Gordon — Thank you for such a nice email back. I guess it’s all in the way you read the posting. The way I read that the school was closing the parking lot was that we were excluding businesses from parking in the Alden lot. It would be more accurate to have posted that the public parking provided by the City was being closed or discontinued with the sale of the property. The school is still willing to work with you and other business neighbors to lease spaces in the Alden lot or to help facilitate our joint use of the grass lot we lease from OUC. One way or the other, there should be a way to solve the parking challenges for all. See you Tuesday night.

warren

Warren Hudson
President, LHPS

Warren,

I regret that you have taken umbrage at the post on our Lake Formosa Neighborhood website. I can assure you that my comments were not intended to inflame opinion against Lake Highland Preparatory School. As I stated to your CFO Jim Bartlet at our meeting yesterday, I do not fault Lake Highland Preparatory School in its pursuit of the parking area or any of the properties that will make up the sports complex. In fact, I have always considered Lake Highland Preparatory School one of our neighborhood’s most stalwart and effective allies in persuading the City to commit to cleaning up the Spelman Engineering contamination site.

My posting did not indeed cover all aspects of the parking situation. I understand that as a private business, Lake Highland Preparatory School cannot provide parking to the public without being compensated for the expenses associated with maintenance,security, and liability, and I applaud Lake Highland Preparatory School’s willingness to continue to lease parking spaces in it’s Alden lot to the businesses who currently use the lot. But, I do believe that it is accurate to say that the lot will be closed as free public parking starting in August.

I believe there is little to be gained by placing blame for the closing of the free public parking lot on Alden, but even if there were, Lake Highland Preparatory School would bear none of the blame.

Gordon Spears

Gordon — I believe the characterization in your web posting of Lake Highland Preparatory School as “…closing the lot in August” is both inaccurate and inflammatory. I’m deeply disappointed that you would misrepresent us. Would you please correct your posting to accurately reflect the school’s position? warren

Warren Hudson
President, LHPS

A similar theft happened last week to a neighbor on my street (Asher Lane), and Bryan’s house across the street was ransacked several months ago. He thinks they must have backed a truck up to the back door because of the amount of stuff they took.

Thanks to all of you who have sent e-mails to FDOT and our elected representatives regarding FDOT’s plans for Orange Avenue. FDOT and our elected representatives have started to take notice.

Our City Commissioner, Robert Stuart, recently sent a letter to the FDOT District 5 Secretary urging FDOT to find a way to avoid the negetive impacts that the project as planned would cause. In his letter, Commissioner Stuart asked FDOT to consider many of the same design modifications tha we have been asking them for.

On Monday, I and several of the merchants along Orange Avenue met with our state Representative, Scott Randolph, and our State Senator, Lee Constantine to update them on the project. Both our Senator and our Representative have contacted the FDOT District 5 Secretary, and Monday afternoon, she called me to tell me that FDOT will take another look at the project to try to avoid the negative consequences of the project. While the Secretary did not commit to any specific design changes, she did say that she thought there were other design alternates that could be used to avoid impacting our neighborhood businesses.

Our strategy of pressuring FDOT from both the top and the bottom seems to be working, but we still havent seen any changes to their design that will preserve the viability of our neighborhood commercial district or improve the safety of the cyclist and pedestrians who also use Orange Avenue. We cannot let up in our efforts now.

If you haven’t yet sent a letter or e-mail to FDOT suggesting modifications to their design, please do so, and copy our elected officials as well. FDOT has pushed their public meeting back from mid October until November. I will keep you posted on this, and I hope that as many of our neighbors as possible will attend this important meeting.

Thank you!

Gordon Spears