The City of Atlanta has proposed Short-Term Rental legislation that would make AirBnB, VRBO, and other short-term rentals (less than 31 days) illegal for single-family zoning districts across all Atlanta neighborhoods. Current AirBnBs will not be grandfathered. 

• Proposed Legislation Summary Fact Sheet (PDF)
• Full Proposed Legislation Document (PDF)

We'll be discussing this in more detail at the PHCA Board Meeting on Tuesday, October 6. Please join us! You can also contact us to share your comments with the Board.

The item will also be discussed one level up at our Neighborhood Planning Unit monthly meeting on October 19 and again for a vote at the November 16 NPU-F meeting. 

Additionally, you can send your comments to Councilmember Ide and the authors of the legislation.

Halloween 2020 will truly be one to remember, with the convergence of a full moon, a blue moon, daylight saving time, and Saturday celebrations!

Please find these resources to help you and your friends and neighbors plan a safe way to celebrate. 

AJC—CDC: Stay at home this Halloween, trick-or-treaters

Halloween2020.org: See risk level for your county and get recommendations on how to celebrate safely

Shop Local! Local PiHi resident Jane Powell is the owner of Costumes Etc, located just off Cheshire Bridge Road. You're sure to find the perfect Halloween costume here!

Public Safety

• Virtual Coffee with a Cop! Thursday, September 24 from 10–11:30 a.m. Hosted by APD Zone 3 and Zone 6 (Part of PiHi is in Zone 6 - the rest is in Zone 2). 

Art & Beauty

• Congrats to Lisa Saul, owner of EcoColors Salon for her feature in VoyageATL. Get the hair of your dreams—without the toxic chemicals.
  
  
• Enjoy the latest art on exhibit at Spalding Nix Fine Art with their “Wayfinding” virtual tour. 
  
  
• Check out the gorgeous pieces from Mason Fine Art and Spalding Nix Fine Art in the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia’s 20th Anniversary Online Art Auction. 

Along the Beltline

• Shine your light with this year’s Atlanta BeltLine Lantern Parade-in-Place from September 21-26! 

For the Kids (& Kids at Heart!)

• #ShopLocal for the perfect Halloween costume at Costumes Etc, owned by PiHi resident Jane Powell, located just off Cheshire Bridge Road.
  
  
• “Turnip the Volume” with Georgia Organics’ Farm to School month. You’ll find fun activities and lesson plans for all ages.

Food & Drink

• AJC just named Taqueria del Sol one of the city’s best Mexican eateries! At the moment, they’re offering meal kits each week. Get Taqueria's newsletter to see what’s on their weekly menu.
  
  
• Cook’s Warehouse cooking classes are back - in person and virtual! 
  
  
• East Pole Coffee celebrates three years in business in Armour West - Congrats! Stop by for curbside caffeine to go, or get a subscription for delivery to your home. 
  
  
• Brooklyn Bagels will replace the former Panera at Ansley Mall in Spring 2021! 

FOOD & DRINK

• Smith’s Olde Bar has reopened with renovations and pandemic precautions in place. Get your football fix, check out the updated non-smoking patio, or grab dinner to go! 
  
  
• ASW Distillery is open for reservations every Saturday with your safety in mind. Reserve your spot at ASWdistillery.com! 
  
  
• So many PiHi restaurants are open, including Atmosphere French Bistro, Nakato Japanese Restaurant, Taqueria del Sol, Fat Matt’s Rib Shack, and many more. Always call or check their website or social channels for the latest! 

KEEP PIHI BEAUTIFUL

• Help us keep Gotham Way Park beautiful, including the giant staircase, which needs re-staining. Donations of any amount are welcome. 
  
  
• Announcing local artists Charity Hamidullah and Angie Jerez for our Traffic Box Art Project! 
  
  
• Thank you to PiHi Alliance, Preferred Office Properties, and Woofs Sports Bar for organizing and sponsoring our recent Cleanup Day. 

SAFETY & SECURITY

• Virtual Coffee with a Cop! THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24 from 10–11:30 a.m. Hosted by APD Zone 3 and Zone 6 (Part of PiHi is in Zone 6 - the rest is in Zone 2). https://bit.ly/35Uo1SX

• PHCA Members, if your Security Patrol sign has been damaged or gone missing, let us know so that we can bring you a new one.
• And don’t forget, you can request Home Away Watch service if you're out of town. 

