Emory Village community reflects on history, anticipates zoning law changes

Emory Village is finally — hopefully — at the brink of change. In late September of 2023, the DeKalb County Board of Commissioners will vote on a revised, less restrictive zoning code for the Village that will allow for mixed-use residential and commercial development of the area —  something nearly unrecognizable from its current state.

Behind this progress is the Emory Village Alliance (EVA), a nonprofit organization established in 2001 to create “a safe and attractive place” for people to gather, according to their website.

Although EVA has existed for over 20 years, the current state of the Village is far from this ideal vision.

The Village is a revolving door. Each year brings a new conglomeration of businesses and inevitably at least a few dark, empty properties with outdated signage marking what used to be there.  

Emory University’s “college town,” Emory Village, is the brunt of many complaints and jokes from students. 

“How is there no grocery store?” Helen Khuri (25C) asked. 

Additionally, Stephanie Yormack (25B) noted the “lack of healthy food options” and said the Village “is really mainly made up of fast food.” 

“The Village is in dire need of a breakfast or brunch place,” Lily Hollenberg (25C) said.

This is especially pressing since Baker Dude recently closed after only a year in the Village and Rise-n-Dine shut its doors years before that. 

Baker Dude maintains its bright blue sign with the iconic rainbow cupcake logo, a misleading marking for its dimmed, vacant interior. No longer present is the wafting aroma of baked goods and breakfast sandwiches or the bustling conversation of students recapping their weekend endeavors on Sunday mornings. 

The Village’s original zoning overlay was established in 2007, and its associated developments were funded by the Atlanta Regional Commission, Emory University, DeKalb County and many Druid Hills residents. EVA created the overlay and planned and oversaw developments. The overlay itself provided regulations that apply to any development or changes that occur within the boundaries of Emory Village. 

The major developments included replacing a five-way intersection in front of the University’s front entrance, which some deemed “dysfunctional,” installing a fountain and plaza and improving pedestrian infrastructure by replacing broken sidewalks.  

But there has been virtually no development since. EVA has now deemed the 2007 overlay too restrictive, as it has prevented progress towards its goal of creating a residential and commercial Village fit for both the Emory and Druid Hills communities. The proposed zoning overlay will be much looser, allowing up to four stories in most of the Village, permitting rooftop bars and restaurants up to the fourth story and increasing the shopping center’s walkability by reducing the amount of parking spaces.

EVA board member and Druid Hills resident Mark Goldman is leading this revision. Goldman said that the old overlay used to have a minimum square footage requirement for living units. This is eliminated in the revised version to accommodate for graduate student housing, which would have to be smaller than what was previously allowed in order to be financially viable. 

There are seven DeKalb County commissioners, all of which are able to vote on all zoning matters. Oftentimes, the two commissioners that represent each part of the county have influence over the others on issues regarding their specific county. Emory Village is represented by Michelle Long Spears from District 2 and Ted Terry from District 6. 

Originally, the new zoning code was supposed to be reviewed by the DeKalb County Board of Commissioners on Jan. 26, but there have been several delays by the county. University Associate Vice President of Planning and Engagement, David Payne, said he was told that the planning department expects to review with a final vote by the Board of Commissioners in late September. However, Goldman said that as each portion of the revised overlay is approved, it will immediately go into effect.

The County Commission approved a portion of the new zoning overlay on April 25 that allowed Savi Provisions to sell beer and wine. The store will open in fall 2022, according to the company’s website. This section of the new overlay removed the restriction from the original zoning code that prohibited businesses from selling alcohol within a thousand feet of another business that sells alcohol. Since CVS Pharmacy sells beer and wine, this would have kept Savi Provisions from selling alcohol.

 

The Emory Village Alliance

 

Originally called “The Alliance to Improve Emory Village,” EVA is composed of a fully volunteer 18-person board, consisting of Druid Hills residents, Emory community members and the recent addition of three Emory students this past March. Jake Kumferman (25B), Khegan Meyers (24B) and Shweta Agrawal (24G) were selected through an application process to be added to the board in order to bring an Emory student perspective to EVA.

“The board members who are students hopefully will be able to share with us what students want to see that we’re not providing,” Payne said. 

Meyers wrote in an email to the Wheel that he chose to join EVA because he is inspired by their mission and work ethic.  

“It is a place for the village’s stakeholders — businesses, property owners, residents, workers, and students — to come together and create a common vision for our local community,” Meyers wrote. “As a student representative on EVA’s board, I hope to bring a valued perspective to help the Emory Village business community connect with Emory students.”

EVA founder Kathie Gannon said that it was the closing of a Kroger in the Village in 1998 that sparked action from the Druid Hills and Emory communities and inspired her to start the organization. Kroger existed where CVS and Shields Meat Market now reside. 

The Kroger was more than a grocery store, according to Gannon. She said it was a social club where food shopping was secondary to inevitable run-ins with friends and neighbors and the aisles were filled with laughter and community gossip. 

“Our little baby Kroger store closed … and that really riled everybody up,” Gannon said. “Even though it was not the best store in the world, it was our store.” 

Gannon gathered community members from both Emory and Druid Hills to air grievances about the Village at Everybody’s, a cherished pizza joint in the shopping center, which has since closed. Here, EVA was conceived. Everybody’s was replaced by Slice & Pint in 2013, which aimed to fulfill the same role as the previous restaurant, but it also closed after only four years. 

The original zoning code was created after pinpointing the glaring issue of the five-way intersection that uglified the front entrance to the University. It was “horribly bad looking,” Gannon recalled, as well as inefficient and dangerous. 

“Great places, like institutions like Emory, have great front doors,” Gannon said. “And here, their front door was anything but. So we talked about how we have these ideas to develop Emory Village, but we couldn’t do it ‘til the intersection is done.”

The original code led to immediate developments, including replacing the intersection with a roundabout, which Gannon said was her proudest accomplishment with the organization before she left to become DeKalb County Commissioner. It also included the installation of a fountain and plaza near the roundabout, both of which were designed by landscape architect and EVA’s current chair, Todd Hill. There were also many other infrastructure improvements, including rebuilt sidewalks and parallel parking to replace the dangerous angled parking that caused patrons to back out directly into traffic. 

This process was not easy, and it was a struggle to keep everyone happy. The Druid Hills community is protective of their neighborhood, as it is part of a historic district, so allowing more density in the Village as part the original zoning overlay required some compromises. 

Payne joined the neighborhood organization in 2008 and said that the idea behind the overlay was to “hopefully facilitate new investment” in the Village in a way that is “sensitive” to its location in a historic district. 

Included within the text of the zoning overlay are the Druid Hills Historic District Guidelines for the Village, which states the district boundaries, as well as preservation principles and guidelines for approaches for architectural rehabilitation projects. EVA did not modify any of these guidelines in the original overlay, nor will they in the proposed revision. 

The Alliance’s major accomplishments have gone unnoticed by many current students, as EVA’s main initiatives occurred many years ago. These students had never seen the “before” version that existed prior to the major 2007 developments, so they focused their complaints on the businesses, the constant turnover and the dark, empty properties in the Village. 

“We’ve worked to really improve the infrastructure, the pedestrian infrastructure, the roundabout, the plaza,” Payne said. “I think people take those for granted now.”

But a new mixed-use Village could transform student’s complaints into praise, providing them with a vibrant social, residential, retail and dining center. 

EVA’s website says the aim of the zoning overlay revision is to modify the original overlay to be less restrictive and “remove unnecessary barriers” in order to create successful mixed-use developments. They hope to serve the community by creating a pedestrian-oriented Village and incorporating new “public spaces for recreation, events and gatherings.” 

In the meantime, students still complain, mainly about the businesses and the turnover in the Village. But the issue of turnover is uncontrollable, and according to Payne, EVA can’t do much about this, as all the land and property in Emory Village is privately owned.

“It’s definitely an ongoing experiment,” Hill said. “Some things that you would think would work didn’t, or did for a while and then it didn’t.” 

In particular, Hill mentioned Lucky’s, a sports bar that opened in the Village in 2015, before eventually closing its doors in 2020.

Fred Castellucci is the president of Castellucci Hospitality Group, which owns and operates a collection of Atlanta restaurants, including Double Zero in Emory Village. He said that the Village may not be the most attractive location for business owners.

“The only negative really about Emory Village is the seasonality,” Castellucci said. “So when this university goes on break for months at a time, that’s extremely challenging from a business perspective.” 

Property owners, such as Jan Saperstein, control which businesses reside in the Village. 

Saperstein owns most of the properties on the northside of North Decatur road, including CVS and Chase Bank. Additionally, Saperstein owns a few on the west side of Oxford Road, including Zoe’s Kitchen, which will be replaced by Cava in the fall. He said he picks tenants based on how he thinks they will get along with surrounding business owners and how well their businesses will serve the needs of the community. 

As of now, Saperstein said he is content with the current state of the Village and feels little need to redevelop the properties in accordance with EVA’s multi-story, mixed-use redevelopment plan.

“There was never any interest on the part of one side of the street to do any development at all,” Gannon said about Saperstein’s side of the street. “[The owners] collect rent. They’re very happy with what they have. It’s a product that they specialize in, a strip mall kind of product.” 

Saperstein said he is wary of the proposed development.  

“I don’t know if it’s worth all the risk to go do that,” Saperstein said. “What’s good for an apartment renter is sometimes in conflict with what’s good for a retailer or a restaurant. Anything from physical column spacing — you know, because you have apartments above and the columns that hold up all those floors — might split the traditional retail space in the middle.” 

Stuart Meddin, who owns properties on the south side of North Decatur Road, from The Studio Pilates down to Panera Bread, said he is enthusiastic about development. Meddin said he is supportive of EVA’s mission and that he tries to cater to the community when renting out his properties. The Studio Pilates was a recent addition, which Meddin said has been “very well received and extremely busy.”

Gannon said that there are a few other smaller owners in the Village who aren’t eager to redevelop. To really transform the Village into the ideal residential, commercial vision, Gannon said that it’s best to have cooperation from all of the owners. Gannon commended EVA for the continued infrastructure developments and event-planning progress they have made but worried about their ability to do much economic development because of uncooperative owners.

“You have to have owners that come in and say, ‘OK, let’s all work on this together,’ and they’re definitely not doing that, so they’re in a bind,” Gannon said. “And the bind is you either develop one little thing at a time, one space at a time, and if you do that you never get your whole vision. Or if you wait, as we’ve done, then you just sort of lose your momentum.” 

In an attempt to make development more attractive to owners, the new zoning overlay has altered requirements. Board member and architect Cynthia Tauxe said that in terms of multi-storied units in the Village, the assumption had always been that you would want to build to the maximum allowable size. However, she created illustrations, which were last modified on March 16, 2023. The illustrations seek to demonstrate how it would be possible to meet the minimum standards by building a two-story structure, but having the second story be an open-air porch or balcony, altering the definition of what it meant to have two stories. Tauxe said she feels that this would contribute to a more pedestrian-friendly atmosphere.  

Tauxe said that some of the property owners who were contemplating development were hesitant because it wasn’t cost-effective or marketable with such large apartment units. She also wrote that the “odd” shape of the lots made it challenging to build a cost-effective parking deck. 

 

A Return to Olmsted’s Plan

 

As a proud Druid Hills resident for 40 years, Tauxe said she’s especially excited for a new overlay that will allow for development to fit the needs of her community and the original intentions of landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed Druid Hills. 

