Pay attention

Blake sets the record straight on the parking deck ...

In my four-plus years covering Athens city government, I’ve seen this happen over and over again: Total apathy for months or even years, followed by a last-second frenzy of indignation.

Friends of Downtown Athens – a group of Athens-Clarke Heritage Foundation activists including Allen Stovall, Blair Dorminey and Rosemarie Goodrum – make some excellent points, especially when they say that misleading conceptual drawings associated with the project are not telling commissioners just how massive this deck will be. (For the record, it’s 75 feet tall and has a footprint of 47,000 square feet.) It's just too bad they didn't make those points six months ago.

Not only do they raise concerns about the building’s size, they are questioning the deal to split costs with a private developer, the rate hike that will be needed to pay off debt, revenue projections, lack of public access to a rooftop garden, lack of opportunities for public input and the very need for a new deck at all. Athens Downtown Development Authority Executive Director Kathryn Lookofsky offered counter-arguments in the Sunday ABH.

The problem is, with the exception of the allegedly misleading drawings, Friends of Downtown Athens are not bringing anything to the commission’s attention that they didn’t already know. Not to say that the commission necessarily came to the correct conclusion, but these objections have all been raised and discussed.

This deck has been under consideration for at least six years. Search “downtown Athens parking deck” on the ABH Web site and 498 news articles, letters, columns and editorials pop up, 53 in the past year alone. It's one of those things I kept writing about, even though no one seemed to care, because the project needed more public attention than it was getting.

Not that no one had a chance to get involved. The commission talked about the deck in no fewer than eight public meetings since 2008, five of which allowed public comment. The Tuesday vote will be the third in the past 13 months to approve the project and allow it to move forward. No one from Friends of Downtown Athens was there for the others, when they could have actually made a difference.