Vanderlyn (yes, even 11 years ago Kingsley was being ignored by DCSD) went to DES Academy, home of the Tigers!  Parents screamed, then screamed even more.  Many families had kids at Vanderlyn, DES, and PCMS at the same time.  These same kids spent a lot of time in trailers, from 1-12th grade. The 4th 5th grade academy lasted only two years.  Crawford Lewis was superintendent and Jim Redovian was the school board rep for this region. Nancy Jester became the region's school board rep in 2011, about the same time Ramona Tyson replaced Lewis.

Fast forward to Dunwoody High graduation in 2018 - the graduating class of the 4th 5th grade academy.  About a dozen of the kids were at DunwoodyTalk HQ, so one of our cub reporters asked the kids about their favorite years in DeKalb.  Most of these kids were K-12 Dunwoody schools.  Some were home-schooled or private for a couple of years - but for the most part, these kids went to a Dunwoody elementary school K-3, the Academy 4 and 5, then PCMS 6-8, then DHS 9-12.  Every one of the kids who went to the 4/5 said it was awesome.  It got them away from kindergarten kids (moms and dads, your 5th grade could care less about going to DES with his 1st grade sibling, so don't use that as a reason to not have the 4/5 school) and into a school filled with kids nearly all the same age.  Granted, the original 4/5 was different as it pulled from three schools, allowing for middle school friend groups to form early.  And yes, the Kingsley kids were left out, but they found their friend groups once at PCMS.

Off the record, a DHS school employee told me that the 2018 graduating class was one of the top years for students getting accepted into UGA and  GA Tech.  Kids from the Academy era are now freshman and sophomores in college and trade schools.  UGA, Ga Tech, Duke, Vanderbuilt, UVA, SMU, Ivy schools.....  In summary, the Academy hurt only the parents' feelings, not the kids.

And move over Ryan S. - the newest star from a Dunwoody school is Halle Bailey, also known as Ariel!  Halle was a 5th grader at DES.

DES Fall 2010

Halle Bailey on right

Dunwoody's Deceptive Tactics Against Its Own Residents

The Dunwoody City Council is considering major changes to the Dunwoody Village area.  These changes, if approved, will forever change the small-town feel of Dunwoody.

Below is the map our council and staff want you to see.  It is extremely misleading - so much so that all those involved should be questioned about their true intent.  At quick glance, the drive-by media and average resident see DV-3 as potential area for rental multi family.  But the truth is that this NEW Master Plan (yes, this is the consultant's way, via staff input, to change the Master Plan without proper input from actual taxpayers) allows for rental units in the entire Dunwoody Village area.

The large property (Walgreens area) in the Village is owned by Regency.  Regency is a REIT.  It makes its money on rents, not buying and flipping property.  All residential here will be rental, not owner-occupied.

See the proposed plan HERE

Council members will defend this plan and tell you about the requirement to get a SLUP for residential and the 55+ restrictions.  That's all crap and they know it.  The SLUP is not a problem for developers and Dunwoody's legal department will give away the farm at every turn.  The legal team is more concerned about banning the Menorah and a nativity scene than protecting the quality of life in Dunwoody. The 55+ issue is not some magic tool either.  Go see what HUD has to say about this designation. Only one person needs to be 55+ in the unit, and the entire community (tower) needs only 80% to have this 55+ person on the rental lease.

What's misleading about the DV district labels is only DV-3 is named residential, but ALL four districts allow residential rental or otherwise. The mixed use requirement in the slides allow up to 75% residential in DV-1 (despite its name "commercial"), DV-2 allows residential everywhere but ground floor (despite its name "office"), DV-3 has no residential limitations.  DV-4 has no residential limitations. All four districts can have density up to 12 units per acre. All four districts can be at least 3 stories with DV-1 up to 4 stories and DV-4 up to 5 stories.  This is not a suburban homeowners services destination. Traffic will be substantially increased without change in main roads. Lastly are two roundabouts proposed on main roads, including one at Mt Vernon and Chamblee-Dunwoody where 3-5 lanes converge from all congested directions. We see nothing but gridlock when the traffic backs up and doesn't move in any direction. This plan appears to be a red herring to put in massive multi-family housing in the Village.

