The City of Brookhaven will soon own the “PDK Greenspace”. Image: The Post with Google aerial view.
Brookhaven, GA, January 25, 2017 – by Trey Benton – Brookhaven Councilmembers voted Tuesday to approve the purchase of the PDK Greenspace, after the DeKalb County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved the sale earlier in the day. The $5.7 million deal consists of approximately 33 acres of land located at PDK Airport and is specifically identified as 2951 Skyland Drive.
According to the City, the property will remain greenspace in perpetuity, and the deal with the County depends on it. The City plans on paying for the land by securing a GEFA State Loan for Conservation, and for the first 5-years utilizing the $2.4 million in proceeds from the sale of land at Skyland Park to pay the note. Brookhaven is also looking to secure a $500,000 grant and will decide what mechanism will be used to pay the balance of the GEFA loan at some point in the future.
The land has not always been contemplated by Brookhaven as greenspace, however. Former City Manager Garrett explored other options with the County back in 2014. Garrett suggested DeKalb’s COO consider for the County to transfer ownership of the land to the city’s Development Authority, but those plans died almost as quickly as they started after public outrage.
Currently one of the City’s Public Works vendors, RoadWorx, utilizes the Clairmont Rd. frontage as a staging area for maintenance equipment. By virtue of an agreement with PDK, RoadWorx also uses the space as a “home base” of sorts for their crews. The City says once they are already looking for a place to relocate the staging area to, once they own the land.
Does RoadWorx have a staging area in each city it has a contract in? Or is this a staging area for Brookhaven and other Cities they have contracts with? While a necessary evil, the new site hopefully will be more compact and laid out better to assure no damage to surrounding properties. Can this destroyed portion of the properties be spun off into a small commercial lot since its frontage is on Clairmont? Or was the transfer price and/or terms based on it being greenspace?
The area spoiled by crumbling roadworx is not for commercial use.
The RoadWorx site could be cleaned up and turned into a gravel parking lot for public access to the Greenspace.
Uphold perpetuity clause – No parking lot. If one ounce of the property is even considered for development or capital improvements I will wish then they would have put the high school there as planned.
The parking lot already exists. Clearing the detritus out of it followed by remediation of the environmental damage (paid by the offender) and an area exists for access.
Doesn’t affect the definition as it is already long spoiled.
Brookhaven can justify paying 5.7 million for the 33 acre greenspace near PDK but won’t pay 1 million for 19 acres and instead is taking by force. Both are “greenspace”.
So according to the city, one is worth $170,000 per acre and the other isn’t worth doing anything other than taking it through the legal process. It’s amazing that the city was willing to pay Dekalb over 3 TIMES what this property is asking and are just going to attempt to steal this guys property. Maybe he jacked up the price because he doesn’t want the city to own it!
Well done Mayor Ernst. I can’t wait for you to be removed from your leaning ivory tower.
Well at least John Park got a park in his back yard like he set his sights on.