Community Corner

Loring Heights Joins Buckhead Council of Neighborhoods

Group approves community, although it lies outside Buckhead boundaries

The Buckhead Council of Neighborhoods Thursday night voted to accept Loring Heights as a member, although the community lies outside Buckhead's boundaries.

Loring Heights Neighborhood Association President Ron Grunwald pushed for his community to join the BCN, saying "we'd like to deal with a bigger group." He cited the BCN's "bigger regional perspective. That's something we'd like to be involved with."

Although Loring Heights lies outside the Buckhead boundaries set by the Buckhead Coalition and recognized by the Georgia Legislature, the BCN found that the neighborhood of 331 homes has common interests with Buckhead. Grunwald said that the neighborhood, which abuts Midtown to the south, is in Buckhead's E. Rivers Elementary school district and represented by District 8 Councilwoman Yolanda Adrean, who serves Buckhead.

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BCN Chairman Jim King before the vote said that the BCN's bylaws stated that "the group would define its own boundaries. The issue to consider is whether Loring Heights is in our community of interests or outside of it?"

Ann O'Connell of the Mount Paran-Northside Citizens Association said the BCN's main consideration shouldn't be whether communities are within Buckhead boundaries but whether they are "like-minded neighborhoods."

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Roger Moister of Collier Hills North objected to Loring Heights' petition, saying the community had dropped out of the Brookwood Alliance, whose neighborhoods are also part of the BCN. Moister asked why Loring Heights would seek to join the BCN when it had left a group with some of the same communities.

Grunwald said that Loring Heights had decided to leave the Brookwood Alliance because its main focus is on one issue, a plan to improve the Peachtree Road corridor up to Peachtree Battle. Grunwald said he had observed that the BCN is involved in a broad range of isuses and that he believed that the BCN would represent the interests of Loring Heights, which doesn't border Peachtree.

After King's statement that the BCN should be "more inclusive than exclusive," the group voted to approve Loring Heights as a member. 

The BCN also heard O'Connell's analysis of the city of Atlanta's underfunded pension system and reform efforts. A separate article on O'Connell's presentation will follow in Buckhead Patch.


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