Well, it looks like the horses are out the barn door on this one. Edwards Communities of Columbus has been very busy the past month, and they've successfully stripped the entire 32-acre site above Richland and Dairy Lane down to raw earth. Besides prepping for the massive apartment complex that the company plans to build there, the speed and completeness of the clearcut suggests a defensive move to counter any further roadblocks the mayor and city council may try to throw up in the way of the project. It would take something approaching a strip mine reclamation and a good 30-50 years to return the property to anything resembling mature woodland again. Disputes over Edwards' plan to blast the hillside are still playing out. Anyone with a taste for irony should savor the fact that Edwards plans to name a development that will lower the ridge 28-40 feet "The Summit at Coates Run".
I'll find time to write more about Edwards and their plans later, but for now I want to invite the south siders whose homes border the earthworks to participate in a sort of public memory project. If you have photos or stories of the Coates Run woods that you'd like to share, send them to athwatch at gmail.com, my blog email address, and I'll post them here (make sure to send descriptive captions with your photos). Having walked the ridge above Coates Run in earlier years, I'd like to see the beauty of that particular part of Athens remembered properly.
Categories:
Coates Run,
density,
Edwards Communities,
southside,
student housing,
viewshed
2 comments:
By: jackscrow on July 9, 2008 at 11:54 AM
As someone who lives just outside of Athens and works in the building industry in C-bus, Edwards, companies like them, and the problems that accompany these multi-family projects are a known quantity to me.
The TIFs and other breaks (special garbage collection, electric, and water/sewer pricing) given by cities to the owners of these projects very seldom if ever make up the revenue that is promised.
It is sad to see them moving in and changing even more, what used to be kind of "Mayberry" existence.
By: jackscrow on July 9, 2008 at 11:56 AM
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