At the time, as we marked our 5th anniversary, I was getting down to some business I had planned before the pandemic: Securing office space, upgrading technology for advertising purposes and actively promoting the next stage of development for this news site.
It’s been an eventful and largely successful year, and I’ve come to regard Labor Day as a time to reflect, take stock of what’s happened and gear up for what’s to come.
One of my priorities continues for a few more months, as I recently launched a crowdfunding campaign, “6 for 6,” asking for readers to make financial contributions.
We did this in July, when we observed our 6th anniversary, knowing it was the middle of summer and people would be out and about.
Now that school is back in session and fall will be here soon (it feels a little like it this weekend!), we’re revving up our drive to ask you to help support the work that East Cobb News does in chronicling our community.
As I have said in previous appeals, this is totally voluntary—we do not have a paywall and do not charge readers for anything on our site or to subscribe to the newsletter.
But we hear from readers all the time about how much they value what they get from East Cobb News. If you agree, we’d like to ask you to consider making a donation. The amount can be whatever you like, but we’re suggesting $6 a month.
It’s similar to a public radio/TV fundraising drive, and every dollar is greatly appreciated. Thanks to all of you who have donated thus far!
We have a secure system on the Press Patron platform, which helps local news publishers like me solicit support from readers like you.
The video below explains more about “6 for 6” as well as what’s in the local headlines this week, and tells you more about what’s coming up.
Next weekend, East Cobb News will be taking part in the EAST COBBER Parade and Festival for the very first time. We won’t be marching down Johnson Ferry Road, but we will have a table at the festival, which takes place from 11-3 at Johnson Ferry Baptist Church.
Come by and say hello, pick up some East Cobb News swag and let’s get acquainted! I love meeting my readers and can’t wait to see all of you.
Have a fantastic Labor Day weekend, and please feel free to get in touch: wendy@eastcobbnews.com.
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Dance Stop Studios owner Lynette Strickland (center) and some of her teaching staff.
Last Saturday I had the privilege of profiling one of East Cobb’s longest-running businesses.
As we published earlier this week, Dance Stop Studios has begun its 50th year of offering dance instruction for youth and adults alike—from jazz and tap and classical ballet to yoga and Zumba.
Keeping people on the move, and in a healthy way, has been at the core of owner Lynette Strickland’s work.
As she told us, she started out in a small converted home in 1974 on the outskirts of East Marietta—the original East Cobb, if you will—and moved around as she needed more space.
Along the way, she taught a generation of young people about a love for dance that is obvious as soon as you step inside the studio space at the Merchants Exchange Shopping Center on Roswell Road.
Some of those former students are now among her teaching staff, including a woman whose own daughter is taking classes there.
The family atmosphere of many small businesses in our community is authentic, as I have learned in speaking with many of these entrepreneurs.
I admire their tenacity, resilience and vision, and their ability to adapt to trying conditions.
Most of all, I admire the sheer passion that continues to underline the work that they do.
They’ll tell you doing what they love doesn’t seem like work at all, despite the grind, tribulations and challenges that come with it.
That’s my outlook on what I have done with East Cobb News, as we enter our seventh year of giving you the local news that you love.
Many of you tell me this, and it’s so energizing to get this feedback on a regular basis.
I just got a note from someone sending in a calendar listing: “Thanks for your commitment to local news. There aren’t enough people like you—we need this info!”
The truth is, I love telling stories of people like these in our community as much as they do in sharing them with me.
That’s because this comes from the heart, and it’s about much more than just reporting the news.
It’s about building a sense of community that becomes more special with each new story I am honored to tell.
Last month East Cobb News began asking readers for financial support to continue the work that we’re doing. It’s called the “6 for 6” campaign, in honor of our 6th anniversary.
We’re asking readers to donate $6 a month, but any amount will be greatly appreciated. We have a few dozen individuals who have done that thus far, and we’re asking more of you to consider making a financial contribution.
We have set up a special page with more information and a link to donate to our crowdfunding platform, Press Patron, or. you can contribute directly below.
Press Patron is specially set up for local publishers like me who solicit support from readers. It’s encrypted and secure, and it’s flexible for any amount you’d like to give.
Contribute what you like, whether it’s monthly, yearly or a one-time basis. Here are some suggested levels of support:
Your support will help us continue to grow and expand and serve a community of nearly 200,000 people—that’s a lot of folks!
While this kind of community journalism does come from the heart, it also takes some resources to do as well as we would like.
Most of all, we want to continue telling the stories of the people that make East Cobb a special place to call home.
I explained all this and more recently in an interview (video below) with Atlanta public relations professional Mitch Leff, who also champions the work of local journalists and lets us tell our stories.
Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with questions about using Press Patron and contributing to our “6 for 6” campaign, as well as general inquiries about East Cobb News: wendy@eastcobbnews.com.
From the bottom of my heart, thanks for your readership!
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Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
A juggler from Timber Ridge Elementary School at the EAST COBBER parade, which returns in 2023.
A week ago today we launched our “6 for 6” campaign to ask readers to support what we do at East Cobb News bringing you community news and information.
I’m humbled by the support we’ve received thus far, and wanted to say thanks to all of you who have contributed!
We’re calling it “6 for 6” in that we’re marking our 6th anniversary in July, and asking for a minimum contribution of $6 a month, or $60 a year.
Some of you have done that, and even stepped up those amounts more. We’ve gotten pledges for recurring monthly contributions of $12 a month and $20 a month, and a one-time contribution of $125.
I’m just blown away by the response, especially in the stifling heat of the dead summer.
What I planned as a soft launch with people on vacation has exceeded my expectations—so thanks again!
It’s called Press Patron, and it’s designed to help local news publishers like East Cobb News solicit support from their readers.
As I noted last week, I’d like to get 500 supporters signed up by the end of September and 1,000 by the end of the year. After our first week, we’re certainly on track to achieve that, and want to maintain the momentum.
We’d really like to encourage recurring monthly donations if you can swing that. When you click on the link to donate above, you’re not required to create account. But if you want to change your contribution settings, you’ll need to do that.
Please note that since we are a for-profit business, your contribution is not tax-deductible. But it will go a long way to help us keep giving you the local news that you love!
And during our initial “pledge drive” of sorts, we’ll include in these posts some of our favorite photos over the years, including the above taken at the EAST COBBER parade and festival, which is returning this September.
You depend on us to get you the news. We depend on you to help us financially. Now is not time to sit on the sidelines waiting for someone else to support local journalism.
We offer some affordable and dynamic ways to promote local businesses, and we’ve got enticing readership numbers to help those running small businesses to reach new customers.
Our “Six for Six” campaign also includes some advertising specials, so please visit this link for more.
Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with questions about using Press Patron and our contributing to supporters’ campaign, as well as general inquiries about East Cobb News: wendy@eastcobbnews.com.
Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
Our first post—July 8, 2017—was about the Skip Wells Memorial Ride that began at Sprayberry High School, and we’ve been truckin’ ever since.
This month, East Cobb News turns six years old!
On July 8, 2017, we published our very first post, about a motorcycle ride to honor a fallen East Cobb high school graduate who was shot to death in a domestic terrorist act while serving his country.
Truth be told, I had declared my independence as a journalist well before that, as I was laying the groundwork for East Cobb News.
A quarter-century at newspapers and a few more for various online outlets helped prepare me to take on the task of building a news resource to last for this community, where our family settled exactly 50 years ago this year.
I chose this particular time to make it official and finally push the button, and the journey has been an interesting, challenging and very gratifying one.
As we have recently celebrated our nation’s independence, I’m asking East Cobb News readers to help us celebrate ours, as we have reached an important milestone.
For the first time, I’m asking readers to help support the work we do in serving you with news and useful community information.
We’re suggesting that you contribute a minimum of $6 a month, or $60 a year, in honor of the 6th anniversary of East Cobb News.
We’re calling it the “6 for 6” campaign, and for the rest of the year we will be encouraging all of you to help us out. We’ll have special promotions, swag and other goodies and giveaways for readers and supporters.
While those details are being worked out, let me be clear about a few things:
This is a totally voluntary campaign. You are not required to pay to read and use East Cobb News. You can click on to any link on our site, get our newsletter and follow our social media platforms as you have been without interruption, at no cost to you.
One of our first major events to cover was the opening celebration for the new Walton High School classroom building in late July 2017.
We appreciate our growing readership as we have built up an essential community resource.
A few numbers as we approach the end of 6 years:
Averaging 150K page views/month
Averaging 70K unique visitors/month
More than 8.3K newsletter subscribers and growing
Unlike other local media outlets, we don’t lock down our content behind a pay wall or require you to register to read stories. We don’t bombard visitors to our site with noisy pop-up videos. We don’t clutter our pages with out-of-town clickbait.
But because we’re committed to keeping East Cobb News free and accessible to all, we’re asking for your financial support today, as we continue to build a sustainable local news business that puts community first.
In order for us to do that, we need you to do two things:
Support our advertisers!
Becoming a paying supporter!
Well, three things actually:
Tell your friends, families and neighbors about us too!
Read more here about our recommended contribution options, and how to pay online or by other methods.
You can also donate an amount of your choosing.
Regardless of what you give, you can do so easily by clicking here.
Our payment platform is hosted by Press Patron, which makes it easy to support the journalism you love via one-time or monthly contributions.
The Press Patron platform is safe and secure, and is connected with the prominent Stripe online payment system. When you sign up to contribute, you can control your account and payment preferences.
We’re suggesting at the very least that you contribute $6 a month—in honor of our 6th anniversary!
Six bucks a month. Think about it. That’s a couple of cups of drive-through coffee. Or a lunch entreé. Or an after-dinner dessert.
(Is any of this making you hungry?)
East Cobb News readers eagerly await our coverage of restaurant openings and other “foodie” news.
That’s about what some of the most notable independent journalists in the country charge for their newsletters.
Unlike them, however, we don’t have tens and hundreds of thousands of subscribers and readers.
Local news doesn’t scale, but at its best it is deeply devoted to serving its readership.
That’s where you come in.
“6 for 6” is very similar to a public radio campaign, but for your hometown news site, lovingly started from scratch by a journalist who grew up here and calls East Cobb home.
The Power of Local
Over the last three-plus years, as the COVID-19 pandemic and the response to it affected every aspect of daily life, readers came to depend on East Cobb News for all the details about how this affected our community.