CIVIC LEADERSHIP

• Nominate a Neighbor to join the PHCA Board starting in January. Learn about board member roles and how you can improve our community.
  
  
• It only takes a few minutes to complete your Census form online. Deadline is September 30 and it means real $$ for our neighborhood. 

READING IS ESSENTIAL

• The annual AJC Decatur Book Festival is virtual all month long! 
  
  
• It's Library Card Signup Month, and the Fulton County library system has you covered with ebooks, curbside pickup, and more. https://bit.ly/301ztIH

Sign up today, even if you're not a PHCA member (yet!).

Stay in the know with what's going on in PiHiATL!

The Piedmont Heights Civic Association usually sends an email newsletter about once a month... sometimes less, sometimes more depending on what's going on our community.

Your Civic Association has been working hard to serve you and our neighborhood since our last newsletter!

Some examples are:

• Safety Concerns: Working with Councilmember Ide, Council President Moore, Atlanta Police Deputy Chief Murphy, and APD Zones 2 and 6 to cut down on thefts from automobiles and street racing, which have grown considerably throughout Atlanta. Zones 2 and 6 both support our neighborhood. Zone 2 has increased patrols, and the Department has formed a Task Force to fight the street racing problem. Zone 2 made a significant number of arrests, citations, and vehicle impoundments the last couple of weekends. To help prevent theft from vehicles, APD urges citizens to lock their vehicles; remove keys, guns, and visible items from those vehicles; not leave vehicles running at gas stations or convenience stores; and report all incidents to 911.
• Streets & Transportation: Continuing to work with Councilmember Ide and Atlanta Department of Transportation on the design of the intersection at Piedmont and Montgomery Ferry, and to get the new road striping painted at the Piedmont/Rock Springs intersection. These are two high-traffic intersections, and current conditions make them unsafe.
• Concrete Spillage Problems: Identifying problems with concrete spillage at the Monroe/I-85 intersection in front of Fire Station 29 and coordinating with Councilmember Ide and Department of Transportation on alleviating that problem. We identified the three cement factories on Armour Dr. as probably responsible and have asked the City to hold them accountable. That spillage endangers vehicle traffic and could impact fire response. Also working with the PiHi Alliance and Councilmember Ide to get Atlanta Watershed to hold those cement companies accountable for spillage of cement and sand that blocks drains on Armour Dr. at the MARTA underpass and creates street flooding that prevents entry and exit on the only road for the many businesses in the Armour/Ottley complex.
• Intown Suites: Working with Councilmember Ide, NPU-F, and Atlanta Police Code Enforcement to hold the owners of the former Intown Suites property at 1944 Piedmont Circle accountable to clean up that property. The owners had plans approved by the neighborhood and NPU-F to create a boutique hotel and office buildings. However, nothing has been done except letting the property decay in the two+ years the place has been abandoned.
• Flooding on Allen Road and Piedmont Way: Continuing to work with concerned neighbors, NPU-F, Councilmember Ide, Heritage School (which has offered to purchase the former Rock Spring Presbyterian Church property to use as their high school), and Hedgewood Properties to alleviate the greatly increased stormwater runoff onto Allen Road and downstream. Hedgewood diverted runoff from the old church property (particularly the parking lot) to a pipe Hedgewood put in under their development and dumped the runoff onto Allen Road causing flooding on that road and significant erosion in the ditch/stream between Piedmont Way and Allen Road. Hedgewood obviously did that to keep the water off their property, but showed utter disregard to damage their action would cause to downstream properties. We've been working this issue for some time now and will continue to do so.

