A team is envisioning how a 200-acre district along Peachtree Rd. could become Brookhaven’s walkable center. New projects are bringing community gathering spaces around Perimeter Mall and the Dunwoody Village. Sandy Springs is studying how to expand its town center to bring more restaurants and possibly a hotel. Developers are reshaping areas in Buckhead with new tenants and community events.  
It’s all being done in an effort to create more walkability across each of these communities. What’s motivating this trend? Creating a better quality of life for these communities.

Other suburban cities have led the way, such as Roswell, Alpharetta, Woodstock, and Duluth, which have all remade their historic downtowns into modern town centers. 

“These projects build the connective tissue of the community,” said Rusty Paul, mayor of Sandy Springs, which is now looking to expand its town center project City Springs. “It’s really created a sense of unity, cohesion, and identity for the whole community.”

Amy Wenk takes a deeper look at the development efforts that are happening across the region, making us ask the question: Is OTP v ITP a thing of the past?

Preston Marshall (above) works in an art-deco fantasy called Atlanta’s Hotel Midtown with lots of gold, giant floral wallpaper, and furniture that looks like it’s from the set of "Mad Men." Marshall runs loss prevention at the hotel, and in his line of work, keeping the fantasy intact sometimes means keeping people out.

“Well in the past, the only option we had was calling 911 and calling the police,” said Marshall. 

He’s had to do it a lot, but there have been times when it gives him an uneasy feeling. 

“My heart reached out to some of the individuals, especially knowing that some of these people have substance abuse issues or some of them had mental health issues,” he said.

But since this summer, Marshall’s had a new option. He’s one of more than 800 Atlantans who’ve called 311 as an alternative to calling the police when they see someone struggling with their mental health, extreme poverty, or a range of other non-emergency quality-of-life concerns.

It’s called the Policing Alternative and Diversion Initiative (PAD) which sends out response teams from their office downtown.

Via our partners at WABE, reporter Lisa Hagen examines the PAD program, which helps get people medical care, deal with financial entanglements, find emergency shelter or ideally, long-term housing.

This story was made possible with support from The 4am Fund for reporting on mental health and policing.

Our regular columnist Carol Niemi is a pro at finding the most intersting stories in local communities. This month, she shares the story of Brookhaven's Jason Green.

"One of the most terrifying moments in movie history is the kitchen scene in “Jurassic Park,” in which two relentless velociraptors hunt two trapped children. Don’t remember? Watch it on YouTube and hold on tight. Then imagine bringing a smaller version of those killers into your home.
 

That’s what Brookhaven resident Jason Green does. A licensed master falconer, he brings winged raptors, also known as birds of prey, into his home to acclimate or “man” them.

“In the beginning, they either want to kill you or escape,” he said of these born killers at the top of the bird food chain."

Read her whole story here.