We know this not only because our audience numbers skyrocketed during that time, but also because of more direct feedback we got. Such as this reader who gets our newsletter, and who sent us this message:
“This is a fabulous publication. Thank you so much!”
You have no idea what a shot in the arm that has been as we navigated these unusual times with all of you. We never stopped working to catch you up with all the vital updates about the reopenings of businesses and schools, how to follow your local elected bodies online and how to help out those in need.
Here are a few other reader testimonials we’d like to share:
“You have a great sense of the community and what makes it tick.”
“Appreciate your deep and objective coverage. Thank you.”
“I read it religiously. I have lived in East Cobb for 43 years. It is my community of people and places. Keeping up with things tightens the feelingsI have for East Cobb. Basically, I love your publication!”
Community activism over the Sprayberry Crossing Shopping Center eventually led to a redevelopment project that’s currently underway.
As we have returned to normal, we’ve resumed chronicling the things you’ve come to expect from East Cobb News:
Local government, schools, public safety, getting around, development
Business openings, especially retail and restaurants
Events, quality of life issues and community service
Elections, candidate profiles and how to cast your vote
Human-interest features and the activities of our community’s youth
What we’ve seen in the last three years is how vital local news has become to a community, and people in East Cobb have been generous with their compliments and with their eyeballs.
We greatly appreciate the many reader contributions we get, letting us know about an event or fundraiser, honoring people for their good works and accomplishments, and sending along feel-good stories in a time of great stress and anxiety.
Now East Cobb News needs something else from you to continue doing the work we’ve done not just for the last three years, but for the last six.
To say launching East Cobb News was a labor of love is an understatement.
What was truly behind the idea was the sense of opportunity it presented to create something just for this community.
Journalism has been my profession for 40 years, but East Cobb is the place I’ve called home, and that nurtured my aspirations for my career and life.
But local news has taken a very deep hit as my profession and the news industry have been transformed over the last two decades.
There’s been so much destruction and job loss, and communities have been deprived of vital information they need.
As I wrote here last Labor Day, this is a time to build, and I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished thus far with East Cobb News.
Readers tell us constantly how important quality-of-life issues matter to them in our coverage of the community.
The Power of Now
You depend on us to get you the news. We depend on you to help us financially. Now is not time to sit on the sidelines waiting for someone else to support local journalism.
We offer some affordable and dynamic ways to promote local businesses, and we’ve got enticing readership numbers to help those running small businesses to reach new customers.
Our “Six for Six” campaign also includes some advertising specials, so please visit this link for more.
Business owners and marketing professionals can also check out our other advertising information. We have a variety of products and price points and most importantly, the flexibility to work with you to craft a package that fits your needs and your budget.
If you really want to stand out with your message, East Cobb News can give you something no other local outlet can provide—dozens of dynamic online display and newsletter formats, including video, slideshow gallery and rotating cube features that dazzle readers and convert into sales.
To me, The Power of Local also extends to local business, and East Cobb News is the ideal marketing partner for local businesses that are trying to thrive in the post-pandemic world.
We love to share news of new and expanded businesses in East Cobb—hey, we’re a local small business too!
We approach advertising the same way we do the news—as a fellow business owner and citizen, fully invested in our community. We want you to grow and thrive, because we understand how local businesses form the backbone of our community.
Now more than ever.
As we have recently celebrated the birthday of our nation’s founding ideals, we’d like to ask our readers to help us as we continue the work of providing independent, online local news and useful community information.
That’s our one and only mission, and it’s unlike anything else in East Cobb.
Please consider giving the suggested amounts with the options below, or whatever you like. While we greatly appreciate recurring annual monthly or annual contributions, we also accept one-time donations that can be renewed as you like:
Here’s the link to contribute, and to create an account with the Press Patron platform. It was formed with local news publishers in mind to help them grow and become sustainable.
I’ve set some substantial, but reachable goals for the “6 for 6” campaign: We’d like to have 500 subscribers by the end of September, and another 500 by the end of the year.
Frankly, I think we can achieve much more than that, and I’ll update those numbers and encourage more readers to take part as we go along in the coming months.
Please keep in mind that East Cobb News is a for-profit business. While your donations are not tax deductible, they will go a long way to help us keep giving you the local news that you love!
As always, please feel free to reach out with questions, news tips and advertising queries: wendy@eastcobbnews.com.
Enjoy your summer, stay safe and be well East Cobb!
As I packed my East Cobb News swag bag into my car Saturday morning, I took a deep breath.
I’ve been promoting this community news venture in a variety of ways since launching it in the summer of 2017, mostly on my site and newsletter and before the local business community.
But going before the larger community was something different. The Taste of East Cobb event on Saturday was a great opportunity to meet some of my readers, spread the word about it to those who weren’t familiar and reinforce the value of local news, community information and small business advertising.
It couldn’t have been a better day on the grounds of Johnson Ferry Baptist Church, weatherwise and otherwise.
People stopped by the booth, picked up pens, magnets and other goodies I laid out for them, chatted and signed up for the newsletter.
Many of them said simply this: “I really like what you do and I just wanted to tell you that.”
Or words to that effect. Also this:
“Keep up the good work.”
“I love how local it is.”
The response was exactly what I was hoping for, as the audience for East Cobb News continues to grow. Thus far in 2023 we’re averaging between 150,000-200,000 page views a month, and between 70,000-100,000 unique visitors a month.
More than 8,200 of you subscribe to the Sunday newsletter. What I wanted to gauge was what readers were interested in.
Not surprisingly, many of you said it was updates on local businesses and restaurants, as well as zoning cases and development issues.
Some wanted more political news, others wanted more news of a certain political bent, and some were grateful for news about events at East Cobb Park and other community venues.
For the newcomers who signed up, I mentioned the Community Guide of services, businesses and community entities. For those interested in advertising, I’m sending rate information.
One of my current advertisers, real estate agent Sheri Hardy, stayed for a while and offered her testimonial for advertising with East Cobb News, and left behind some Atlanta Braves schedules that were scooped up by many of you.
Oh, and the food. I was lucky enough to be located between the booths for Mediterranean Grill and Belen de La Cruz: I had gyros to the left of me and empanadas to the right.
The kind of community gatherings that we went without for a couple years seem so much more vital and meaningful now. I’ve attended the Taste of East Cobb before, and it’s different when you’re a sponsor.
You really get an appreciation for what it takes to stage such an event when you learn more about what happens behind the scenes.
The folks at the Walton Band Parent Association do a phenomenal job, and I’d like to thank them for how well they worked with this first-time sponsor. Thanks to Pam Duffy, who first reached out to me in February about getting involved, 2023 event coordinator J.J. McKelvey and photographer David Wilson, who let us use some of his many photos from the event, including the cool aerial shot below.
While event proceeds go to Walton High School’s band program, the entire community benefits as well from having such a festive gathering.
I can’t wait for the Taste of East Cobb next year, but East Cobb News will be doing more of these events in the coming months so stay tuned!
And thanks for your readership! As always, feel free to get in touch with your thoughts by e-mailing me: wendy@eastcobbnews.com or calling: 404-219-4278.
East Cobb Park and other county parks were closed for six weeks in the spring of 2020.
Three years ago this coming week, spring was in the air. So were the sounds of neighborhood children happily playing nearby. My dogwood tree had finished its usual late-winter bloom, replaced by bustling green leaves.
Birds were chirping, and pollinating bees were hovering too close by on my balcony.
As I write this today, on a beautiful first Saturday afternoon in March, the same scenario applies.
But there are some notable differences.
The howling of loud cars, often racing, is constant. At times it sounds like the Indianapolis 500, 24/7.
These annoying noises have become part of the soundtracks of our lives since the COVID-19 pandemic was declared here in Georgia and elsewhere during the second week of March 2020.
A few days ago, as I pulled out of my office park, three hot rodders were zipping up Johnson Ferry Road, flooring past the Dick’s Sporting Goods store.
They had a rare empty straightaway on that busy corridor and took advantage of it, and I briefly shut my eyes, fearing a crash that fortunately didn’t happen.
COVID data reflected the vulnerability of the very old and very sick, but public health officials favored restrictions against the young and healthy for months.
Life for most of us has returned to whatever seemed normal before, as the virus has mutated into into less lethal variations. Even those who believed we could eradicate a respiratory virus—something that’s never happened before in human history—now understand that COVID-19 is not going away.
While it was a tragic killer—more than 35,000 Georgians, and nearly 2,000 in Cobb County are among those who have died—the collateral damage stemming from the COVID-19 response figures to be immeasurable, and its effects will last far longer than the danger of the illness.
As surreal as the lockdowns were—something not previously done in Western, supposedly democratic nations—what’s even more troubling now is that there’s little appetite for scrutinizing those mitigations.
Even though many of the narratives—about mask and vaccine effectiveness and natural immunity in particular—are collapsing.
I’ve been skeptical of the restrictions all along, but as a journalist I felt I owed my readers an open mind as this saga unfolded.
During the height of the pandemic, Dr. Janet Memark, director of Cobb and Douglas Public Health, periodically briefed the Cobb Board of Commissioners about COVID-19. She provided data, explained why the precautions were needed and reminded all of us to do our part.
She was trying to be helpful and informative, but her script essentially followed whatever messaging came from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, whose credibility took a major blow during this pandemic.
Not long after then-Cobb Commission Chairman Mike Boyce said he was keeping county parks open during a state of emergency, he was persuaded by public health officials to close them.
For six weeks in the glorious spring, with our public health experts knowing the outdoors were not only not dangerous but healthy to be in—the gates were locked at East Cobb Park, Mabry Park and others in Cobb County. Playgrounds were closed for a bit longer.
It was absurd then, and it’s even more ridiculous recalling it now.
Dr. Janet Memark of Cobb and Douglas Public Health briefing commissioners
Just as bizarre was an impromptu meeting of the Cobb Board of Health in the fall of 2021, called essentially to shame the Cobb County School District into reimposing a mask mandate.
On the Zoom meeting, Memark was shown in a room by herself, wearing a mask. The district didn’t budge, but remains a defendant in a federal lawsuit over the lack of a mandate.
Even though Georgia was the first state to allow a wide swath of businesses to reopen, not enough of her clientele came back right away, and she closed her doors for good during the early summer.
A hair salon owner further down on Johnson Ferry was still feeling the effects of the closures in December 2020, admitting that federal government relief loans, while welcome, were not going to be enough.
Our state and local leaders here in Georgia and Cobb weren’t nearly as heavy-handed as their counterparts elsewhere, but they should be obligated to explain how they think their actions fared.