The Piedmont Heights Civic Association Board of Directors is elected to serve the needs of the members of the Civic Association. In reality, though, the work we do serves every resident of the Piedmont Heights area, whether or not you are a member. While we have accomplished a lot this year, we have a lot more work to do. We could use the support of every resident of Piedmont Heights. Some of the areas we need your support are:

• We need your voices to let us know what your needs are, how we can meet those needs, what you believe the neighborhood’s priorities should be, and suggestions on paths to reach those goals.
• We need your voices to join ours in working with Neighborhood Planning Unit F and nearby neighborhoods (Morningside, Virginia Highlands, Lindridge-Martin Manor, Ansley Park, Brookwood Hills, and others) to fix common problems and advance common goals.
• We need your voices to join with ours in working with the Beltline, to make sure the Beltline is a blessing and not a curse to our neighborhood.
• We need your membership dues to help pay for our Security Patrol and possibly increase the patrol hours to better secure our neighborhood and prevent some of the thefts from autos, street racing, and other crimes that have been rising all over Atlanta.
• We need your dues to help defray the costs of maintaining our community-owned Gotham Way Park (one of the very few parks in the City of Atlanta not owned and maintained by the City).
• We need your participation to work with other Board and Committee members to bring new ideas and possible solutions to problem areas.
• We need your participation to add to our voices when we collaborate with City Councilmembers and City Departments to ensure our concerns are heard and actions taken to answer our community concerns.
• We need your participation to support our PiHi Alliance business members, the local businesses who provide much needed services to our neighborhood and Greater Atlanta.
• We need your participation in the social events we have scheduled before COVID, the ones we will have when this pandemic eases, and to suggest new social events so we can get to know each other better.

Respectfully,
Jim Hardy
President, Piedmont Heights Civic Association

At the 2019 PHCA Annual meeting, Commissioner Tim Keane of Atlanta’s Department of City Planning announced that a “study” of the Armour/Ottley area would soon be undertaken. That study is finally getting underway and the area will become part of a new neighborhood (temporarily named “Lindbergh-Armour Neighborhood”), which will extend north to include the Lindbergh MARTA station and environs.

Piedmont Heights is not the only neighborhood impacted by this project. Brookwood Hills abuts the Armour/Ottley area on the north side. On the east, residents in the area around the Lindbergh MARTA station recently submitted an application to the City to be a new neighborhood and are proposing their western boundary be Peachtree Creek, also abutting Armour/Ottley.

This new Lindbergh-Armour neighborhood encompasses an area very diverse in land use and geographically complex. The Armour/Ottley portion has land uses that run the gamut from coffee shops to cement plants. Light industry, modern offices, entertainment venues, and retail mix with a lumber yard, service station, and multi-family residential, to name just a few. This area also suffers from serious infrastructure problems. The street network and utility systems are inadequate, old, and tired, and the area is crisscrossed by railroad and MARTA lines. Access is limited to a single street, from Piedmont Heights ironically, with elevated highways and dramatic grade changes further isolating it. It does have one outstanding natural asset, however—Atlanta’s famous Peachtree Creek, now totally ignored, but which could become a linear park and the centerpiece defining the character of the new neighborhood.

So, how does Piedmont Heights interface most effectively with this new project? We have our 2012 award-winning Greater Piedmont Heights Master Framework Plan, which includes the Armour/Ottley area, to guide us. But far more importantly is that City Planner Kevin Green, who worked closely with us in designing our master plan, is now the City’s team leader for this new project.

This will be the most important event impacting Piedmont Heights since the BeltLine. It is our chance to not only help create a more mutually beneficial relationship with Armour/Ottley but, equally important, to divert traffic away from our residential streets, particularly Monroe Drive.

-Bill Seay, Rock Springs Rd. resident

In the early 1800s, in old Easton township, a train depot likely occupied the property where Ansley Mall is today. The railroad linking Easton to Atlanta is long gone but the BeltLine follows its roadbed.

Watkins Mill on Clear Creek, the first business in the area, served the surrounding farmers. Across the creek, Meredith Collier ran the first local post office out of his home. These were Piedmont Heights’ commercial roots.

In 1928 Atlanta annexed Easton and changed its name to Piedmont Heights. By that time a number of homes had been built in the area, mostly west of Montgomery Ferry Road, which was already a noted suburb.

In the early 1960s the Adams-Cates Company purchased a 16-acre tract on the west side of Piedmont Avenue from Clear Creek to Monroe Drive to build one of Atlanta’s first shopping centers. The land, a former cow pasture,was mostly vacant except for an auto repair/service station on Piedmont Road and five houses on Monroe Drive.

