Opposition to planned redevelopment of Triangle Plaza in east Athens

By Emma Auer/WUGA

Local nonprofit Farm to Neighborhood wants to add a teaching garden and green space to the Historic Iron Triangle Plaza in East Athens. Neighbors are asking for alternatives to protect longtime residents from gentrification.

“Risks displacing our community:” Inner East Athens speaks out

The Historic Iron Triangle on Vine Street in Inner East Athens is a planned development, or PD, dating from 1996. It is currently owned by local restaurateur Rashe Malcolm, who is also the founding director of the nonprofit Farm to Neighborhood.

Any changes to the Iron Triangle have to go through the Athens-Clarke County Commission as amendments. At Tuesday night’s meeting, neighbors of the property objected to Farm to Neighborhood’s proposed amendment, which would increase green space, move a sidewalk, and construct a teaching garden at the site. It would also remove ten parking spaces from the commercial property.

Dr. Cshanyse Allen, President of the Inner East Athens Neighborhood Association, said at last Tuesday’s meeting that approval of the plans would create a precedent for further changes in her community.

“Today it’s a teaching kitchen and a garden,” she said. “Tomorrow it could be apartments, student housing, higher land values, and families priced out. That is the opposite of what that 1996 PD promised. This is just the beginning.”

The Inner East Athens Neighborhood Association formed seven years ago to give voice to the neighborhood’s residents. Farm to Neighborhood’s proposed amendment isn’t the only issue the association pays attention to. It advocates for solutions to zoning and storm water issues, as well as relief from eviction, poverty, and hunger.

Dr. Allen says that the association faces one major theme in particular: rising housing prices that force longtime residents out of the neighborhood.

“We’re losing our identity as a community,” she says.

Dr. Allen says that if the amendment to Iron Triangle Plaza’s planned development gets approved, it may lead to the development of apartments that only college students and their families can afford. She also believes Malcolm’s idea of a teaching garden can be achieved in a different way, using a garden that already exists on a property behind the shopping center located on the plaza.

“We are not against her [Ms. Malcolm’s] proposal. We’re not against her teaching kitchen or teaching garden,” Dr. Allen clarified. “She has a garden already. Utilize that so this planned development amendment does not have to occur.”

Malcolm says she isn’t planning on putting housing on that spot, which is zoned as a commercial property. She says that if she wanted to, she could build apartments on a different property she owns that would already allow residential development.

Her amendment to the planned development at 585 Vine Street seeks to make sidewalks more ADA accessible and put in a teaching garden to give young residents of Inner East Athens gardening skills for their own homes or businesses. Inside the building at 585 Vine, Ms. Malcolm also wants to build a teaching kitchen, where students can learn how to cook using the food they grow.

“If we teach them how to pickle it, can it, freeze it--those soft skills for them, if they want to start their own business, then they can use that at home with a cottage food license. If they need commercial space, they can rent that here,” she says.

But Dr. Allen says the plans weren’t developed with the community’s input, unlike the 1996 Planned Development, which was done with community involvement.

“There’s some things that come with a binding planned development,” Dr. Allen says. “The community has to be involved and engaged, and that piece did not occur.”

Ms. Malcolm says she held meetings with Inner East Athens residents about making plans for improvements after she bought the property in 2021. Dr. Allen says that neither she nor any other Inner East Athens Neighborhood Association member were invited or attended those meetings.

Dr. Allen says she and other Inner East Athens residents want their community to be invested in and beautified, but that residents need to be a part of the conversation.

“When you go across the city and you see flowers, tulips, and daisies lining the communities, we don’t have that. But we pay the same taxes.”

At Tuesday’s meeting, District 2 Commissioner Tiffany Taylor, who represents the area where the Iron Triangle is located, said that she had no objection to the plans. Other commissioners, however, said they wanted to see greater improvements to pedestrian safety at the site if the plans were to go forward.

The Athens-Clarke County Commission is set to vote on the Iron Triangle amendment in early September.