In a 3-2 vote, with one abstention, the Atlanta Zoning Committee voted to approve proposed legislation that would oust adult businesses along Cheshire Bridge Road by 2018.
Voting in favor were Keisha Lance Bottoms, chair of the committee; Alex Wan, co-chair and sponsor of the legislation; and Carla Smith. Voting no were Howard Shook and Ivory Lee Young. Joyce Sheperd, who arrived late to the meeting, abstained.
Next stop for the controversial legislation that has been amended numerous times before it was decided to focus solely on strip clubs and sex stores is the full City Council on June 3.
The new grassroots group QUEER UP! Atlanta is going toe-to-toe with supporters of proposed ordinances to rub out adult businesses on Cheshire Bridge Road with a petition of their own.
The group's petition is named, "Alex Wan & NPU-F's zoning proposal.: Atlanta City Council Members: Vote NO on Cheshire Bridge changes!" and is a direct response to a petition started Monday by those living in the neighborhoods surrounding the popular thoroughfare.
The group is also asking people to show up at the city's Zoning Committee meeting on May 29.
A petition popped up this week on change.org urging the Atlanta City Council to banish adult businesses on Cheshire Bridge Road.
Posted to the popular website by a group calling itself "Concerned Atlanta Residents" and made up of people living in the area, the petition states, "Adult businesses are incompatible with residential neighborhoods. Our neighborhoods were here decades before the adult businesses started appearing on Cheshire Bridge through a series of zoning loopholes and poor decisions/enforcement by the City of Atlanta."
Applause broke out in the packed Atlanta City Council chambers Thursday after the Zoning Review Board voted to deny approval...
Atlanta City Councilmember Alex Wan in an email today to constituents said he would only target adult businesses in his proposed rezoning ordinances for Cheshire Bridge Road. That means car washes and auto body shops, which were included in the original legislations to be zoned out, are safe for now.
He also is extending the amortization period for the adult business to five years, rather than the original two years.
A new grassroots organization named Queer Up! Atlanta is rallying people to attend the Zoning Review Board meeting on May...
Bobby Hammill sits in his office in the new BJ Roosters on Cheshire Bridge Road. Opened just last month, the gay club is twice the size of its old location just down the street. His neighbors are Jungle and Heretic, two other popular gay clubs, and the Doll House, a strip club.
“I’ve lived in the area for 21 years and I understand what the complaints are about from the neighborhoods,” Hammill said. “But I personally feel what’s going on is unfair. It’s like they are prosecuting people who really aren’t doing anything wrong.”
What’s going on, and has been going on since January, is proposed zoning changes to the Cheshire Bridge Road corridor, long considered Atlanta’s red light district.
Zoning proposal pits gay City Council member, critics
Up to 15 people representing a cross section of Atlanta will be named to Atlanta’s “Working Group on Prostitution” to make recommendations to the city to find ways to curb illegal sex work.
At the Feb. 25 Atlanta City Council Public Safety Committee work session, the city’s Chief Operating Officer Duriya Farooqui made a request to put a hold on the proposed “banishment ordinance” so that she and Michael Julian Bond, chair of the Public Safety Committee, could appoint members to the working group.
The city’s backing off of the banishment ordinance, proposed by Atlanta Police Chief George Turner, came after stiff backlash from social justice activists, including many LGBTQ activists.
At a recent public hearing, a speaker describing Cheshire Bridge Road as “the most wonderful street in Atlanta” drew chuckles from the audience. That the comment elicited laughs sadly captures the disappointment many hold in how the corridor falls far short of its real potential.
Over a decade ago, nearby residents, businesses, property owners and city planners undertook a long, collaborative public process to design a vision for the area. Their work resulted in the Cheshire Bridge Road Study adopted by the city of Atlanta in 1999.
Six years later, the zoning changes corresponding to that plan were enacted, creating two neighborhood commercial (NC) districts along the street, but in the eight years since 2005, no more meaningful progress has been made.
Cheshire Bridge Road: alluring, risque, diverse, authentic, vibrant, alive, and now... endangered because of people like Atlanta City Councilman Alex Wan, the openly gay official whose District 6 includes both Cheshire Bridge Road and Midtown.
Recently, we learned of a zoning effort to change the character of Cheshire Bridge by getting rid of restaurants, bars, clubs, and stores that were grandfathered in as part of a 2005 rezoning. Now Mr. Wan wants to go back and get rid of grandpa.
The legal aspects of this do not bode well for Wan nor for the neighborhoods he purportedly represents, as they have proposed an illegal “taking.”