My guess is that’s not likely to happen, and not just because they can’t defend what they’ve done. There’s an unspoken desire to move on and put this behind us, but it’s not that easy.
On a personal level, covering COVID was an experience like no other. Of the few events I attended in person during those early months, they invariably required me to submit to having a temperature gun pointed at my forehead.
I approached a masked woman and her two young masked sons about why they came. We were outdoors, but she shrieked in horror because I wasn’t wearing a face covering.
She accused me of trying to harm her children and refused to talk to me. I’ve been given plenty of no-comment brushoffs in my career, but that one’s near the top of the list.
The woman pictured here without the mask—she had no problem talking to me, although she didn’t give me a last name.
I received a harrowing phone call from a mother after Cobb schools started the 2020-21 school year virtually, her two daughters aching to get back to school with their friends. The woman cried and poured her heart out, then thanked me for the therapy session.
Others left equally agonizing messages in early 2021, trying to schedule vaccination appointments. They were elderly, and the Cobb and Douglas Public Health website had crashed, and there wasn’t a phone number to call.
I’ve never felt more helpless.
As a human being, I wasn’t faring so well the longer the hysteria continued. After a family member had fought off COVID in early 2021, I was on a social media thread with familiar people and pushed back against those demanding vaccine mandates.
A former co-worker kindly informed me that I had the blood of hundreds of thousands of dead Americans on my hands.
The church I attended, like many houses of worship, remained closed for months, and when it reopened, it was very restrictive, with no singing or fellowship, and reservations were required.
My nephew in Florida didn’t get to have his high school graduation in 2020, as the anxieties of adults trumped the once-in-a-lifetime experiences of youth. At least Cobb seniors that year got to have commencement exercises, belatedly.
Lindsey Johnson, a member of Lassiter High School’s Class of 2020, didn’t get a traditional graduation celebration.
The power of fear was on display like I’ve never experienced before, and some people will never be the same.
These memories may seem distant now, and I can understand why many don’t want to revisit such a painful time.
But they can’t be memory-holed. Too many people lost their livelihoods and their bodily autonomy over the last three years. Their kids’ schooling was disrupted, social life was flattened and community bonds were ripped apart.
We’re lucky in East Cobb to be in a community that has been able to rebound from this ordeal fairly well, but many people are still hurting, financially, emotionally and socially.
This unprecedented, disastrous response to a virus with a high recovery rate needs to be fleshed out at every level, including in Cobb and Georgia.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
Your editor’s happy place: Enjoying the fall colors at East Cobb Park.
Over the summer I asked readers to complete a survey to help guide the coverage and direction of East Cobb News, and I was gratified that nearly 100 of you responded.
I’ve been meaning to share some of the results with you, but as the Thanksgiving holiday approaches, I thought I’d use the occasion to express my gratitude for your readership and your thoughts on this community news service.
First, a little bit of the data:
56 percent of you access East Cobb News via our Sunday newsletter, which has been vital to our growth.
We now have more than 7,300 subscribers, and it’s been the single-biggest tool for expanding an audience that averages around 130,000 page views a month and nearly 70,000 monthly unique visitors.
That latter figure is telling because that’s roughly one-third of our coverage area.
Another 33 percent read East Cobb News directly from a web search, and 35 percent read on a mobile device.
When I asked what kinds of news readers like about what we provide, here were the top topics:
84 percent government news
76 percent restaurant/retail/business news
72 percent features and community events
72 percent crime/public safety
68 percent politics
54 percent school news
54 percent religious news
53 percent calendar listings.
Now, for some details on all this, including more of what you would like to see:
“Snapshot of this month’s festivals or major events around Georgia. Restaurant reviews or yelp summary, something curated to highlight top places to try.”
“Positive honoring inspiring stories.”
“I would like to see content reported with less bias. Also I would like to see content that reflects some actual reporting, rather than regurgitation of what some other publication has written/spoken.”
(Wish the last reader above would have specified examples of both of these points. As for the latter, East Cobb News broke or led coverage of East Cobb cityhood, the Tokyo Valentino adult store, the Mt. Bethel Church controversy and other topics that other outlets regularly followed.)
“Letters to editor, screened to provide balance and eliminate vitriol and ranting.”
“Development plans. Activities, classes, activities for seniors, groups to join, charities to contribute to by volunteering or donations. Local small business owners profiles. Environmental groups and developments. Highlight local recreational areas: nature center, parks, bikeways and associated activities.”
“I love what you are doing. I don’t need nor want anything else.”
“Less politics, unless it’s around an election.”
“Less news about Lisa Cupid.”
“If I had one piece of constructive feedback, it appears East Cobb News treads lightly when it comes to the Cobb County School District.”
“Concentrate on being the most authoritative and neutral source of truthful news. Stick to the facts and let the readers draw their opinions from the true facts. Don’t be a cheerleader for the Cobb County Commissioners.”
“Request readers submit stories, news, events they have first hand knowledge and involvement with! One or two interesting overviews! Ex. The day I met Neil Armstrong, my trip and who I met at the Masters!”
“Acknowledge varying points of view. Explain laws and ordinances, teach civics.”
“Perhaps consider a podcast?”
“More original content and photographs, not just repeating stories found in MDJ.”
“I’m glad you exist, MDJ doesn’t cover us and I can’t read their articles anyway.”
“You’ve become more balanced but still comes across as one sided politically.”
“I enjoy and appreciate East Cobb News. Please oh please, just don’t become partisan.”
“Continue to spotlight youth who are active in positive activities, especially helping others.”
“Tired of the biased community news outlets here in East Cobb. Seems the right leaning bullies rule everything here.”
“Appreciate your deep and objective coverage. Thank you.”
There are plenty more responses like this, and I value them all, even when they’re critical. There’s plenty of room for improvement and expanding the editorial product, and I will be taking all of this feedback into account.
The suggestions have been very helpful—a podcast is something I’ve had in mind and am seriously considering—and we’ll soon be publishing reader contributions and bringing on some freelance writers to help cover more news.
One thing that a number of readers in the survey said was that they wanted more stories about local small businesses, and we’ve done some of that recently and will be doing more in the coming weeks and months.
As I tell local business owners and advertisers, and those I’m trying to become advertisers, East Cobb News champions local news AND local businesses. They truly are the backbone of the community, especially because many of them give back to the community in amazing ways.
These were among my objectives when the COVID-19 pandemic was declared, and over these last two-plus years I’ve seen how much so many of you value what you read at East Cobb News.
That’s one of the silver linings that’s emerged from a very challenging time for all of us, and I’m thankful to all of you for sticking with us, getting in touch, pointing out corrections, providing news tips and suggesting ways to get better.
As I’ve mentioned before, the model I’m following is what another local independent online news publisher I admire calls “community-collaborative journalism.”
After decades in corporate media, I answer these days only to my community—to readers, businesses, organizations, entities and other individuals invested in this place we call home.
It’s been an interesting time in what’s not just a suburban bedroom community any more.
And it’s been an honor to have been able to do this for five and half years, and I’m thankful to all of you for reading and contributing your ideas.
As always, feel free to get in touch. I’d love to hear from you.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
A participant in a 2018 town hall regarding the Sprayberry Crossing Shopping Center expresses a common sentiment of our times.
In April, the journalist-turned-venture capital entrepreneur Katherine Boyle penned a widely-read essay that really lit a fire under me at the right time.
A reporter at The Washington Post when Amazon founder Jeff Bezos purchased the newspaper, Boyle has had a front-row seat at the convergence of media and technology in the early 21st century.
She’s now a general partner at Andreesen Horowitz, the Silicon Valley VC firm started by Marc Andreesen, the web browser pioneer behind Mosaic and Netscape.
Boyle has made the leap of many journalists going into something else over the last two decades, as our profession and various media industries have been in major transformation if not rapid decline.
In her piece for the Common Sense newsletter founded by Bari Weiss, a former columnist at The New York Times, Boyle concluded that American dynamism is lagging primarily because we’re just not all that serious about building for the future.
She takes aim at the massive institutional decay and warped priorities that have marked our times. Yet she strikes a tone of optimism in closing when she writes that “We do not need aging institutions to pave the way for American dynamism. But we need American will.”
I nodded my head often while reading this blunt, but hopeful argument. This paragraph from Boyle in particular I want to shoot straight into my veins:
“Building is an action, a choice, a decision to create and move. It is shovels in the dirt with a motley crew of doers who get the job done because no one else will. Building is the only certainty. The only thing we can control. When the projects we believed were Teflon strong are fraying like the history they toppled, the only thing to do is to make something new again.”
I’m among the journalists who couldn’t imagine doing anything else but the news, and that’s what prompted me to start East Cobb News. The idea was to bootstrap it for a couple of years, then ramp up the editorial and business side.
In March 2020, just as I was seeking office space and lining up freelancers, the COVID-19 pandemic was declared, and we all know what happened next. I buckled up to cover a story unlike anything else in my 40 years as a professional journalist.
Building something from scratch is hard enough, but carrying on during such a surreal time was something I never imagined.
There were days when I literally did not know what day it was, or if I would ever write something that wasn’t about COVID.
As I’ve noted previously, we got major increases in web traffic due to extensive coverage of the local COVID response, which affected people in every aspect of their daily lives.
That was a silver lining, to know how valuable your product has become to others, and I’ve tried to identify others as we appear to have put the worst of the pandemic behind us.
As another Labor Day holiday approaches, I feel very gratified to have made it this far, re-energized and grateful to the community that we’re serving.
I hear from readers frequently about how they appreciate what they read at East Cobb News, and I can’t overstate how much that means to me. I get some complaints, too, and try to address them in the same way as the compliments.
It was 14 years ago this week that I left the newspaper business, when I took a buyout at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I was taken aback this week to read that the place that nourished my career over 18 years appears to be ending daily print editions, publishing a newspaper only on the weekend.
This scenario isn’t all that surprising, and other newspapers are likely to follow suit.
The ink-stained wretches in my profession have been nostalgic about the old days for years. While I will always love what newspapers have been (for the most part), the news isn’t about a delivery system. It’s not about the feel of a newspaper in your hands with your morning coffee.
Tactile pleasures aside, it’s about the news, and the best way to provide it and deliver it to a readership. That’s why it’s imperative to keep building outlets that meet their readers and advertisers where they are.
The slogan under my masthead is “Local News for the Way You Live Today,” and that’s my the premise of my building project.
