Mayor Andre Dickens announced Aug. 16 final agreements have been reached with Peoplestown homeowners that have fought for years to stay in their homes where the city wants to build infrastructure to alleviate chronic flooding and sewer overflows.
The Atlanta City Council voted Aug. 15 to approve $5.3 million in settlement agreements negotiated between Dickens and the three remaining families that owned homes in the area needed to build the project. The agreements come after an often tense and roughly 10-year battle between the families who refused to sell their homes to the city even after threatened with eminent domain.
“I have spent this year listening to Peoplestown residents, working directly with the most-impacted families, and charting a course that will allow us to move forward in a way that is in line with our values and fulfills our obligation to alleviate the challenges that have plagued Peoplestown,” Dickens said in a city news release.
“I thank all the families for their willingness to engage with me and for being passionate advocates for the city we all love,” he said. “I know these families wanted to stay in their homes, and I am grateful for the sacrifice they are making for the larger community and our city.”
The council authorized a settlement of $1.975 million to Tanya M. Washington; a $1.9 million settlement to Robert L. Darden; and a settlement of $1.473 million to the family of Mattie Jackson. The total is just over $5.3 million.
The Department of Watershed Management will soon start the bid process to find a company to build an underground stormwater vault covered by a water retention garden and pond. The project will alleviate chronic flooding and sewage issues. Construction is expected to start in 2023.
The project will be housed in the block bounded by Atlanta Avenue and Connally, Ormond and Greenfield streets. The city previously acquired all the other properties on the block through an earlier agreement negotiated by Dickens in June.
“For nearly 10 years I have maintained, with my neighbors, a desire to stay in my home on Atlanta Avenue and in my beloved community of Peoplestown,” said resident Tanya Washington in the release.
“It is clear that the city will move forward with its plans and that makes it reasonable to seek a satisfactory resolution,” she said. “My disappointment is curbed by the respect and integrity Mayor Dickens has shown in how he has dealt with us and this issue he inherited. We hope our fight will inspire other communities to stand up for themselves and inspire responsible exercise of authority by those in power,” Washington said.
“I am at peace with this outcome and grateful to Mayor Dickens for his role in achieving a mutually respectful result,” she said.
Mattie Jackson was a longtime Peoplestown resident and civic leader who advised mayors and represented Atlanta by bearing the torch that symbolized the 1996 Olympic Games. The City Council honored her when she died in 2020.
“The struggle to remain in our home over all these years, a home that she loved and cherished, was devastating to the family,” her family said in the release.
“Today that chapter is closed. The family of Mattie Jackson applauds Mayor Dickens for bringing resolution to this matter. As a candidate he promised he would do it and he has kept his word,” the family said. “We hope the city will find some fitting way to honor our matriarch, Mattie Jackson, in the public space that will be developed on the ground where she lived, raised her family, and so ably served the City of Atlanta. That would be a fitting last chapter for her legacy.”
The Darden family acknowledged the hardship they faced trying to stay in their longtime home.
“Like all the other families that are parties to this settlement, we love our home in Peoplestown where we have so many memories accumulated over so many years,” said the Darden family in the release.
“The threat of being uprooted was a great hardship and has taken a toll over the years. We are proud to have stood shoulder to shoulder with our neighbors waiting for our cries to be heard and justice to be served,” the family said. “It is a blessing to have this struggle brought to a satisfactory conclusion, and for that Mayor Dickens deserves credit. He said he would get it done and he got it done.”
The parties to this agreement acknowledge the key role that Deborah Scott, CEO of Georgia STAND-UP, has played in facilitating and mediating this agreement, according to the release.
The project will alleviate sewer overflows from the combined sewer system and stormwater flooding that have threatened public health and safety of residents in the Peoplestown neighborhood.
The project is also the linchpin of sewer infrastructure improvements for the broader Southeast Atlanta neighborhoods in the Custer Avenue sub-basin of the larger Intrenchment Creek Basin. The project is a critical component of the city’s obligations under two federal consent decrees signed in 1998 and 1999 to upgrade sewer infrastructure and improve water quality.