Does Woodstock have a Plan B?
By: Gerry Yandel

If you had asked me a year ago what the future of Olde Towne Woodstock’s downtown held, I wouldn’t have needed rose-colored glasses to say that it looked quite promising indeed.

After all, Hedgewood announced it would redo the west side of Main Street and include a grid system of streets to alleviate downtown traffic; there were ambitious plans to bring one of The Avenue shopping centers to a newly constructed interchange off Interstate 575 at Rope Mill Road; and there was going to be a bypass through and around a newly upgraded Biello Park from Old Ga. 5 over to Arnold Mill and Neese roads.

Throw in a plan for streetscape projects and sidewalks, upgrades to the building facades on Main Street, three new eateries – Cinco Mexican restaurant, Canyon’s Burger Company and J. Christopher’s – and some retail boutique-type stores in the bottom of the Hedgewood loft building, and a plan for a walking trail system around the city, and things looked quite promising. Perhaps the city’s vision of becoming a pedestrian-friendly destination filled with happy strolling families out walking around Olde Towne wasn’t far off the mark after all.

And then, of course, the economy tanked… and now we seem to be looking at the death of downtown Olde Towne.

In the past year, there have been a slew of things that seem to be sucking the life right out of downtown: the retail floor of the Hedgewood lofts building went into foreclosure; Cinco remains an empty shell with a dirt floor; J. Christopher’s still isn’t open; the Hedgewood lofts, and the townhomes right behind them, remain mostly very expensive and very vacant; surrounding buildings in Hedgewood also remain empty; and the downtown coffee shop Serene Bean, closed it doors for good only months after opening its second location in Towne Lake.

Only one building along Main Street went through a façade renovation, and, unfortunately, it has remained empty since then. The sidewalks and streetscape upgrades still exist somewhere in the future plans, but downtown merchants didn’t feel any relief after the city announced it was moving city hall temporarily to the old Harris Homes building on Ga. 92. (One has to wonder how temporary the move actually is, given that city purchased the building for $5.6 million, as opposed to renting it for the three to four years they say they will need to occupy it while the current city hall is razed and rebuilt.)

This isn’t to say that Woodstock is in financial trouble. Commercial development continues to boom along Ga. 92, especially east of Trickum Road, and along Towne Lake Parkway. The existing retail and food industry commercial properties already on Towne Lake Parkway and along Ga. 92 have already established both areas as easily accessible, logical choices for diverse shopping and eating options…. Which, again, does nothing to help downtown’s future.

Of course, the current situation is undoubtedly exacerbated by the economic downturn, but I wonder about the wisdom of putting all the city’s eggs in one basket. Everything about the future of downtown Olde Towne hinges on Hedgewood’s success, and it seems pretty clear that if Hedgewood falls, it will take a bunch of other things with it… just like economic dominoes.

For instance, what incentive does Cousins still have to try and bring The Avenue to Rope Mill Road if Hedgewood founders, like so many other developers have in the past few months? If that happens and Cousins bails out on The Avenue, that probably also nixes any chances for a Rope Mill interchange on 575. If that interchange dies, then where’s the incentive and motivation for completing the bypass to Arnold Mill Road? If Hedgewood goes, so will Hedgewood West, which means no grid system to relieve the traffic through the Main Street intersection.

I personally hope Hedgewood can hang in there and weather the economic storm, but the alternative possibility becomes more and more realistic every day. Working a block away from the empty Hedgewood buildings, it doesn’t take much to see how things are going. There is no foot traffic around downtown to speak of, and I wonder how the local businesses survive.

But, the most disappointing aspect of downtown’s future to me is that the Woodstock city government seems so clueless about what is clearly happening. Most of the buildings around Hedgewood have been empty since they were constructed, and it doesn’t appear to be moving forward at all. There aren’t even construction crews in the area any more.

In last week’s Ledger-News article about Hedgewood, the city consensus seemed to be one of denial and that everything is fine and things will get back to normal when the economy rights itself.

Unfortunately, the Woodstock government apparently hasn’t even  considered the need for a plan B. It appears to be simply assuming Hedgewood will be able to hang tough and that the economy righting itself is just around the corner.

Boy, I hope they’re right. There’d be nothing more depressing than working in a ghost town.

No accounting for the school gene
By: Fauve Holihan

I gave birth to an alien. And I’m about one U.F.O. away from calling Scully and Mulder in to
crack the case of “Who are you, and what have you done with my kid?”

I say this because my oldest daughter Emily shows very few outward signs of being related to
me, where school is concerned.

Last Friday, Emily woke up and was clearly in the process of catching a nasty cold. Her throat burned, her eyes were red and her voice sounded more like Harvey Fierestein than a 14-year-old girl. The way her body dragged when she walked said it all: I feel terrible, and all I want to do is go back to bed and reclaim some of the hours of sleep I didn’t get last night.

I asked her if she wanted to stay home from school.

“Um, no way. I need to be there today – I have too much to do,” was her response.

Exhibit “A,” your honor, as proof of my child’s alien tendencies.

When I was 14 years old, I was thinking of new and inventive ways to miss school. I would sneak a heating pad into my room the night before, then just before I left my room the next morning, I’d spend five minutes with the pad – turned up all the way, of course – on my face …. Then, I would rush downstairs and ask my mom or dad to see if I had a fever. My faux-temperature trick worked nearly every time.

Once, while in the ninth grade, as Emily is, I was so determined to miss school (and the inevitable math test I wanted to avoid at all costs), that I told my parents that there had been an outbreak of bubonic plague at my high school, and I was too afraid to attend school. Because I didn’t want to die, I asked to stay home that day.

That trick didn’t work so well, and as I feared, I ended up with an “F” on the test.

Once, when I was a couple of years younger than Emily, I skipped my first day of school. I hid behind my house instead of walking to school, and waited until my mom and dad had both gone to work.

When my dad’s car finally pulled out of the driveway, I unlocked the door with my key and enjoyed a full day of cartoons, soap operas and a nap. 

That sort of school avoidance would never occur to Emily. She actually enjoys school. She looks forward to being challenged and tested, and even if she woke up with a leg missing, she would stick a band-aid on it and hobble off to school.

I was fully prepared to be a parent that could deal with truancy. I took copious notes as a child and teenager, in order to prepare myself for motherhood to children who would be like me – underachieving skippers with bubonic plague.

Somehow, I ended up with an alien who would rather go to school than stay at home. And rather than become a terrible student so that I can mother her in a situation that I’m more familiar with, Emily from Mars gets As, rather than Fs.

She embraces learning in such a way that is so foreign to me, and I don’t know how to cope with it. I have this kid that could not be more different than I was, and I don’t know what to do.

And what’s even more frightening is realizing that Emily’s twin doppelganger, 11-year-old Jane, is just like her.

Aliens have overtaken my home, and they’re frightening. I don’t know what to do.

Mulder, Scully…help!

You’re the only ones that can show me how to deal with this situation.

The truth is out there….

Fauve Holihan is a writer and public relations professional.