I’ve watched my own industry evaporate in front of my eyes, and chronicled the last couple years of death and loss during a pandemic, tearing and burning things down, the ripping apart of the social fabric and the public trust. All I want to do is keep building, keep making this site the best it can be for a community that nurtured me.
It’s not on a scale of the tech companies or a larger news media entity. I’ve planted a seed where I am, and want to cultivate it.
Most of all, I want to build something that will outlast me. A former colleague at Patch who started her own news site and magazine in Walton County has sold them to the local newspaper.
Her example and determination helped inspire me to start East Cobb News. Cynthia Rozzo, the founder of the EAST COBBER, recently sold the magazine to her advertising manager, Laren Brown, who is carrying the publication into its third decade.
That’s remarkable staying power, something I hope to realize some day. But there’s still a lot of building to do. I’m unpacking the results of a recent reader survey, and plotting out editorial and business objectives for the rest of the year.
For the first time in a long time, however, I’m going to take a couple days away from the screen, Sunday and Monday—barring major breaking news—and absorb the true meaning of Labor Day.
I hope you will too, and I encourage you to stay in touch.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
East Cobb News reader Bob violated two tenets of online commenting: Typing in all caps—signifying yelling—and venturing off the topic. Don’t be like Bob.
Ever since I made the switch to online journalism nearly 20 years ago (how time flies!), I’ve constantly wrestled with how to handle reader comments.
The immediacy and engagement can be beneficial components to building a thriving audience for community news.
And yet the instant availability of digital technology to cause mayhem and spread toxic messages often overwhelms those more noble aspirations.
Even before the age of blogs, social media and smartphones, online communication was an open sewer for mischief, threats, insults and worse.
If you remember the “alt” message boards of the late 1980s-early 1990s, you know what I’m talking about. Compared to today’s performative Twitter mobs, they truly resembled the Wild Wild West.
There were no moderators, almost everyone was anonymous and good luck getting anything taken down that was truly distasteful or even slanderous.
Perhaps I’ve become a bit numb, and even jaded, by what I read online to understand how this atmosphere can strike a nerve with readers today.
At more than 27K pageviews and counting, it’s the most visited post on East Cobb News in our 5+ years of publication.
Stories like that tend to generate plenty of reader comments, and this one certainly did.
For the most part, readers were civil, if irate.
Then somebody hit the CAPS LOCK BUTTON and didn’t turn it off for a good while.
That was a response to another reader complaining about having fled a “police state” in Cobb County that’s led by “Commie Democrats.”
And so on it went like this for a brief sequence, running a bit afoul of our Comments Policy.
Another reader noticed all this, and e-mailed me. He said he appreciates reading about local news and issues at East Cobb News, but “I’m not sure what benefit your comment section brings to your news organization. It’s kind of a dumpster fire and I’ve never seen a productive conversation happen on it. Literally just people calling each other ‘commie’ and other names.”
He makes good points, and I replied that for the most part, readers here don’t get that far off the chains. We’ve had a fairly respectful environment for community conversation in spite of the limitations on online platforms, not just on the site but our social media channels as well.
Shortly after our exchange, I shut off reader comments for that post, linked to our policy and revised it to include the following:
Before posting a comment, ask yourself this: Would I say this to someone in person or over the phone? Also, read through your comments for spelling, grammar, etc.;
In other words, behave like an adult on this platform.
When I was an online editor at the AJC, I had to moderate comments during the sordid saga of Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, as he faced charges of being involved in a dogfighting ring.
For weeks before and then after he was hauled off to federal prison, his football career destroyed, I waded through some nauseating comments, chucking more into the “unapproved” bin than I ever imagined.
What Vick copped to was indeed reprehensible, but after my moderating shift was over, I felt like I needed to take a shower.
We all need a place to vent and rant, but online forums unfortunately have become havens for increasingly vile, putrid expressions.
Frankly, I expected East Cobb News coverage of the Tokyo Valentino adult store and the controversy at Mt. Bethel Church to generate some red-flag comments (sex and religion!).
While they certainly prompted some racy reactions to the former and some biblically-inspired pronouncements to the latter, it was nothing that couldn’t be managed.
It is possible to express strong views without boiling over.
In our increasingly overheated times, many media outlets have decided to dispense with allowing comments at all, and not just major corporations.
Another local independent online news publisher here in Cobb County just switched the off button, for many of the same reasons others have.
For the time being, I’m going to leave them on and keep them going. I still think there’s an opportunity to have civil exchanges on important topics.
Most of you do that; it’s always a small handful that ruins it for everyone else.
I may come to regret this, and there likely are trolls out there waiting to lick their chops.
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It’s been a momentous ride through the first five years of East Cobb News.
I sit down to write this very special Editor’s Note exactly five years to the day I published the first post on East Cobb News.
July 8, 2017 was a Saturday, as punishingly hot then as what we’ve been experiencing in recent weeks, and I scrambled to find some shade in the parking lot at Sprayberry High School.
The Cherokee Wingmen Club had organized a fundraiser to benefit the Lcpl Skip Wells Foundation in the memory of the Sprayberry graduate and Marine officer who was killed in a terrorist attack in 2015 at the Chattanooga Naval Marine Reserve Center.
The lot filled with motorcyclists and as they revved up their engines, the sound roared across that busy Northeast Cobb quadrant with a vengeance.
As they filtered out onto Piedmont Road (see photo at the top), I hoped I had enough good photos to put together something publishable with my maiden post.
Among the many good news stories we’ve done at East Cobb News was the 30th anniversary of the Good Mews cat shelter.
To be honest, I had no idea when I set out for Sprayberry that day what I was going to do, or if anyone would notice. Not just for that story, but for others that followed.
It was just about getting started with an independent, truly community-focused local news website that I had planned for several months.
What I simply dubbed East Cobb News was actually the culmination of several years of reimagining more than 25 years of journalism experience in the corporate world.
Local news has been especially vulnerable to the catastrophic declines in legacy news media, and local news operations rooted in specific communities are even more endangered.
Corporate media entities like Gannett and investment firms and hedge funds have gobbled up local newspapers and stripped them down to practically nothing, booting longtime journalists and robbing citizens of vital news and information.
A hardy band of independents scattered across the country has been trying not just to fill the gap but offer a throwback to community news the way it used to be done.
My vision wasn’t original—serve readers and advertisers with professionally reported news and useful community information. The blessing of having an all-online format was that this could be done without being beholden to a print production cycle.
I had previously tried my hand at this as the founding editor of East Cobb Patch, a hyperlocal network started by AOL. After that effort foundered, AOL sold it off and I was out of a job.
A drive-by holiday light display shone brightly during two Christmas seasons under COVID.
But a seed was planted in my mind that a ground-up, grassroots approach would serve East Cobb well.
The comments I got from readers was encouraging. Yet going at it this way, especially in an area with The Marietta Daily Journal and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution—where I had spent most of my newspaper career—and other local outlets was daunting.
Another hyperlocal publisher told me when I started that if you can persevere, you can make it. I had no idea then what that would entail.
Five years, and nearly 4,000 posts later, I’m proud of what’s been built at East Cobb News. Over the last year, we’ve been averaging more than 120,000 page views and 60,000 unique visitors a month, and our newsletter subscribers total nearly 7,000.
There have been challenges and struggles and occasions when I questioned whether what I was doing would ever be enough.
In early 2019, I lost my mother, and that had a profound effect on me that continues today.
For the last two and a half years, the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically altered many things. It provided me with a silver lining, as traffic increased due to coverage of the community response, especially schools, business closings, events and more.
Readers had come to this site to learn about those things, and some had expressed the value of what they found here. That, more than anything, helped me to keep pushing forward.
An East Cobb Cityhood effort that began in 2018 resulted in a whopping defeat in a May referendum.
There were days during those initial months of COVID when I wondered if I would write about anything else.
When the vaccines arrived, I received harrowing phone messages from frantic seniors, unable to contact the health department, desperately trying to book appointments.
Then we had educators in the Cobb school district who had died from COVID, and blistering criticisms of the district and school board ensued. Not long after that, a family member of mine became seriously ill from the virus, and it was touch and go for a few weeks before he began to recover.
It was in early 2021 that was the most difficult stretch, when I began to think if I wanted to continue with this. In a long career as a reporter, editor and now publisher, had I had enough?
But readers and so many others in the community helped me through, not just with comments and helpful feedback but by sending their own news of recognitions, honors and accomplishments.
There were so many important stories to tackle that have galvanized this community that couldn’t be ignored: The East Cobb cityhood saga, the Tokyo Valentino adult store controversy, the Mt. Bethel Church dispute, the Sprayberry Crossing and East Cobb Church rezoning cases.
Citizens demanding the redevelopment of Sprayberry Crossing Shopping Center finally got their wish.
East Cobb News broke and/or led coverage of those stories, the stories that have the biggest impact to this community. I’m especially proud of that, and if it sounds like bragging, my apologies. Focusing on what really matters to a community is the foundation of everything I do.
After a lifetime of answering to corporate managers, and doing the news to curry access to movers and shakers, there’s nothing more gratifying that working on behalf of your neighbors and fellow local business owners and community members.
There is so much more work to do in a vibrant community that continues to change, and I’m eager to get started with that.
We have another round of elections in November, and a new school year is just around the corner. Zoning and development issues continue to resonate in East Cobb, and many local businesses are trying to regain their footing and figure out this post-pandemic world.
So is East Cobb News. Many of the editorial and business plans I set aside as COVID-19 was declared I’m restarting and revising now, and you’ll hear more about them soon.
I’ve sent out a reader survey to ask all of you what you like about East Cobb News, and what you don’t, what you think we can do different, or better.
Your responses (here’s the survey link) will help me guide the next phase of this publication, which I want to grow beyond daily news.
I’m reading through some of the survey results now, and they’re very interesting and helpful. I’ll share them in a future column.
While I don’t really get into too much anniversary stuff, I wanted to take this occasion to thank all of you for your thoughts, suggestions and support over these last five years.
East Cobb News is in this for the long haul, and I want to fashion this into a community voice for all of you. There is no more honorable mission.
Enjoy the rest of your summer, and please stay in touch.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
Signs from a pandemic: Black Lives Matter rally on Johnson Ferry Road; an expression of hope on Holly Springs Road.
As the year 2020 approached, I sent out what was the first reader survey for East Cobb News, eagerly anticipating a breakthrough year for this community news site after a couple of years of laying the groundwork.
