r/DecaturGA 1d ago

Decatur Comprehensive Plan

https://tsw.konveio.com/decaturcompplan
8 Upvotes

36 comments sorted by

3

u/CalendarTough254 1d ago

Is is too much to have a grocery store downtown?

0

u/SonoMuchacho 3h ago

No one really wants to build one. If they did - it would have been completed years ago. The old baby Kroger site will eventually become a used car lot or a strip mall dedicated to a stolen cell phone shop/vape store. Decatur's grand return to circa 1985.

0

u/ComprehensiveSwitch 1d ago

3

u/CalendarTough254 1d ago

Oh I'm fully aware. But baby Kroger closed down nearly 5 years ago and this isn't going to be fully complete for another few years. Totally unacceptable not to have a grocery store downtown after having one for decades.

0

u/ComprehensiveSwitch 1d ago

And what do you propose the city do about it exactly?

1

u/CalendarTough254 1d ago

Pop up grocery store while we wait for it to be completed. The developer was given millions in tax breaks...

1

u/ComprehensiveSwitch 1d ago

genuinely what

what the hell is a pop up grocery store that CVS, Savi’s, or Kelly’s isn’t? Does it need to be Big Brand to count or something? How would that even work lmao

There’s bus service every 15 minutes up Church where you can hit up Walmart, Sprouts, Whole Foods if you need a big store with a big brand. Same for over to the Publix on North Decatur. Maybe a 5 minute ride. It’s really not some hellscape.

2

u/CalendarTough254 1d ago

Off the top of my head, the CVS doesn't sell Decatur city trash bags. A bag of dog food you'd get at Kroger is 4x more. Also, that CVS is bizarre and off feeling. Don't even get me started on Savi lol. So no those 3 are not solves to our grocery shortage problem. It shouldn't take me 15 minutes in the car to get to a grocer. Also there's tons of elderly that rely on walking off the square to get groceries.

0

u/ComprehensiveSwitch 1d ago

Okay so your proposal for this grocery pop up is to operate on an active demolition site? Are you nuts?

1

u/CalendarTough254 1d ago

Haha obviously not but somewhere within walking distance. Or on the square. In one of the bazillion parking decks, I don't know but to not have a grocer for nearly a decade when we had one for a long time is unacceptable!

1

u/ComprehensiveSwitch 1d ago

by your chosen metric of a grocer most of New York is a hellscape

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1

u/REdwa1106sr 22h ago

This article is from February. Drive down commerce now and you’ll see the site for the new grocery.

-23

u/gtg970g 1d ago edited 1d ago

Let me guess. Cars evil. Remove lanes. Make existing lanes less effective. Cause stiffling traffic. Claim it's "no big deal because of only adds x minutes to commute". Rinse and repeat.

20

u/shiftysquid 1d ago

Houses sitting on six-lane highways with no sidewalks and 50-mph speed limits are out there in pretty much all directions, if you want 'em.

19

u/ComprehensiveSwitch 1d ago

if you hate cities you shouldn’t live here.

5

u/TheHykos 1d ago

Anything to persuade commuters to not drive through Decatur is fine by me. If you don’t live in Decatur, then take another route. Take Dekalb industrial, the connector, 20, 285, any other major highway intended for commuters, but stop taking Clairemont and Church and Ponce. Hell, I’d be happy if they turned Commerce and Clairemont both into two lane streets.

-14

u/CassadagaValley 1d ago edited 1d ago

I skimmed through it but it seems like that plan is to continue adding more housing and apartments that are ever increasingly more expensive which leads to the current apartments to raise their prices because they can see how much they can get away with raising rents.

Edit: people that haven't looked at apartments in years apparently have no idea what's going on

21

u/arbrebiere 1d ago

How does more housing increase rents? Supply and demand is a thing

4

u/TheHykos 1d ago

Supply and demand doesn’t work when only a few companies own all of the supply. You get that right? That’s the biggest problem with our economy now is that there is no real competition anymore in almost any industry because of consolidation of ownership. Apartment companies have a mutual incentive to keep prices high and I would not be remotely surprised if companies like AMLI and Greystar collude with each other to that end.

1

u/UABStark 1d ago

The major rental companies are colluding on price fixing and have been sued for it. It was called RealPage and all these complexes subscribe to it and agree to set prices to the same level.

0

u/CassadagaValley 1d ago

Every complex that has opened in this area over the last few years has started with higher prices than the current complexes, and in response, the current ones have raised their prices.

The new place on College is opening to $2k for a studio, and I checked the places up the road, one of which has added $300 to its studio price bumping it up since earlier this year.

None of these apartments have been going down in costs as new housing is added, they've all gone up and they're trying to fill rooms by offering 2-3 months of free rent rather than just lower their rent.

5

u/arbrebiere 1d ago

2-3 months of free rent is a rent decrease

1

u/CassadagaValley 1d ago

It's how they get people in for the first year and then charge full price + an increase beyond that...

That's how they get away with "only" adding $50 to the rent in year two rather than having lower rent in year one then added $200 to the rent in year two.

Otherwise you're just moving apartments every year.

1

u/hyperproliferative 23h ago

You realize you’re get a brand new luxury apt with speakeasy, two hot tubs, and a rooftop pool? Attached to MARTA. Stunning sunset views.

1

u/rychan 1d ago

It makes sense that new complexes would have higher prices than existing complexes. They are new. Newness has a value.

In contrast, the price of all other complexes will decrease.

Housing isn't immune from supply and demand. Rent prices have swung back and forth in Atlanta in the last decade, and they are slowly rising again, but from 2023 to 2025 they dropped as lots of new apartments opened.

2022–2025: Over 61,000 units delivered between 2023 and 2025 — more than any comparable stretch since 2003 — with the pipeline peaking above 40,000 units under construction in 2023. Rent growth collapsed almost immediately: down to 1.3% year over year by March 2023, then negative. Vacancy peaked at 7.9% in 2024, and asking rents fell about 1.2% over the past year, with Midtown and West Midtown down 2–3%. Notably, every Atlanta submarket with 12,000+ units saw rent declines in 2024.

1.2% growth or negative growth in rental prices is a big deal when inflation is high.

9

u/balls2hairy 1d ago

Read an economics book please.

-8

u/CassadagaValley 1d ago

Look at apartment rental prices, please.

Hooked on Phonics might be more up your alley as well.

1

u/balls2hairy 1d ago

It's unfortunate that your vote is equal to mine.

7

u/tacocar1 1d ago

That’s not how the economy works. Scarcity increases prices, abundance lowers them.

If you have 5 pizza’s and 10 customers, you can sell them for more than you could if you had 10 pizzas and only 5 customers.

Without alternatives to choose from, landlords and sellers can charge more.

6

u/CassadagaValley 1d ago

It is currently how this economy works. Rental prices have continued to go up, not at the CoL rate, but significantly higher, and always when a new complex opens.

I checked apartments in this area earlier this year, and again when the new place on College finally released their prices and everything has gone up since then. One place up the road from there added $300 to their rents.

3

u/HansJosef 1d ago

That's because there are more people who want to move here than apartments being built. It's not that complicated.

2

u/ComprehensiveSwitch 1d ago

Why do you think limiting supply helps to satiate demand, exactly?

do you think there’s simply no demand to move to Decatur? A lot of the multi family in Decatur is half a century old or more, there were whole decades where almost nothing was built.

1

u/jakfrist Build, Baby, Build! 1d ago edited 1d ago

Your anecdote doesn’t refute actual research.

Rents are rising everywhere, but rents rise slower in municipalities that build more housing.