People moved to Dunwoody for the quiet neighborhoods, proximity (not to be in the middle of) to the urban Perimeter setting, and for schools.  One of these three things is not really a selling point currently, and this radical change to the Village takes away at least one of the remaining two.  People moved here to live and have basic businesses nearby.  We have our dry cleaners, a few car repair places, a cobbler, etc.  And yes, we have banks.  Those who bash the number of banks in Dunwoody fail to recognize the benefits of such institutions.  They maintain their properties, don't litter the area with illegal signs, and reinvest in the community.  The small-thinker simply says, "we want rooftop bars, chef-driven white tablecloth eateries, and no more bank." Then they go eat burgers from the Chevron gas station (yes, the DT2 staff loves NFA burgers like nearly everyone else).  The roof-top bar crowd is not who you want making long-term decisions that affect our entire community. Sure, let's allow a rooftop bar in the Village (me and HW buying the first round!), but there is no need to create a new Master Plan to allow this type of business to open.

Contact your council and ask them to toss away this plan and keep the Village properties not currently zoned for residential as they are today.

Tiger Moms of DES

Dunwoody Elementary School has more kids in its attendance zone than all other Dunwoody elementary schools.  Some vocal parents from DES want that to change.

DES Parent: Put my neighborhood back to Vanderlyn
DCSD: Denied.  Vandy is full.  You were zoned out of Vandy ten years ago. 

DES Parent: Put my house in the Austin attendance area.
DCSD: Denied.  You live closer to DES and Austin is now full, and will attract more kids to this area.

DES Parent: Put these apartment kids somewhere else. 
DCSD: Denied, temporarily.  However, Nancy Creek school will lose the magnet (brain-drain) kids and some multi-family communities from DES will move there in August.

DES Parent: No, we don't want them to go to Nancy Creek.  We want them at Austin because Austin moms make us mad and we want them to suffer for years, like we have.
DCSD: You do realize Vanderlyn has been overcrowded since 1998 and old Austin had trailers since 2007?

DES Parent: That Nancy Creek building sucks.
DCSD: Well, the magnet kids don't seem to mind it

DES is pulling many tricks out of their bag.  It's no surprise these are parents of STEM students.  The creativity is impressive.

Change.org petition HERE
"We have an entire 3rd grade class in trailers"  That's cute.  DHS class of 2018 from Austin and Vandy spent more time in trailers than classrooms from K-12.

Remove all “West of Ashford Dunwoody Road”   Wow.  Why didn't they just say "take all these apartment kids".  I'm sure those WAD kids and parents really feeling the love after reading the petition.  Nice job, Tiger moms.

AJC Video HERE

Here's the DES letter from earlier this week.  We expect another letter this weekend.  DES wants overcrowding corrected at DES, but only by sending apartment kids to Austin.  No other solution is acceptable, in their eyes.  

Sorry for the poor formatting of the DES letter.

Dunwoody Misses It By One Letter

Back a few years ago the roof top bars and chef-driven restaurant chatter was all the craze.  Dunwoody Green would have 5-6 such eateries, bustling with patrons from the metro Dunwoody area.  Dunwoody's own Urban Renewal Agency backed the idea, because we all know The Government knows what we want to eat. In 2017:

“This is to be our Canton Street [in Roswell] or Dresden Drive [in Brookhaven],” Starling said. “It will be walkable and is intended to give a sense of place … and that is a destination for folks.”

Then came the food hall concept.  Another Government idea that Dunwoody never tasted. In 2019:

Plenty of unique restaurants just up the road are thriving; but the Achilles’ heel for the Project Renaissance parcel is that it’s somewhat tucked-away, leading to drive-by traffic visibility and counts that one official described as “terrible.”

The real killer for local restaurants is home grown - it's the Dunwoody Area Restaurant Reviews Page. After a few minutes of scrolling this group's feed you soon realize half of Dunwoody writes for ZAGAT while the other half writes reviews for TripAdvisor.  We have such awesome food snobs here in Dunwoody, most out to destroy local businesses.

Top reasons for bashing a local restaurant - Dunwoody version:
1. Too many kids 
2. Not kid-friendly  
3. Deviled eggs too small
4. Salmon was canned, not fresh from the Flint River
5. Mac n Cheese noodles inappropriately too large
6. Salsa chips too salty
7. Salsa chips not enough salt
8. Beer served 2 degrees warmer than brewmeister recommended
9. Too loud, then it was too quiet, then the server disappeared
10. Had an Ossoff yard sign in front

So back to that one letter miss and chef-driven.  What's the hot talk all over Dunwoody's social media?  Our very own Chev-driven hamburger hut.  Yes, those folks two years ago clambering for Chef Ramsey and Paul Bocuse to open a cozy bistro next to Jiffy Lube are now head over heels for deep fried hotdogs and a 3X3 burger w pickles.  My how things have changed so quickly.