As I began to look through the responses, a breakthrough event was in progress, and it changed everything for so many of us.
As COVID-19 and the responses to it dramatically altered our world, I set the survey aside. While many of my best-laid plans for this site also were put on hold, readers turned to East Cobb News like never before.
We thoroughly covered the COVID response and its effects on the community, schools and so much more. Along the way, we broke stories about the opening—and closure—of an adult retail store and a bitter controversy embroiling one of East Cobb’s biggest faith communities.
More than two years later, we’re hopeful the worst of the pandemic is behind us. We’ve grown our traffic and newsletter audiences with a sizable daily reach that is unmatched in this community.
Community life, and festivities, are springing back into action, and we’re eager to gauge your thoughts about East Cobb News as we get back to what is feeling like normal again.
All you have to do is click the link above, and respond to 10 questions about this site, and the news and information we provide. The survey takes just a few minutes, and once you’re finished, hit the “submit” button.
What’s happening in East Cobb is why you come here, and we want to better serve your interests and understand what you value about this community resource.
Unlike corporate-owned media, East Cobb News answers above all to our readers, with the objective of meeting the news and information needs in our community. Your answers will help us tailor our product to make it really appeal to what’s important to you.
Don’t be bashful—tell us what we’re doing well, what we could do better or different. We appreciate your readership and look forward to delivering more community news and information that’s relevant to you as we continue in 2022.
I’m always accessible to field your questions, hear complaints and try to explain why we do what we do at East Cobb News. E-mail me: wendy@eastcobbnews.com.
We’ll be collecting responses through the end of July, so please feel free to complete the survey as you can. We’ll share the responses as the school year begins.
Thanks so much for your readership of East Cobb News! Have a great summer!
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
At the Taste of East Cobb festival earlier this month, Craig Chapin, the chairman of the Committee for East Cobb Cityhood, was approached by an irate citizen.
Less than three weeks before the East Cobb Cityhood referendum, tempers and allegations were flaring over what has been a contentious issue ever since it first arose in 2018.
With a vote looming over carving out a slice of a vast East Cobb community into a city of around 60,000 people, emotions were going into overdrive.
(Monitoring just a sliver of the cityhood chatter on NextDoor, a social media platform for people for whom Facebook apparently isn’t unhinged enough, is a vivid reminder for Internet oldies of the Wild West days of early Web message boards.)
Mindy Seger, Chapin’s counterpart with the anti-Cityhood group East Cobb Alliance, said she was called over “to help defuse the situation.”
She said they “discussed how heated things were getting and wanted to show our ability to share space.”
In between debates the two groups had agreed to—and before a forum at Pope High School that turned a little nasty— there was good-natured conversation, and the above photo-op.
“Craig and I agreed Top Gun Maverick is going to be a great movie, we both love BBQ and Righteous Q is one of the best, and that it is possible to be kind to people you disagree with,” Seger said Thursday, two days after the cityhood referendum was soundly defeated.
Mindy Seger of the East Cobb Alliance, who also debated Cityhood leaders in 2019, became a visible figure of the opposition.
She and what the Alliance claimed was a grassroots collection of citizens across political and social lines were gratified not just by the victory, but by the margin.
All but one of the 17 precincts voted handily against the referendum. It was a thumpin’, as President George W. Bush memorably described a midterm election that torpedoed his fellow Republicans.
More than 73 percent of those casting votes in the East Cobb referendum rejected it, a 46-point gap and by far a larger spread than defeated cityhood votes in Lost Mountain (58 percent voted no) and Vinings (55 percent opposed).
All three votes were, among other things, the victims of sloppy, poorly managed legislation that further riled up the citizenry and a chastened Cobb County government alike.
Instead of November referendums, they were pushed up to May. The East Cobb bill changed several more times, including how the mayor would be chosen and residency requirements for city council candidates.
Republican lawmakers responding to the new Democratic majority of the Cobb Board of Commissioners made a coordinated, and at times ham-handed, attempt to create the chance for more local control in the county’s most conservative areas.
Minutes after the Georgia House passed the East Cobb Cityhood bill, State Rep. Matt Dollar, its main sponsor, abruptly resigned, and non-locals were left to carry the bill.
State Rep. Sharon Cooper, a co-sponsor of the bill, and State Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick, whose seat was redrawn out of the proposed city, voted for allowing citizens to have a referendum, but neither spoke to the legislation during floor debate.
The East Cobb bill, predicated on the notion that our neighbors are best-suited to decide things like density and quality of life issues, was tellingly deflected by our neighbor-lawmakers.
Craig Chapin of the Cityhood committee talked up his longstanding ties to East Cobb, but opponents questioned the motives of leaders behind the scenes.
Cobb County government set up a web portal on cityhood and held town hall meetings, in particular honing in on what they said would likely be slower response times for public safety calls in East Cobb.
In the final week of the campaign, Cobb public safety agency heads appeared on a Zoom call organized by the East Cobb Alliance, rehashing previous concerns.
Most of all, Cobb’s cityhood referendums were swamped by everyday citizens of communities who never bought the argument that there was a need to change their form of local government, and in the case of East Cobb, to create expensive police, fire and 911 agencies.
When East Cobb cityhood was revived in March 2021, the new focus was to be on planning and zoning and controlling growth and development.
Those were issues I thought could make for a stronger cityhood campaign, as I wrote when the first effort was abandoned in 2019.
But when a required financial feasibility study was released in November, it included public safety services. That study left a lot easy financial holes for opponents to poke at, and even shred.
Cityhood leaders said police and fire “kept coming up” when they met with citizens, but they never offered specifics.
The Cityhood group decried comments by Cobb public safety heads about what they said would likely be longer response times in a City of East Cobb.
Just as in the initial East Cobb cityhood campaign, however, there never was much of a groundswell for cityhood. It was a secretive initiative that blindsided the community when it first arose nearly four years ago and lacked any kind of grassroots appeal.
That some behind-the-scenes leaders had development interests fanned the flames of suspicion.
An East Cobb resident I spoke to in late March who supported cityhood felt even then it was ill-fated.
“Too much emotionalism,” he said, adding that as a small-government advocate, he’s leery of a Democratic-led county commission and thinks a City of East Cobb would be preferable on a number of fronts, not just development.
While that’s a novel way to make the case for smaller government, those against cityhood turned up their calls that a new city would add another layer instead.
This citizen also questioned the county’s financial estimates of the cost of losing cities, and the numbers and claims being peddled by the Alliance.
But East Cobb Cityhood was always a hard sell, and its public-facing proponents, while well-meaning, were fighting a multi-front war on multiple issues. All three of the failed referendums in Cobb (another comes in November, in Mableton) also were the subjects of lawsuits that were ordered to be set aside until after the elections.
In trying to press for the need to better control zoning and development, East Cobb cityhood advocates spent too much time and energy defending why police and fire services were necessary.
After receiving documents via an open records request, the Alliance contended that transferring the county fire fund millage rate was the only way to make a City of East Cobb financially viable.
The Cityhood group disputed that charge without elaborating, and resorted to some dog-whistle rhetoric that Cobb Commission Chairwoman Lisa Cupid and federal Democrats in Washington, notably the Biden Administration, were pushing policies “to incentivize states and localities to buck market forces to increase housing density.”
It smacked of desperation, and was meant to appeal to voters who’ve been concerned about zoning density and a proposed Unified Development Code in Cobb County.
Near the end of the campaign, the Cityhood group insisted it wasn’t obligated to file a financial disclosure report revealing who was funding its efforts.
The Cityhood group parked an electronic sign in front of the former Tokyo Valentino sex shop, but refused to divulge how it was paid for.
That harkened back to the early days of Cityhood, when the group explained that it wasn’t identifying its donors or others involved for fear of harassment from their “enemies” and the media.
To repeat such an arrogant, even paranoid refusal to be modestly transparent reflects disdain for the citizens of a community whose blessing they needed to realize their vision for local control.
This was a case study in how to rub a community the wrong way while seeking its vote.
The East Cobb Cityhood group may eventually be right about the development and housing concerns it raised.
“East Cobb will be under increasing growth and tax pressure from Cobb County to urbanize our community,” the Cityhood group said in a post-referendum statement, as it scrubbed its website.
Their issues may, like Sandy Springs and other North Fulton communities that are now cities, resonate over time and gain adherents to a new effort to create a city.
Cupid’s handling of zoning matters—especially the Dobbins case that prompted a rare protest from the Cobb Chamber of Commerce—has sounded some understandable alarm bells.
The theme of the East Cobb Alliance has been that it likes East Cobb “just the way it is,” but this community isn’t static.
It’s not merely a bedroom community any more, just as a once-rural area became an affluent, in-demand suburban hotspot for great home values, schools and quality of life several decades ago, when I was growing up here.
If you remember the Parkaire airfield, and farmland where retail centers and million-dollar homes stand, you understand how different East Cobb looks and feels now, and how it can change again.
From the outset, the masterminds of the East Cobb Cityhood effort never understood or seemed to care about what it takes to create a winning grassroots campaign.
They had money and political influence to get a referendum bill passed in the legislature, but that’s about it. During the second campaign, a more concerted attempt was made to garner community support, and did they did make some headway.
Broader public support was essential, but ultimately they didn’t trust the public enough to come clean about who they are, or to build authentic community connections.
If there’s to be another attempt, there’s got to be the kind of ground-up impetus that prompted successful cityhood efforts elsewhere.
A revived East Cobb Cityhood effort also would need to be rid of its original parties, who while sowing visceral skepticism, inadvertently gave rise to a new brand of community activism they could learn from.
“Many in this community stepped out of their comfort zones by attending meetings, wearing buttons, knocking doors, and waving signs on street corners,” Seger said. “Not only did we find a way to work together sharing various skills, we made some unexpected friendships along the way.”
Seger said there’s an interest in trying to “raise the bar for Georgia’s Cityhood process. The community has the mic, we hope those in authority are listening.”
She said while she doesn’t have contact information for Chapin, with whom she momentarily tried to demonstrate some local goodwill, “I hope we can connect in the spirit of community.”
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Mike Boyce took plenty of heat at a budget town hall at the East Cobb Senior Center from citizens angry about his proposed tax increase in 2018 (ECN file).
On a chilly, but sunny Saturday in early November 2019, Mike Boyce was visiting with veterans on Old Canton Road at United Military Care, a non-profit that helps veterans in need.
