Mal-investment in Douglas County GA

Do you have any knowledge of the Georgia Forward group? They came into Douglas County offering us the “GREAT” Plan.

Many involved do not live in DC. Apparently the Chamber is involved.  A few of the big ideas presented by Georgia Forward today at the Douglasville Conference center included:

Create a Cultural Collaborative Commission (CCC) to drive and oversee arts and culture throughout the community

Hire a professional company to create a tourism committee

Hire a professional company to create a community wide branding campaign

Build a "Creativity Corridor" between Club Drive and Campbellton St. since we have the old jail, Courthouse Museum, Conference Center and O'Neal  Plaza as anchors. This corridor would include walking trails, pocket (mini) parks and outdoor dining

Turn the old jail into a marketplace

Build a boutique hotel (while we thought this idea was dead, the mayor announced today that Harrison Merrill is assisting the city with this effort now)

Clean up the mill site and turn it into a mixed use development. Incorporate some of the old mill's architecture into the design

Streetscape Hwy 92 with sidewalks, appropriate lighting and signing

Put walking/biking trails in the cemeteries with benches to transform them into meeting places and to conduct cemetery tours

Implement tactical urbanism by doing things like having a campout in O'Neal Plaza or turning the plaza into a "game room" for a weekend

Connect downtown with the rest of the county via pedestrian paths, bike sharing, bike stands, roadway beautification and cohesive signing

Host a "grand reopening of downtown" event when the Hwy 92 project is complete

Prepare Douglas County citizens for the jobs of the future by building an Exploratorium (workshops, unique learning spaces), a STEM Museum and an Incubator Space (shared machinery, conference rooms, printers etc. to prepare the workforce for new employment in manufacturing)

Focus on development along the aerotropolis between the airport and Foxhall

Build a walking bridge over Interstate 20 to connect the mall and West Pines golf course*

The full report from Georgia Forward will be available next week and this was videoed by citi-tv so will be posted on the city website.

Ron Wilson from the Development Authority asked how the community should deal with taxpayers who don't want to fund all these things. The response was that the people moving to Douglas County now will make up the majority of the voter base soon (insinuating it shouldn't be a problem with Gen X and Millenials moving to the county because they want all these things)

Source: James Bell <gataxpayer@gmail.com>

Comments

Douglas County voters need to hold on to their wallets and visit their county commissioners about this wealth transfer from them to the Municipal Consultants and Developers prayer group of the Atlanta Metro Church of Regional Consciousness.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader