Special Appeal

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Hello fellow Stone Mountain neighbors, faithful Village Corner customers, friends and family:

Our restaurant is facing a serious problem and we need your help and support.
 

The City of Stone Mountain and the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) have formulated a plan to "improve" the 5 point intersection adjacent to our restaurant building.  These improvements include building a sidewalk with a six-inch curb directly in front of our building.  If this construction takes place our restaurant, as well as other surrounding businesses, will suffer immensely.

• Our 50-seat garden patio will be destroyed
• Our beautiful and famous Japanese Cherry tree will be uprooted
• At least ten parking spaces will be eradicated
• Convenient access to our building will be extinguished
  

These proposed improvements assert a serious threat to our Stone Mountain Village merchants and will greatly challenge our ability to remain in business.  We realize the need for provisions and upgrades within a community; however, this particular plan devised by the GDOT does not create a solution.

This plan is intended to improve the traffic flow at an intersection that currently holds a grade "F". (There are six Level of Service, or LOS rates ranging from "A" to "F". LOS "A" is defined as being ideal flow conditions with little or no delays, whereas LOS "F" is defined as conditions where extreme delays are encountered).

The GDOT states in their plan that the intersection will maintain a LOS "F" . Further, Stone Mountain citizens are expected to pay in excess of $600,000 in tax dollars on this project.  The GDOT is expected to pay more than $1,000,000 of taxpayers' money.

Please support Stone Mountain merchants and residents by contacting the City of Stone Mountain mayor, Gary Peet and OPPOSE THESE PLANS.  Below is a sample letter which you may simply copy and paste into your email window and send to Mayor Gary Peet at mayor@stonemountaincity.org

PLEASE SEND YOUR EMAILS SOON AS WE WERE GIVEN A JAUNUARY 6th DEADLINE FOR RESPONSES!

Thank you so much for your overwhelming support and continued patronage. We appreciate each and every one of you who have become like family over the years.

Sincerely,
The Village Corner

If you share our concern, please copy and paste the email text below and send it to the Honorable Mayor of Stone Mountain.   A copy of the email will be sent to us, as well.  We need to keep a record of our supporters.

UPDATE:

Letter to the Editor

Published in the October 2007 (Volume 40, Issue 7) editon of the SMOKE SIGNAL, a TUCKER, GA. community newspaper:

An article in last month's Smoke Signal regarding the changes in Stone Mountain containeda few inaccuracies involving our restaurant and bakery, The Village Corner.

The project of improving the intersection is a project of the City of Stone Mountain, not the DOT, as reported.  The City has n agreement with the DOT to design the intersection (to be approved by DOT) andis responsible for the land acquisition.  The funds for the project come from a grant, plus $700,000, which the taxpayers of the small community will have to pay.  This s an exorbitant amount for a community of 7,000d not have an input in the decision-making process.

The purpose of th project is to alleviate traffic on Main Street.  The most interesting phase of this proposal is that it exits cars back onto Main Street!

Our entire patio, large cherry tree, and nine parking spaces will succumb should the present design be approved.  Land that has been offered to us as additional parking is not owned by the city; they do not control it, nor does not come close to what is being taken.  The plan further proposes a sidewalk in front of our building which will directly impact access to our front entrance.  Should this plan be implrmented the economic impact would force us to close our business.

An alternative solution has been proposd and our attorney, Scott Peters, is hopeful more level heads will prevail.

Claus and Hilde Friese, Owners

The Village Corner