The occasion was a barbecue luncheon to observe Veterans Day, and a few dozen people turned out for hamburgers, hot dogs and the sounds of a local band playing 1960s pop songs that resonated with memories of the Vietnam War.
The group was the Tunnel Rats, and as Boyce took a seat next to mine in the sun, he told me over the music, “I’ve got their CDs.”
A retired Marine colonel, Boyce was too young to suit up for that conflict, but his 30 years in the Corps shaped what became for him a life of service in uniform and beyond.
On this occasion, he wasn’t glad-handing or politicking as Mike Boyce, Cobb Commission Chairman, but as a veteran himself, and a private citizen appreciative of the service and sacrifices of others.
He was as approachable and interested in hearing from his fellow veterans as he was during the many town hall and other public meetings he conducted during his four years in office, even from citizens furious when he proposed a property tax increase.
For Boyce, serving in public office was no different than the military. After he lost his re-election bid in 2020, he participated in a leadership program at his alma mater, the University of Notre Dame.
That’s where he was two weeks ago when he suffered two strokes. In announcing his death on Tuesday at the age of 72, his wife Judy Boyce said he was “having the time of his life,” mentoring students, riding his bicycle around the inviting Notre Dame campus (I’ve been there, and it’s fantastic) and starting a new chapter in his life.
Like many in Cobb County, I was shocked to hear the news. Judy Boyce said in a message that her husband’s strokes were “unrecoverable.”
A funeral Mass for Boyce will take place next Thursday, Feb. 3, at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in South Bend, Ind., starting at 9:30 a.m. It may be live-streamed and updates will be posted here.
A memorial service also is scheduled for Feb. 18 at 10 a.m. at Mt. Bethel United Methodist Church (4385 Lower Roswell Road), where Boyce was a member.
When he left office, Boyce remained high-energy, vigorous and spirited.
That’s how he approached the job he inherited from Tim Lee, whom he defeated as chairman in 2016, campaigning against his predecessor’s handling of the Atlanta Braves stadium deal.
Boyce ran a true grassroots campaign, dutifully knocking on doors and spending plenty of time around the county, and not just his base in East Cobb. He was vastly outspent and didn’t have the county’s business and political leadership behind him, but he prevailed.
It was a slog, as were many of the budget town halls and other public meetings he conducted during an eventful four years in public office. But his Marine persona was unmistakeable.
As he liked to say about some of those political conflicts, “I’ve been through a lot worse.”
After taking plenty of flack at the East Cobb Senior Center at a budget town hall meeting, Boyce didn’t pack up his presentation materials and quickly scuttle away. Instead, he stuck around to hear citizens agitated about their taxes going up.
As much as he let them sound off, Boyce never backed away from what he said was the necessity of passing a “restoration budget,” one that provided additional funding for parks and libraries, among other things, for Cobb to remain “a five-star county.”
There also was the Mike Boyce who had some gruff Great Santini moments.
During a budget retreat, weary that commissioners weren’t signing on to the tax hike, he blurted out “I get it. You don’t want to stick your neck out. But this isn’t hard. It’s $30 million in an economy of billions. You would think we’re living in Albania! I just don’t understand.”
In the end, he got the third vote he needed. Commissioner Bob Weatherford, a Republican who provided it, was promptly voted out of office.
The Cobb Republican Party, which never warmed up to Boyce, spoke out against the increase.
So did former Commissioner Thea Powell, an East Cobb Republican whom Boyce had appointed to the Cobb Planning Commission.
Not long after calling the proposed tax increase “a dog’s breakfast,” she was summarily replaced.
The “Tax Hike Mike” moniker was born as the political winds in Cobb County were changing.
In 2018, Democrats even made headway in Republican East Cobb, snaring a Congressional and a school board seat.
Boyce often mentioned how the job of chairman was much more than he ever imagined, but as he decided on running for re-election, I asked him: “Are you up for this?”
Without hesitation, he said “Yes.”
I saw him at other community events, including occasionally slipping in at an East Cobb Business Association luncheon when a zoning meeting ended early.
Boyce wasn’t always there to make a public speech, but was hobnobbing with the locals.
At heart, I think Mike Boyce was a citizen-servant who never saw himself as a professional politician.
One of Boyce’s finest moments in public office came in November 2020, shortly after he had been defeated by commissioner Lisa Cupid.
Amid the partisan bickering over Georgia’s voting in the presidential election, Boyce offered “a transition in grace,” saying that “we acknowledge the voice of the people, we hear them and we move on.”
That was the guiding spirit that prompted Boyce to get into public office, and that’s how he left it.
While his family grieves and our community mourns, we should consider ourselves grateful for his commitment to service, and the example he set.
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I took the photo above at East Cobb Park back in November, on my birthday.
It was a nice treat to take a little time away from work and enjoy a warm-enough day that glistened with sunshine as the autumn colors emerged.
I’ve always felt fortunate to be able to celebrate the renewal of my birth (I turned 29 again!) as the season of hibernation approaches.
I enjoy immersing myself in what passes for the four seasons here in Georgia, although this fall took later than usual to arrive.
They’re timeless opportunities to reflect on what they signify for a particular moment in time, and for the last two years we have undoubtedly been living in momentous times.
As I write this, on New Year’s Day 2022, the temperatures are in the low 70s, and the sun is breaking through after a wet New Year’s Eve that included a tornado warning.
Luckily, the East Cobb area dodged that bullet, but the year that was 2021 clearly was determined to leave on a bizarre note.
This time a year ago, I was like so many others, glad to see the backside of 2020, which visited upon us a pandemic, closures, chaos and uncertainty.
Far too many people in our community experienced illness, hospitalization and death from COVID-19, as well as the destruction of work, schooling, civic, religious and social life caused by the shutdowns and restrictions.
The year 2021 had to be better, I thought, knowing that the changing of a calendar year was mostly symbolic.
But after the champagne toasts were made and the final chords of Auld Lang Syne faded away, 2021 roared on like it was still 2020.
Three educators in the Cobb County School District had died over the holidays, and in January the Cobb school board heard an earful from the public—teachers, students and parents—afraid and wondering what would be done during a massive surge in infections.
At the same time, the first COVID-19 vaccines became available, but the local health department website designed to book appointments crashed, and vaccine supplies were limited.
Older people called and left messages with me, mistaking this publication for the health department. Their voices were desperate and frantic; some just wanted to talk to a human on the telephone in an age of being forced to do so many things online.
It was absolutely harrowing to hear, as I felt utterly helpless.
A month later, people close to me were getting infected, one seriously enough to be hospitalized for several weeks.
It was touch and go for a while, and while I’m not terribly religious, I prayed for him to recover, and he thankfully has done that.
Throughout these last 20 months or so, I’ve tried to find silver linings, both personally and as the publisher of East Cobb News.
Warnings to avoid large gatherings indoors prompted many people to get outside.
I’ve spent many outings at East Cobb Park and the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area, but they took on a new importance in the pandemic.
People offer a smile, faces uncovered, as they walk their dogs, and on occasion stop to chat. A woman who brings her feisty Pomeranian to East Cobb Park on Sunday afternoons has become a new acquaintance.
There’s a friendliness that’s not only refreshing, but restorative to one’s well-being.
When I’ve felt the depths of posting continuously grim stories about the virus—we’re now on our third surge in the last year—readers have helped pull me through.
It’s been gratifying to get messages of appreciation for the information—related to COVID-19 or otherwise—that’s important to the community.
Our traffic figures reflect some of that, but the calls, text messages and e-mails you send me are like a shot in the arm—no pun intended.
I can’t tell you how much your kind words, support and encouragement have meant to me.
And I want to keep hearing from you as 2022 is here.
Perhaps I’m more hopeful than I should be, but I really am starting to see more than just a few silver linings as we approach two years of the COVID-19 era.
We’re not out of the woods yet, but when I hear from friends and family members who live in other parts of the country where crippling government shutdowns and mandates are still in effect, I feel grateful to live where I do, and to have the opportunity to serve the citizens of this community.
Before the pandemic began, I surveyed readers on what they would like to see from East Cobb News in 2020.
Little did any of us know what was to transpire, and for how long. Shortly I will be sending out a new survey to solicit public feedback on how this publication can better serve you, in these very altered times.
Please look for that in the next couple of weeks, and as always, feel free to reach out: wendy@eastcobbnews.com and 404-219-4278.
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The Atlanta Braves had not one, but two, parades on Friday, plus a special concert at Truist Park with rap luminaries Ludacris and Big Boi to celebrate their improbable World Series championship.
Tens of thousands of fans lined up in downtown Atlanta and along Cobb Parkway as the Braves’ caravan made its way to the ballpark.
For a moment, the exuberance almost got the best of Cobb County’s finest, as police surrounded a man whom they thought had wandered out from the crowd, but who was actually Braves’ relief pitcher Tyler Matzek.
It was hard not to get caught up in cheering on a team that was devastated by injuries, didn’t have a winning record until late in the season, then knocked off teams predicted to beat them, including last year’s champions, the Los Angeles Dodgers, in the playoffs.
As someone who grew up in metro Atlanta and whose family’s ties to the Braves go back to their days in Milwaukee, this last week truly has been special for me.
My first game as a fan was as an eight-year-old in 1969, when the Braves won their first pennant in town.
In 1995, when the Braves won the World Series at the same venue, I was a sportswriter at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I don’t remember much about that decisive Game 6 on a Saturday night at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, as I was coming back from somewhere after covering a college football game.
So it was a real treat to savor the first sports team I had ever followed beat back all the obstacles. This year’s Braves are a testament to determination, resilience, teamwork and optimism, qualities that take on special significance during these abnormal times of a pandemic.
The euphoria was bound to go overboard, of course, as these occasions sometimes do.
On Thursday, in a commentary published in our local daily newspaper, the headline referred to the late Tim Lee, the former county commission chairman who brokered the stadium deal that brought the Braves to Cobb, as the “angel in the outfield.”
Even more tellingly, the narrative glossed over the dubious process by which Lee, the Braves and local business insiders worked in secret for months, until they could keep their secret no more.
The above commentary asserted several times that “Tim did the right thing.” But the glaring lack of transparency, a bevy of investigations and ethics complaints and a rushed timeline without much of a chance to get meaningful feedback from the public are still gnawing.
This coming Thursday will mark the eighth anniversary that Lee announced a proposed 30-year memorandum of understanding with the Atlanta Braves to help construct a stadium in the Cumberland area.
