By Maria Saporta | Thursday, June 26, 2008, 09:20 PM
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Make no mistake. Community leaders do not want the Georgia Tech Foundation to demolish the historic Crum & Forster building at 771 Spring St.
At the Development Review Committee meeting Thursday evening in Midtown, every single person who spoke voiced opposition to the foundation’s plan to tear down the 1926 building and replace it with a vacant lot.
“This is a first-rate building,” said Mark McDonald, the new president of the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation. “It is important to the history of Atlanta, and it’s important to the history of Georgia Tech. Every solution for the historic preservation of this building should be sought.”
In all, 22 people spoke out against the Georgia Tech Foundation’s plans to seek a demolition permit for the building. Some were Georgia Tech students. Some were Georgia Tech alums. Others were Georgia Tech faculty members. And most were concerned Atlanta leaders who saw this fight as a crossroads for the city’s future.
A Georgia Tech alum said he was not proud of the way his alma-mater was responding to community concerns. “There’s a way to save this building,” he said.”There are few moments in the life of cities that determine their future.” He went on to compare this fight to the effort to save the Fox more than three decades ago.
Other alums said they would no longer give money to support the foundation until it dropped its plans to demolish the Crum & Forster building.
Myles Smith, a community leader who is retired from Georgia Power, took it a step further. He called the three foundation representatives at the meeting “hired guns.” He urged the community to put pressure on members of the Georgia Tech Foundation board, many of whom are well-recognized civic leaders.
“We need to tell those board members that they’re doing the wrong thing,” Smith said. “We need to find those people and start pestering them.”
Penelope Cheroff, an Ansley Park resident who chairs the Neighborhood Planning Unit - E, agreed.
“We can not stop this as much as we’d like to,” Cheroff said. “The foundation has decided to destroy this building.” She then urged people to find out who is on the foundation’s board and urge the trustees to save the building.
The foundation’s web site is
www.gtf.gatech.edu, and there’s a link to its board of trustees.
About 1,700 people already have signed an online petition urging the foundation to save the building.
Although Georgia Tech is steadfast in its desire to get a permit to tear down the classically-designed structure, foundation representative Carl Westmoreland said the foundation is “committed to looking at different alternatives for the building.”
The last person who spoke at the Development Review Committee meeting was Ellen Dunham Jones, director of Georgia Tech’s architecture program.
“I certainly would like to offer our help,” she said, explaining that the foundation has been supportive of the architecture program’s in the past. “We would like to help the foundation back by helping find out what alternatives there really are.”
At that point, the members of the Development Review Committee took a vote to oppose the Georgia Tech Foundation’s application for a demolition permit. The vote was unanimous with one exception — a Georgia Tech employee who abstained because he felt it would be a conflict of interest for him to vote.
Now that recommendation will go the city of Atlanta’s Bureau of Planning, which would either approve or deny Georgia Tech’s demolition permit.
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