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Kay Lee is a Community Initiative Entrepreneur spending time on projects that integrate her experience and corporate skills with her deep interest in making a difference in the community. Since her retirement from Southern Company, she has been focused on community projects in and around Covington and Newton County. The last ten years of her career in the private sector centered around special project roles - including managing Georgia Power's Olympic Project.
“The future of the Atlanta region will depend on the ingenuity and bold actions of its cities and communities.”
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April 10, 2009
Together We Stand: How Collaboration Can Shape a Community
Kay B. Lee, Director, Center for Community Preservation and Planning
Downtown areas can be many things to many people. Residents see them as a charming, community-centered way of life. City governments see them as magnets for attracting new residents and businesses. Developers and businesses see them as promising centers of new profit. And visitors see them as a destination – a place to find the history and soul of a community. How do communities maintain these ideas as they grow?
Growth will happen. But, we can embrace the change while deciding how growth impacts our communities.
By the late 1990’s Newton had become a rapidly growing county on the frontline of Atlanta sprawl. Covington – the county seat – faced a loss of identity and quality of life as it became just another exurban, bedroom community.
The people of Covington wanted to prevent that from happening. As a result, citizens, nonprofit organizations, and city and county leadership banded together in a collaborative effort to preserve their small town feel and rural character.
The impetus for this effort was the Arnold Fund, established in 1952 by Covington residents Robert and Florence Arnold. As Atlanta’s sprawl line began flirting with the outskirts of town, Fund trustees – all descendents of the Arnolds – partnered with the community to seek creative solutions.
In 2000, Andres Duany – a Miami-based architect who has been dubbed the father of new urbanism – was invited to Covington for a community charrette. When complete, Duany told the citizens they could have measured growth that would boost the economy while preserving the city’s integrity. He laid out a plan that renovated Covington’s central area and created mixed-use development that brought homes, shops, and offices close together.
Since that time, the Arnold Fund, the governmental bodies of both Covington and Newton County, and a myriad of local residents have invested millions of dollars in and around Downtown in a recreation and senior services center around a 158-acre park, a traditional neighborhood development, a downtown loft development with on-street retail, an upgrade to the historic courthouse, a wetlands preserve area adjacent to the City Hall, and a new county government complex.
In 2002, the Arnold Fund provided seed money for The Center for Community Preservation and Planning, a nonprofit established to provide a neutral place for leaders and citizens to gather and create unique ways to manage growth and change for the entire county. During its existence, The Center has helped shepherd the visioning, planning, and decision-making process necessary to determine a collective direction.
Is it possible that a relatively small, commonplace community like Covington might be considered a “City Upon a Hill”? The future of the Atlanta region will depend on the ingenuity and bold actions of its cities and communities. The model that has been created by leaders and citizens in Covington and Newton County – a neutral place, a multi-jurisdictional decision-making process, and a logic-driven built-out plan – fit that description. |