In that agreement, Cobb would commit to a $300 million subsidy—taxpayer money—to help finance the ballpark, as well as to regular capital maintenance, public safety and other costs.
The four district members of the Cobb Board of Commissioners had exactly two weeks to digest a complicated long-term deal. The public had an even smaller window to ask questions of their elected officials at hastily arranged town hall meetings.
I covered these proceedings during my time at Patch, a hyperlocal network founded by AOL a little more than a decade ago.
Bob Ott, the former Cobb commissioner whose District 2 included the area along Windy Ridge Parkway and I-75 where the stadium would be built, was thrust into a sudden, and very glaring, spotlight.
Always accessible, Ott prided himself on holding informative town halls all over his Cumberland-East Cobb district.
But he made himself scarce for most of those two weeks, inundated with messages and calls from constituents and the media like no other issue in his then-two terms in office.
On the night before the vote, Ott held a town hall meeting not in his district, but in the commissioners’ meeting room off the Square in Marietta.
I found that odd, and asked him after it was over if he had made up his mind. He said he would do so when he pushed the button to vote.
Like the other town hall meetings I attended during that intense fortnight, I realized that the Braves stadium deal was a done deal.
Like many people who raised questions about the deal, Cupid wasn’t opposed to the Braves coming to Cobb County, or even having a partially publicly financed stadium built.
Like many of those same people, I also wondered about the rushed, secretive proceedings. Citizens groups as disparate as the Tea Party and Common Cause tried to get some answers, but community scrutiny wasn’t well organized.
Lee defended the timeline and process by asserting that if Cobb didn’t act, then the Braves would go elsewhere.
But as longtime Braves executive John Schuerholz admitted not long after the Cobb vote, the team didn’t have another venue in mind after wanting to leave the city of Atlanta after nearly 50 years.
In other words, the Braves played Cobb like Max Fried toyed with the Astros’ lineup on Tuesday, setting down the commissioners in almost perfect order.
The timing of all this is important to remember, as Cobb and much of the nation were starting to come out of the recession.
Commissioners JoAnn Birrell and Helen Goreham were doing verbal cartwheels from the moment the proposed stadium deal was announced, smitten by the catnip of economic development that has tempted elected officials everywhere.
You can love the Braves, as I have for most of my life, and still hate the way that stadium deal came down.
You can be excited about the dining and entertainment options at The Battery Atlanta, which the Braves have financed to the tune of nearly $400 million, and wonder why the franchise still needed the public’s “help” to build a ball park.
The process stunk to high heaven, lacked even a modicum of transparency, gave no thought to a referendum, and was followed by lame excuse-making.
Lee paid the ultimate political price when he was ousted in the 2016 Republican primary by Mike Boyce, and didn’t get to enjoy the ultimate payoff of his stadium efforts. He died two years ago of cancer at the age of 62.
After the stadium opened in 2017, the Cobb Chamber of Commerce commissioned an economic impact study proclaiming a nearly $19 million annual benefit to the county.
One of the more vocal critics of such claims, Kennesaw State University economics professor J.C. Bradbury, noted in an op-ed during the World Series that one can cheer for the Braves and not get caught up in such runaway economic development fever.
Not wanting to rain on a parade, but I feel the same way. The economic “home run” that was promised Cobb citizens still hasn’t been realized, and shouldn’t be conflated with success on the baseball field.
When a public official is hailed for doing something “right” without that individual being examined for how he/she conducted public business, that’s more than blind cheerleading.
The ends never justify the means, especially public officials spending tax dollars and not giving the citizens much of a say.
Holding elected officials—or the legacies of those who are no longer with us or who are out office—to account isn’t just about determining if what they did was the right (or wrong) thing to do.
It’s also scrutinizing how they do it that should matter.
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On the darkest day in the Cobb County School District since the COVID-19 pandemic began, neither the superintendent nor the school board had much to say about it.
As the board was in session twice Thursday for their monthly meetings, two teachers in the school district died of COVID-19.
Superintendent Chris Ragsdale did mention them by name during the meetings: Dana Johnson, a first-grade teacher at Kemp Elementary School and Cynthia Lindsey, a paraprofessional at Sedalia Park Elementary School here in East Cobb.
The perfunctory “thoughts and prayers” from Ragsdale were all that were even referenced about their deaths and the district’s ongoing pandemic response.
With classes being all-virtual this week, I figured Ragsdale would provide an update. Are case numbers easing off? Is there ample staffing available for in-person learning? What about the schools that closed early last week?
It was his decision to shut down in-person learning this week due to increasing COVID cases in the schools and teachers absent due to quarantine. It has been his decision to offer parents a choice of face-to-face or remote instruction.
During these months of uncertainty, he’s explained his thinking about these matters in some detail. While not everyone has been happy with the decisions, he’s been above-board in laying out the difficult task of reopening, establishing safety protocols and providing dual learning environments.
This week, with concerns about the safety of students and staff rising along with a case count that’s higher than ever, there was nothing on the board agenda to discuss the COVID response.
Even though Dr. Janet Memark, the director of Cobb and Douglas Public Health who’s advised Ragsdale, continues to urge students and adults to stay home as much as possible.
At both school board meetings, teachers and their advocates urged that all-remote learning continue. They were mourning the loss of their colleagues, and emotions were also rising high.
Face-to-face learning resumes on Monday, and with tensions and case numbers growing, Ragsdale had nothing to say about it.
At a Thursday afternoon work session, school board member Jaha Howard wanted Ragsdale to comment on the COVID-19 situation in the schools, but board chairman Randy Scamihorn put a halt to the inquiry.
“Would you be open to a dialogue?” Howard asked Ragsdale. “There are a lot of concerns out there [from the public] and we’re about to move on.”
“That’s it,” Scamihorn said.
Scamihorn had more than the power of the gavel at his disposal. The Cobb Board of Education, at least at its public meetings, has chosen to censor itself.
It was a contentious time marked by the additions of Howard and Charisse Davis, first-term Democrats whose elections in 2018 trimmed a 6-1 GOP advantage on the school board to 4-3.
Howard in particular has ruffled feathers, sometimes eagerly so, making regular accusations about racial disparities in the district, and he has used his comment time at board meetings to denounce Republican elected officials elsewhere.
His grandstanding can be over the top, but the attempt to silence him and Davis was absurd. Partisan bickering since then has grown even worse, and members of both parties are to blame. There’s no spirit of compromise at all, even with the serious business of navigating a pandemic.
So on Thursday, we saw one board member cutting off another who wanted ask the superintendent about the most important subject in the second-largest school district in Georgia.
Board members can put items on the agenda, but a policy change pushed through last month by Scamihorn on a party-line vote now requires the approval of a board majority.
Given the deep partisan divide, anything that Howard, Davis and newly elected Democratic board member Tre’ Hutchins want to bring up needs at least one Republican vote. There’s no budging going on in the slightest.
With anxiety heightening and parents wondering how their children might be learning in the coming weeks, the public was owed much more than petty parliamentary maneuvers.
The policy to muzzle unwanted speakers and topics also stifled any comments from elected representatives to the Cobb school district about a very sad, grim day.
At the end of the public comment period Thursday night, Scamihorn thanked the speakers for being “informative and succinct,” but to paraphrase him, that was it.
On Friday, Davis offered some school-related public health guidance on her Facebook page “in the absence of ANY COVID-related discussions or presentations from the superintendent at our board meeting. . . . These are difficult times, but like many of our teachers tell their students: we can do hard things.”
While Cobb County government and public health leaders carved out dedicated time this week to help frazzled citizens navigate the COVID-19 vaccine process, the Cobb school board and superintendent offered nothing of reassurance on the one day of the month they have to come before the public.
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Since 1979, the Giannes family has been serving up Greek and Mediterranean specialties at their restaurant in the Terrell Mill-Powers Ferry area.
What’s been Kouzina Christos since 2012 at the revitalized Terrell Mill Village Shopping Center first opened next door, at Terrell Mill Junction, at a time when that East Cobb community was undergoing a transition.
Christos Restaurant, as it was first called, later moved up the road a bit, at the Delk Spectrum Shopping Center at the corner of Powers Ferry, and continued to persist and thrive.
As other independent, mom-and-pop and chain restaurants came and left the area, Christos became a fixture. It seemed able to adapt to changing demographics and tastes in a busy commercial area with more competition from the national casual restaurant brands.
In three different locations, the Christos menu, and the familiar faces, have stayed essentially the same. In my many visits there, I thought of it as comfort food with a little extra spice.
But on Saturday, the long-standing eatery will be serving its final gyros, salads, sandwiches, pizzas and spanakopitas.
Owner Christos Giannes announced the restaurant’s closing on Monday, as first reported by ToNeTo.
The calamitous impact of COVID-19 closures was just too much, and Giannes said in a social media message he’s no longer working with his landlord “over options to remain operational.”
As far as restaurants go, anything over even 10 years can seem like an eternity, even in the pre-COVID-19 world.
But more than four decades? It’s stunning, really, a testament to a determined Greek immigrant family that loved serving up affordable, family-style meals to a loyal East Cobb community of customers.
Among them was my mother, who came to the original Christos in the early 1980s for lunch with co-workers from a nearby office park.
I was in college during those years, and after I returned she and I would go there often. I don’t remember what she liked in particular, but I know what I did: A very generous and tasty Italian grinder.
Over the years, I have gone there on occasion, typically for that Italian grinder at lunch.
On Wednesday, I did so again, for the last time, and the familiar flavors of Genoa salami, pepperoni, capicola, tomatoes, lettuce and Duke’s mayonnaise on toasted bread brought back fond memories.
It was a bittersweet dining experience all the same, as I looked around and saw the beginnings of a packing-up.
Christos Giannes wasn’t there when I stopped in, but he’s been frank about the fate not only of his own restaurant but others like his during the long months of closures, partial reopening and government action over COVID-19.
He said on the restaurant’s Facebook page that Kouzina Christos was doing well before March, after some years of experimenting with an expanded menu to include Greek dinner delicacies, as well as the addition of an outdoor patio.
A proud champion of independent restaurants, he was critical of what he said is a “flaccid and shortsighted response from local, state and national sources for support to buttress businesses who’s loss will negatively affect business viability, employees, their families, the community, the schools is laughable. The losses to the foundation, the fabric that buttress our communities will be felt for many years.”
