It Started With a Whisper

The Lakeside City Alliance people have said many times in their meetings that they had discussions with “predecessor iterations” of the City of Briarcliff Initiative. I thought it might be useful to relate the history of City proposals in this area.

The idea of creating a city in this part of DeKalb really began in 2008 in a meeting at Manuel’s Tavern with Oliver Porter (of Sandy Springs fame) and a group of people from different areas of central DeKalb County. Out of that meeting came a general map, and a set of principles that defined what made an intelligent design.

Initially there was little support for the creation of a city in the community, and the process remained more or less quiet. When the City of Brookhaven was created, some of the same people – and some new ones – had meetings about starting again. That group became known as the “North Druid Hills Study Group”.  It had people from around the area, including current members of the LCA and COBI Boards.

When Kevin Levitas organized the community meetings at Oak Grove Methodist church, many of us who attended the series of events at OGUMC became a lot more interested in the possibility of a city, and were hopeful that something great would come out of it.

But when the original Lakeside proposed map was made public, many people were disappointed in the proposed design, and offered suggestions for modifications that made more sense. The response was that the members of the Lakeside group had their own ideas of a city design. That design included the homes of all of the members of that organization. There was no desire to take one of them out of the map, or to extend to areas much beyond where they lived.

In March the Sagamore Community Association hosted a meeting in which they invited the Lakeside City Alliance to present their proposal, and asked Don Broussard to discuss other options.  In that meeting Mary Kay Woodworth commented that the LCA didn’t really think Emory and CDC were particularly important to their community.

That comment reenergized the community, and after several discussions in different community groups, Allen Venet asked many of the people who had indicated interest to his house on May 18. Most of them had not previously been involved in any of these organizations. At that meeting, we decided to create the City of Briarcliff Initiative.

So when people talk about discussions with “predecessor organizations”, you should realize that both Lakeside and Briarcliff members were part of that effort. And it’s also important to be aware that there is almost no overlap of membership in the 2008 group that started the discussions and the current COBI group. The only relationship or similarity is the map, and the principle of a logical design.