The city of Sandy Springs has made the decision to hire an architectural design firm to revitalize four under-utilized shopping centers, including North River Shopping Center, Loehmann’s Shopping Center, Northridge Shopping Center, and the former Big Lots shopping center. These underutilized tracts have given the North End a “depressed” look for decades, so we absolutely welcome this redevelopment.
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Since we started Sandy Springs Together, we have constantly talked about the need for the city of Sandy Springs to take bold, decisive action to tackle the ever-growing affordable housing crisis.
But despite this, you might be wondering: What’s it gonna take?
What’s it gonna take for the city of Sandy Springs to implement comprehensive, bold, affordable housing policies and plans?
Well, for starters, we need will — political and community will.
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Editor’s Note: Sandy Springs Together periodically publishes letters or comments from community members who raise a concern we feel should be considered by the broader community. Please let us hear your thoughts.
by Maurice Hoelting
At the beginning of the summer, the City of Sandy Springs put out a Request for Proposals (RFP) for four North End Shopping Centers.
I had an immediate question when I heard that our city government is funding a study for redevelopment: Why is the city spending taxpayer money on a study for private property owners when the owners should be paying for their own study?
The shopping centers and the developers are the ones to profit from these studies. They should be the ones paying for the study. Additionally, two of the shopping centers already have plans for renovation.
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For many months now, Sandy Springs Together has been educating the community about the dangers of losing our workforce housing — the housing affordable for teachers, officers, nurses and others.
We have also shared what surrounding communities are doing. We understand that our lives can get busy, making it easy to lose our focus and get distracted. It happens to each and every one of us.
But, we must do more.
So, we offer a challenge: If we do nothing, we are, in fact, doing something.
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The founders of Sandy Springs Together, David and Melanie Couchman, were asked by the Sandy Springs Reporter to write an op-ed on the future of Sandy Springs. We took this opportunity to lay out our vision of the future of our city.
“For the first time, the children of working families are less likely to do better than their parents. This problem is impacting middle-income families, including teachers and first responders. From 2011 to 2016, rents rose at five times the rate of a family’s income. Young families, with rents taking more than 50% of their income, can’t save for a home down payment, and with high home prices and student loan debt, many don’t qualify for mortgages, disrupting a natural progression to home ownership.
Apartments are an asset: Given today’s land-acquisition and construction costs, many cities have created policies and incentives to protect this valuable resource and the families living there. Forward-thinking cities realize that existing apartments are a necessary component of a growing and thriving community.
We encourage our city to do the same. Together we can do this.”
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How many of you moved here in the last decade?
If we had to guess, probably the majority of you. The Atlanta region has added more than 400,000 people since 2010, and the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) forecasts the additional growth of 2.5 million by 2040.
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