A million bucks for Boulevard street improvements?
Thanks to a recommendation from the Atlanta Regional Commission, Boulevard could see $1.25 million in pedestrian safety investment.
Kickoff Q&A with Kwanza Hall
In early February, a few weeks after the “Year of Boulevard” initiative was announced, I sat down with city councilman Kwanza Hall to talk about the project's launch. Hall, whose parents were civil rights leaders and worked with Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s, spent much of his childhood in the area. A former member of the Atlanta Public Schools board, Hall has served on Atlanta City Council since 2006. He lives in the Old Fourth Ward and represents District 2, which includes Downtown, Sweet Auburn, Inman Park, the Old Fourth Ward, and Castleberry Hill. We met in the Starbucks at the Atlanta Medical, a few yards from the future site of the Zone 6 mini precinct.
The first week on the farm
The first week of camp at Truly Living Well got off to a soggy start. It poured on Monday and Tuesday, and campers spent a lot of time in the open-walled pavilion that also serves as the farm’s market stand.
Conversation on Boulevard: Edna Moffett
In 1983 Edna Moffett took a job as assistant property manager with Wingate Management Co. and was assigned to the Village of Bedford Pines, Wingate’s sprawling collection of Section 8–subsidized apartments along the Boulevard corridor.
Year of Boulevard: Round Three
Home to the Village of Bedford Pines subsidized housing complex—the largest in the Southeast—as well as gentrifying sections of the Old Fourth Ward, the Boulevard corridor is one of the most diverse sections of the city. Hall conceived the initiative in 2012 as a “living laboratory,” in which the challenges of crime and poverty on Boulevard would be addressed alongside revitalization. The goal: Avoid the typical patterns of gentrification in which wealthier newcomers replace the original residents of a poor community.
Scene on Boulevard: MLK memorial service
On the forty-fourth anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, a service was held in the sanctuary of Ebenezer Baptist Church, the historic congregation where King, his father, and his grandfather all served as pastors. On this warm April evening in 2012, a fourth generation was represented by Bernice King, daughter of the civil rights leader, who took over as CEO of the King Center this January.
Is redevelopment finally starting in Bedford Pine?
In 2005, on the day before Thanksgiving, a fire destroyed two apartment buildings in the Village of Bedford Pine and left sixty people homeless. In the eight years since, the corner lot at Boulevard and Angier where the apartments once stood has remained vacant. During that time, Wingate Companies, which owns and manages Bedford Pine, the largest Section 8 subsidized housing project in the Southeast, has talked about redeveloping that lot—and dozens of other properties it owns along the Boulevard corridor. It looks like something is finally going to happen.
Cleanup day on Boulevard
As weed whackers thwacked yard-high grass and tangles of kudzu along the fence at Boulevard and Boulevard Place, they also disrupted a couple of anthills. The dislocated insects marched out across the sidewalk and over the feet and ankles of Reverend Joseph Crawford.
Boulevard cleanup day
The Year of Boulevard initiative will be attempting to clean up the corridor more literally than figuratively on Saturday May 19, with a massive spring-cleaning effort organized by councilmember Kwanza Hall’s office.
If 2012 was the “Year of Boulevard,” what happens in 2013?
Last January, city councilmember Kwanza Hall declared 2012 the “Year of Boulevard,” and outlined an ambitious plan to revitalize a blighted stretch of intown Atlanta. What's in store this year? Get ready for "Mo' Boulevard," says Hall.
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