“It was only those that were adult businesses.
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“The gay bars were never in question,” Wan said. This motion, which did not pass, was interpreted by some to be anti-LGBT and a slight against gay bars. In 2013, the City Council moved to give these adult businesses five years to comply with the underlying zoning. You can continue operating so long as you don’t expand your nonconforming adult business,” he said. “Basically what they’re saying is no new adult businesses could come in and the existing ones … if you’re doing something and we change the zoning, we can’t force you out. Alex Wan, an openly gay Atlanta City Council member, said that at the time, neighbors wanted a Virginia Highlands-like feel with bars, retail, offices and eateries that they could walk to. The zone change to make Cheshire Bridge neighborhood-commercial was approved in the mid-2000s, and grandfathered in adult businesses. Now it’s … becoming just a sterile place.” “They’re building apartments and storage facilities instead of having a planned community like the neighbors had hoped.
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Those are going to be another 300 apartments,” Darnell said. “You see these huge gaps on Cheshire Bridge of things just being totally plowed down. What did happen was an economic recession, followed by developers swooping in. “This vision that the community had for Cheshire Bridge Road - making it a work/live-type of community - nothing came of that.” They tried to make it go away, and the legislation didn’t pass,” Darnell said. “The community’s been in an uproar for at least a decade about wanting to get rid of Cheshire Bridge Road.
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“Atlanta is already bad enough with Sherman coming through and destroying everything, burning all the buildings down, and to me it feels like the same thing,” said Teri Darnell, an out photographer who lives in the area. Anything you need is on Cheshire Bridge.”īut the scenery of this eclectic corridor is changing: zoning allows for more apartment complexes to replace the patchwork of older retail and restaurant structures, and some worry what this may mean for the historically LGBT-friendly part of the city. “You can get the best Italian food in the city. “You can get anything on Cheshire Bridge,” Hamill, owner of BJ Roosters bar, said. Bobby Hamill calls it “the little red-light district” of Atlanta.