In 1964 Ansley Mall opened for business. It cost $3.2 million and boasted 175,000 square feet of shops spread along a beautifully landscaped open-air mall. Anchored by a Woolworth 5 & 10 and a Colonial supermarket, it also featured 26 smaller retailers. Early tenants included Regalos “emporium”, the Matador Room cocktail bar, Ansley Florist, Morrison’s Cafeteria, Revco drugstore, and the 175-seat Ansley Mall Mini-Cinema. It soon became a serious rival to the older commercial district on Peachtree at Tenth Street.

Selig Enterprises bought the property in 1972 and in 2010 gave the buildings a contemporary exterior facelift and re-landscaping the open mall. Today, a shopping magnet for all the surrounding neighborhoods, it is one of Atlanta’s few open-air malls and, as such, featured in the “Mall Hall of Fame”.

- Bill Seay (Rock Springs Rd.)

CLEAR CREEK

02/24/20

Clear Creek, a modest rivulet flowing through Piedmont Heights, has significant roots in Atlanta’s history. In the early 1800s it was a large stream powering Benjamin Walker’s grist mill. But its steep banks, rushing waters, and the lack of a bridge made it virtually impassable in heavy rains.

The creek is fed by two main tributaries originating in the west. One, originating in Inman Park, was called Shermantown Branch for a while after the Civil War because the Union army had camped beside it. Running on through Springvale Park, this stream was dammed to form Lake Clara Meer for the 1895 Cotton States Exposition and was piped underground through Piedmont Park in the late 1990s. The second began in the northeastern part of Midtown near the intersection of Peachtree and Tenth streets.

These two are supplemented by other creeks along the way such as one drainingMorningside’s Orme Park which connects near Grady High School. Smaller branches and other natural water sources, such as Ponce de Leon Springs, add to the flow. During the recent northern expansion of Piedmont Park more such springs were discovered as the underbrush was cleared. Several feeder creeks flow through Piedmont Heights. Most were piped underground during the 1918 flu epidemic, but one can still be heard gurgling under the manhole covers down the middle of Rock Springs Road. Two others remain partially exposed here and there if one knows where to look.

Behind Ansley Mall, Clear Creek widens and slows to form a quiet pond where a colony of turtles can be seen cavorting. It then turns west under the BeltLine and into a concrete culvert through Ansley Golf Club on its way to Peachtree Creek at the western end of Armour Industrial Area. Soon, however, this little stream could become a major amenity for Piedmont Heights. BeltLine plans feature its course through the neighborhood as the “water gardens” proposed in the 2004 BeltLine “Emerald Necklace” study by noted landscape designer Alex Garvin.

This muddy ditch could soon be transformed into a wonderful neighborhood amenity as well as a “must see” feature along the BeltLine trail.

#voting2020

For those interested in voting in Georgia's primary, the deadline for registration is fast approaching. The final day to register is MONDAY FEB 24TH.

If you’re not already registered to vote in Georgia or your address has changed, you must register to vote by Monday, Feb. 24, to participate in the March 24 Georgia presidential primary. Check your registration status online at www.mvp.sos.ga.gov.

Advance in-person voting for the 2020 presidential primary begins on Monday, March 2, 2020 in limited locations in each of the counties around the state. Hours and locations may vary.

The Georgia Secretary of State's office has released dates for events related to this year's elections. Here are a list of critical dates associated with Georgia's 2020 election cycle:

Feb. 24, 2020 - Voter Registration Deadline for the March 24 Presidential Preference Primary

March 2, 2020 - Advance (in-person) voting begins for the Presidential Preference Primary

March 14, 2020 - Mandatory Saturday voting for the Presidential Preference Primary

March 20, 2020 - Final date for advance voting in the Presidential Preference Primary

March 24, 2020 - Georgia Presidential Preference Primary

April 20, 2020 - Voter Registration Deadline for May 19 General Primary Election

May 19, 2020 - General Primary Election for local, state and federal offices

Oct. 5, 2020 - Voter Registration Deadline for November General Election

Nov. 3, 2020 - 2020 General Election

https://www.11alive.com/article/news/politics/elections/2020-georgia-presidential-primary-election-guide/85-6f0fe16d-c18f-44d2-8be4-72cdc2d45539