“Druid Hills is distinctive,” Tauxe said. “It was built to be walkable, and if you really look hard at Olmsted’s plan you can see it in his plan.” 

Tauxe said that Olmsted meant for Druid Hills to be a multi-use community, which she gathered from the way he laid out Lullwater Road. 

“This is getting a bit geeky,” she said with a chuckle, as she explained that the Ponce de Leon Avenue end of Lullwater Road has wide, deep lots and big mansions set high on a hill far back from the street. Whereas, as you come towards Emory Village and the Lullwater roundabout, the lots get smaller and the houses are much closer to the road. Under this plan, Tauxe said that “there’s kind of something for everybody.”

Tauxe said that the Village should be a place with affordable housing for workers, graduate students and young people who can’t afford big houses, which would be more feasible with the revised requirements for apartments in the new zoning code.  

Having student housing in the Village will hopefully help increase its youthful community and bridge the gap between Emory students and Emory Village Alliance, Tauxe said. 

 

Events and Planning

 

EVA recently implemented an events and planning branch of the organization. Last October, the organization hosted their 10th annual Open Streets event. The organization closed the streets for merchants to sell their products at tables, and they hosted events like yoga in the street, a kids halloween parade, food and beverages and live performances. 

Last year, EVA held a spring concert in conjunction with the Olmsted 200 events held to celebrate what would have been Olmsted’s 200th birthday. In April of 2023, they hosted the Coca-Cola “Cleanup the Creek” Concert.

One might think Emory students would flock to these types of events — free food, drinks, music, all within walking distance, but many students weren’t made aware of the event. The University has an active social media presence that promotes upcoming events on and around campus, but there was nothing posted about EVA’s concerts, and the Open Streets event occurred during the University’s parents weekend, when the University hosted on-campus events at the same time.

These events seemed to be more geared toward the Druid Hills community, especially those with young kids who enjoyed events such as the Halloween parade and getting to see inside a fire truck. 

 

Building Community

 

More recently, EVA is working to further involve Emory students in the community. The new zoning overlay aims to achieve this by allowing student housing, as well as potential student-oriented businesses, including rooftop bars, liquor stores, yoga studios and food halls. EVA also added undergraduate and graduate Emory students to the board this year to provide a student perspective. 

“I really believe that Emory, that the Druid Hills area, was meant to be an inclusive place and that the new zoning code is going to help reinforce that,” Tauxe said. 

Additionally, in 2019, four students from Emory’s Goizueta Business School conducted a marketing study on the shopping center. They analyzed the Village in comparison to other successful nearby areas and presented their findings to EVA, claiming the Village needed a better website and an increased social media presence. 

The website has since been updated, and one of the Emory student board members, Agrawal, will also be working on revamping their social media presence to attract the younger audience. 

Agrawal said that she is mainly focusing on updating EVA’s Instagram to effectively share and promote events. 

“I am truly fortunate to be a part of the Emory family, and I am passionate about giving back to the community in the best way possible,” Agrawal wrote in an email to The Wheel.  

EVA leaders like Tauxe said they need the community behind them — the property owners, the students, the residents and the businesses. That’s what they’re trying to accomplish under the new zoning code, which they hope will make redevelopment more enticing, and that the student representation on the board will heighten Emory involvement. Eventually, this could lead to a noteworthy new village — somewhere students proudly call their college town and a staple center for the Druid Hills community.

“The bones are there, the roundabout is there, the infrastructure is there, the little plaza is there,” Payne said. “It’s the commercial areas that need to be developed. That’s the next step.” 

Tauxe is one of the oldest and longest-standing members on the board. She’s optimistic that one day she’ll be able to enjoy EVA’s vision of the Village coming to fruition. 

“My ideal would be to sit on top of the new second-story open-air cafe and sit and drink a cider while staring at the sunset,” she said. “The sunsets in the Village are spectacular. I’ve never seen any sky that’s quite the same blue as we have in Druid Hills. It’s really particularly lovely.”