3X3 burger

Yes, NFA Burger is here and open for business.  It is the nation's first Chev-driven eatery, positioned inside the local Chevron, along with typical convenience store sundries.

The fact is we have lots of people thinking Dunwoody can sustain fancy food places on every corner, but in reality we are a burger and pizza type of town.

And yes, the DunwoodyTalk2 staff enjoyed delicious burgers from NFA recently (Jan 1st).  And we paid for our meals. We wish much success for NFA.  The burgers and tator tots were excellent and we will go back, despite what naysayers on NextDoor or FB may say about it. Welcome to Dunwoody!

And the great news is that NFA has no competition coming soon as the city council has banned new businesses for the Village area for six months - at least.  Probably to prevent things like the free market and NFA from happening again.  Because our local government knows better than the free market. Just look at all the food halls and chevf-driven restaurants in Dunwoody as proof.

Hopefully the aforementioned Facebook groupies don't visit and complain of the tator tot diameter.

Merry City Administrative Offices Closed Day

The City of Dunwoody wishes you a Merry City Administrative Offices Closed Day!

Dunwoody Grinch Council

The City of Dunwoody can't say the C word, but has no problem being The Grinch.

The Dunwoody City Council has halted all development in Dunwoody Village for up to six months, allowing the new council to decide what property owners can and cannot do with their properties.  Property owner MUST continue to pay all taxes on property during the moratorium, despite being barred from bringing in new tenants.

The moratorium is put in place to force property owners to do what the city wants them to do.  The free market has no say for development in the Village area apparently. Moratoriums are put in place to reach a predetermined end.  Predetermined by the government.  And in this case, that government is the new city council.  Expect many many apartments in Dunwoody Village in this next LandUse plan.  Of course these apartments won't have kids and won't affect traffic. 

This is the opposite of the city's last moratorium when the city stopped apartments under the disguise of safety. 

Dunwoody Village 2025

I've attended many meetings over the years here in Dunwoody.  The city hires consultants to meet with us and tell us what we need/want.  It's even better when said consultants are MASSholes from up north.  These consultants deploy the Delphi (effect) method whereas they have the end result of the meetings and surveys already sealed in an envelope, ready to hand over to council and the city manager when they get their payment.

Here is a link to the Land Use Master Plans on Dunwoody's web site. We have/had a plan.  If that Plan failed, will the next one as well?  Will we have a new Master Plan after every election?  Was the moratorium put in place simply because elected officials want to control the new plan?

Very little notice was given on this newly enacted moratorium.  Hopefully this is not the new M.O. for city council.  Where is the Perimeter Chamber on this? No mention of the moratorium on their web site or Twitter.  The Chamber usually feels a thrill going up its leg when Council talks.  And the topic was not mentioned at the December DHA meeting.

If the newly elected council believes there is an emergency in the Village, it is much faster (than six months) to make amendments to current zoning.  

For those looking for something to go in at the former Burger King location or at the old Texaco / steam car wash, forget it.  This action stops all activity in the Village.  Unless a permit has been applied for, you will NOT see anything new for close to a year.  See HERE for details

the Mayor and Council believe that it is in the best interest of the City that a temporary moratorium be enacted regarding the Village Overlay Area to prohibit the filing of any new Applications for Special Use Approval, Permitted Use Approval, or Building, Land Disturbance, Site Plan and Design Review, or other Permits such moratorium will allow the City the opportunity to move the Village Overlay Amendment through the zoning process to receive public input and for the City council to consider the Village Overlay Amendment for adoption; and WHEREAS, it is determined that a temporary moratorium of 180 (one hundred-eighty) days is the minimum time necessary to allow for a full evaluation of the Village Overlay Amendment via the zoning process and potential adoption by the City; 

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE MAYOR AND COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF DUNWOODY, GEORGIA:  During the moratorium neither the City nor any of its departments or staff shall accept, process or review new or revised applications for Applications for Special Use Approval, Permitted Use Approval, or Building, Land Disturbance, Site Plan and Design Review, or other Permits within the Village Overlay Area;