It started with porch parties.

But, shoot, porch parties can only take you or, in this case, the Poncey-Highland Neighborhood Association, so far.

Jim McMahel, a president of the association, said he realized the neighborhood desperately needed a master plan about five years ago when developers began to buy up parcels of land and propose ambitious new buildings in that part of Atlanta, which is south of Virginia-Highlands.

In an interview earlier this month, McMahel said, “Here is this tiny little neighborhood that didn’t have a lot of volunteers, trying to deal with someone like Wayne Mason who has $25 million to throw around and hire the best lawyers and planners to push through what he wants. We recognized very quickly if we had a master plan that was recorded with the city that we could reference that and send a developer to that,” in order to preserve the neighborhood’s character.

(By way of explanation, Mason bought land in the P-H area that he later sold to the Beltline; developer Trammell Crow expressed interest in building a 20-story building on the site of the North High Ridge Apartments on Highland, seen in the photo above, McMahel said.)

So McMahel and other residents of Poncey-Highland began to raise money to pay for a master plan, which they believed would cost as much as $40,000.

“I kept saying we need to do something,” McMahel recalled. “We did not have a clue as to how we were going to raise the amount of money. We were raising it through porch parties and socials at restaurants. And we managed to raise $1,000 and set it apart. But we were not getting anywhere with that.”

In recent months, City councilman Kwanza Hall and others have come to the neighborhood’s rescue, and data is being collected that will result in a master plan, which will hopefully be adopted by the city, and it will not cost the neighborhood association $40,000 (more on this below). Hall helped the Old Fourth Ward embark on a master plan, and he said Home Park, near Georgia Tech, is next.

But it got me to thinking: isn’t this a bit much to ask of citizens?

Hey citizens, if you want your neighborhood to look nice, if you want it to be somewhere you would want to stroll and window-shop, you better organize yourselves and start raising money through porch parties!

I want to put my opinion out there. The city, in my opinion, has let these residents down by saying yes to low-density, suburban-style development that has severely marred the aesthetics of the neighborhood (I should also say that my larger beef is with Ponce as a whole, which crossed through several neighborhoods, not just P-H).

And why do I care and why should you care? Well, outside of downtown/Midtown, Poncey-Highland is perhaps the key crossroads on the east side of Atlanta. Many people traverse this neighborhood on their way to Virginia-Highlands or North Druid Hills or Decatur, or they wind up there to go to Manuel’s or the Plaza Theater in Poncey-Highland, et al.

Now, some experts agree with me to a certain extent.

“For the past 40 years in the South, we’ve built nothing but crap along our commercial streets,” said Ed McMahon of the Urban Land Institute in Washington, D.C., and a native of Birmingham, Al. “One of the biggest impediments to better development is a fear on the part of city officials to say no to anything. The thought in the past was, in the South, we’ve been poor so long, we can’t say no to anything.”

But people closely involved with the master plan wouldn’t take the bait when I said the city had let them down.

McMahel, a real estate agent and the former association president, said, “America grew up in the era of the car….The city did what they thought was right” at the time.

Hall, whose district includes Poncey-Highland, said he might feel let down if he lived in Poncey-Highland but he said citizens need to see the master plan as an opportunity for “self-determination.”

I asked if residents are now forced to “undo” the bad development the city had allowed, and he said, “There is undoing, and there’s also moving forward.”

I applaud both of them for being positive — I wouldn’t be so charitable.

Why? Because it’s going to take a lot of work and time to undo what planning officials have allowed. Sure, Atlanta is not the only city that has allowed bad, car-centric, parking-forward development. McMahon the the Urban Land Institute said for many years planning departments across the country did not take the lead in determining what cities looked like; they made sure developers followed certain codes but did not set the agenda for the city’s look.

Now, Atlanta is part of a larger trend of citizen activism.

“There is a trend for people all over the country to take a bigger interest in planning,” he said.

Poncey-Highland is still holding meetings with residents and gathering information. Councilman Hall said the plan is moving forward thanks to pro-bono work on the part of some residents and planning firm Tunnell-Spangler-Walsh & Associates. Hall’s office allocated $13,000.

In a month or so, the Poncey-Highland Neighborhood Association and Neighborhood Planning Unit-N will review the master plan and then pass it along to the Atlanta City Council so it can be included in the city’s comprehensive development plan.

Last but not least, I want to include some of the questions the residents are asking themselves as they go through the master plan process. But before that, let me say I want to hear from you!

What do you think about this?

****

Here are the Proposed Plan Goals for the Poncey-Highland Master Plan:
* Protecting existing single-family areas
* Creating a “green” neighborhood
* Establishing a blueprint for growth
* Addressing cut-through traffic and speeding
* Promoting walking, bicycling, and transit use
* Preserving the neighborhood’s character and historic resources
* Enhancing neighborhood services

Things to Think About:
* What can we do now to create the Poncey-Highland we want to see in 25 or 50 years?
* How can we calm traffic and make our streets serve everyone, not just drivers?
* How can we encourage a diverse and sustainable mix of uses?
* How can we accommodate and encourage smart growth and redevelopment while protecting the neighborhood’s existing character, businesses and residents?
* What can we do to improve the neighborhood’s visual character?
* How can we create a strong identity and character for Poncey-Highland?
* How will we use the current economic slow down to plan for future development?
* Can we enhance North Highland Avenue’s role as our neighborhood’s “Main Street?”

Related posts:

1. Will City Hall East changes be better for Beltline?
2. Atlanta’s challenge: Managing limits on growth
3. One more Beltline walk pic — an important one
4. Pedestrian mall on Auburn Avenue?
5. Not a drop to drink