Community Corner

Candler Park Adopts Master Plan

What started out as a discussion about a problem intersection, developed into a greater desire to create a development blueprint for an historic neighborhood.

CANDLER PARK — It all started with a desire to address speeding and cut-through traffic at the intersection of McLendon Avenue and Oakdale Road — site of many serious accidents.

But what started out as a discussion about a problem intersection, developed into a greater desire to create a development blueprint for Candler Park, the historic in-town neighborhood that traces its beginnings to 1890.

The neighborhood, for several months, has been crafting a master plan, a blueprint of sorts for the type of growth and development the community wants to see.

The Candler Park Neighborhood Organization hired Market + Main, an East Atlanta-based planning consultancy, to help it with creating that blueprint.

At its Aug. 19 meeting, CPNO members overwhelmingly voted in favor of the Candler Park Master Plan, which now goes to the city for review and ultimately, adoption by the city.

Master plans, as Aaron Fortner, a Market + Main principal and former Atlanta City planner explained, are really about helping a community leverage its individual strengths, its history and crystallizing what differentiates it from other neighborhoods.

In approving the master plan, Candler Park joins other communities including Edgewood, Kirkwood and Old Fourth Ward, among others, that have created and adopted their own.

The process cost about $40,000, but Dave Radlmann, who served on the master plan committee and worked with Charles Brewer in the development of Glenwood Park, said it's an investment in Candler Park's future.

That's especially true as the neighborhood, along with others across the city will be vying for quality of life bond funds from the city to pay for projects.

"This is a $40,000 investment into the neighborhood to leverage perhaps millions," Radlmann said in an interview with East Atlanta Patch.

He and other master plan committee members, Jimmy Bligh, who was chairman and Lexa King, an Atlanta-based Realtor, also spoke with Patch to discuss the process what the community did in developing its blueprint.

Please click on the video to hear excerpts from that interview.


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