This is one of the greatest fears of business closures due to COVID-19, especially in the restaurant and retail sectors, and the horrible reality is unfolding before us everywhere.
Within eyeshot of Kouzina Christos is a brand new Panera Bread in the MarketPlace Terrell Mill development underway, and around the corner on Powers Ferry is a Jimmy John’s.
They’re known for their sandwiches, but they don’t have anything like my Italian grinder, much less the gyros and falafels of Christos.
I’m not knocking the chains; they’ve been oh-so-convenient with drive-through service and I’m as guilty as anyone of pulling in when the sit-down places were closed.
And that’s been just the problem.
“Chains are happy to see the mass failure of independents, expanding the labor pool, increasing competition and increasing downward pressure on hourly wages,” Christos Giannes wrote. “Corporate greed and avarice…supporting the Chinese economy.”
He shares company with so many venerable dining and watering hole institutions, including Atlanta’s Manuel’s Tavern, where I had many a meal and adult beverage during my years at the AJC. Owner Brian Maloof, son of the famous barkeep and politico Manuel Maloof, doesn’t see how he can keep his doors open in Poncey-Highland beyond the end of the year.
That would end a 64-year run on land that is now owned by corporate real estate interests and is surrounded by pricey regentrification. Maloof has spurned acquisitions in the past from the likes of Hooter’s, and completely overhauled his freestanding building a few years ago.
Christos Giannes was becoming gradually pessimistic in the weeks and months over summer when he began discussing reduced rents for Kouzina Christos with his landlord.
In late August, he said “it’s quite probable this will be the final year of business in our present location. The continuing pandemic has made it almost impossible to maintain profitability.”
Another crippling factor is the surrounding office market, where many employees who can work from home have been doing so. That’s gutted the lunch business of places like Kouzina Christos that have always depended on it.
With the Terrell-Mill Powers Ferry area going through another transformation—with several mixed-use developments in the works yielding many new residential dwellings—the timing of Kouzina Christos’ closure is even more unfortunate.
For those of us who ate there somewhat regularly, it seemed like we’d be able to eat there forever.
The old-world feel of Kouzina Christos held up well over four decades, and it took something as devastating as a pandemic to close the doors.
I get many messages from readers asking about new restaurants that are opening—especially the new chain casual spots that are dotting East Cobb like never before.
What I’d like to ask my readers is to think of their favorite truly local restaurants these days and patronize them like never before. These are community gems that are teetering on the edge of extinction.
At the very least, many are trying to stave off a gradual death like Kouzina Christos, barely holding on amid continuing uncertainty and with no end in sight to health restrictions.
Kouzina Christos (1453 Terrell Mill Road) will be open from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. through Saturday.
After that, Christos Giannes said “we will all take a long rest and start looking at other possible locations to build on our 40 years of history” including “options to re-imagine the next chapter of Kouzina Christos.”
I hope that chapter comes soon, and that the Italian grinder is on the menu.
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A Cobb GIS Map of COVID-19 deaths by ZIP code, with icons showing the locations of long-term care homes. For more details click here.
Since we began breaking down COVID-19 cases, deaths and other data in Cobb County and specifically East Cobb, we’ve been getting queries from readers imploring us to dig further into the numbers.
Some think the seriousness of the virus is overstated considering the high number of people who test negative and the very high percentage of those who recover.
They worry that a slide back into lockdowns would not only devastate the local economy, but some wonder if there isn’t an intent to close things down until after the November elections.
Others think we’re not doing enough to illustrate the spread of a virus that’s killed and sickened far too many people, and that we should hunker down until the case numbers decline, or a vaccine is developed.
Most just want to know how to better understand numbers that are floating around in incredible quantities, and from an increasing variety of sources.
The biggest problem is the limited range of the data that is community-specific, and especially pertaining to East Cobb.
On Friday a total of 339 new COVID-19 cases were reported in Cobb County, a weekday single-day high since the Georgia Department of Public Health began issuing daily updates in March.
(A total of 556 new cases were reported in Cobb on Monday, July 6, reflecting a lag due to the Independence Day holiday weekend.)
As of Friday in Cobb County, there were 6,708 confirmed cases of COVID-19, fourth-highest in Georgia, and 250 deaths, second only to Fulton County.
On Saturday, Cobb’s case count rose by 232, to 6,950 cases, and three more deaths were added, for 253 overall.
Those are staggering numbers, and some readers have been asking us what exactly do they mean? It’s easy to see graphs and charts showing big jumps in cases alone and get very jittery. How concerned should we be?
What’s the larger context we should be thinking about? Who’s getting the most sick and dying the most, and who’s experiencing only mild symptoms or none at all?
Cobb and Douglas Public Health figures showing higher case rates for younger age groups. For more local data click here.
This more recent crest of cases—which is disproportionately affecting younger age groups—is not bringing with it the death rates we saw in the spring, when many elderly and at-risk people were the primary casualties.
The Cobb and Douglas Public Health website, like the state’s, has a lot of valuable information, but quite often it’s hard to parse data that readers say they want us to examine.
CDPH breaks down cases by age group, but not deaths. It also tracks the test positivity rate (how many people test positive against all those it tests), which is at 6.76 percent in Cobb, up from around five percent just a few weeks ago.
Those are figures noted by Dr. Janet Memark, director of Cobb and Douglas Public Health, who issued a public health alert last week as a result.
CDPH has tested 18,571 people in Cobb County. If you factor in those 253 deaths, that’s 1.36 percent of people in Cobb who’ve been tested for the virus—at least by our public health agency—who’ve died.
If you measure deaths against what as of Saturday is now 6,940 positive cases (what’s called a case fatality rate), that figure is 3.6 percent.
Cobb government’s Geographic Information Systems department also has been tracking COVID numbers, focusing mostly on data stemming from case and death counts.
How many of those who are testing positive these days are seriously ill? Beyond hospitalization numbers, which have been going up in Cobb and elsewhere in Georgia but are still considered manageable, that’s unclear.
How many people have mild or no symptoms at all also isn’t known. Since anyone is being encouraged to get tested, it would be helpful to know how many asymptomatic cases there are. But that’s data that isn’t readily available.
In East Cobb, we’ve had 1,271 confirmed cases of the virus, and 44 deaths. That’s up from 1,034 and 41 a week ago. But that’s about all that we know, for now.
As we noted in that last report, 16 of those deaths were in ZIP Code 30068, in East Cobb, which has a number of long-term care homes.
While that information has been helpful, it’s become public only in recent weeks. There’s nothing more in the ZIP Code data to indicate the infection rate (those who test positive against those tested) and the case fatality rate.
We don’t even know the age, gender or racial breakdowns by ZIP Code, or how many of those cases involved people with other underlying health issues.
This is information that might calm the fears of many citizens, fears that have been skyrocketing in recent weeks.
Right before Friday’s numbers came out, Cobb Commission Chairman Mike Boyce said he wouldn’t issue a mask mandate, as some mayors have done in Georgia, because he thinks it’s unenforceable.
After Friday’s numbers were reported, the Cobb County School District issued revised reopening plans that do not require staff or students to wear masks.
That’s set off a firestorm of emotion and anxiety that figures to get even more heated before classes start next month.
How masks became such a fraught issue is a topic for another column, but it does show the continuing uncertainty, not just over data, but how to interpret it and how to develop strategies to combat the virus.
We are drowning in data without having a better understanding of it. Other data that might better explain how many people seriously become sick, or not, is harder to come by.
Yet politicians and public health officials keep peddling the same pedestrian messages they have since March—wash your hands, practice social distancing, and wear a mask in public.
Gee, thanks Mom.
After four months, this is all they can still say? This isn’t reassuring the public any more than continuing to extend emergency orders, as the governor and judges have done, at least until August, and possibly into the fall.
How much longer will business owners, employees, students and parents, religious worshippers, sports fans and everyday citizens be told to continue placing their lives and well-being on indefinite hold?
How much longer will there be public demands to mask up, and lock down, healthy people? Especially school children, who are in an age group with the fewest virus cases of all? Is this even a good thing for our society to expect?
The numbers are all over the place, begging to be better organized, and so are the reactions to a crisis that seems to have no end.
Cobb County appears to be in good shape, based on data that goes beyond raw case and death counts.
However, those are the metrics that dominate government response, media coverage and good bit of public opinion.
They’re also feeding a social contagion that’s sweeping through our country faster than COVID-19, and that might be the most difficult outbreak of all to contain.
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If you were eager to break the tedium of waiting out a public health emergency, it would have been hard to top the rumors of a sex shop possibly lining Johnson Ferry Road—our main thoroughfare here in fair East Cobb—that swirled about over the Memorial Day holiday.
My phone lines, inbox and text and social media messaging apps were on fire just as the exact people you’d need to contact to check out the story were disappearing for the long weekend.
I got what I could from publicly available sources, heard from plenty of East Cobbers who were hopping mad and even got an exasperated “what?” from the individual supposedly in the middle of all this.
On Memorial Day, Commissioner Bob Ott, hounded by what he said were more than 500 messages about the subject, cloaked his response to the Tokyo Valentinto rumors in a “Memorial Day Message” subject line.
He said that as long as the business opened as what it indicated—a clothing store—and met code requirements, there was nothing the county could do.
Nor could it do much if it later opened as an adult store, as happened last December in Sandy Springs. Local governments, he added, can’t come back retroactively and change their zoning codes to stop something like this.
When we broke the story on that holiday, it wasn’t all that I wanted that story to be, but it was more than enough to stoke an even bigger fury from some East Cobb citizens.
But do they speak for the entire community? While many of us come here for safe neighborhoods, good schools and a family-oriented way of life, who’s to say there’s not a market for an adult store?
When I started checking reader comments to this story—always a good idea when you’re running a family community news site—I found some intriguing views. Including this little exchange on the East Cobb NewsFacebook page:
“Perhaps if customers of the store had photos of their cars or their photo taken as they exited the store and the photos were posted on social media it might embarrass them and discourage them from shopping there.”
Rebuffed, in a flash:
“Sure—let’s get Amazon to release what they send to your house, mmmkay?”
“Clutch those pearls, ladies! How many of you read 50 Shades of Grey?”
I checked out some other local social media channels, which certainly are dens of trolling. There’s Nextdoor, which is even more unhinged than Facebook, even though users are required to identify their neighborhood.
An opponent of an adult store asked a simple, age-old question that goes to the classic argument over how to determine community standards:
“What would it add to the community?”
A sampling of the replies:
“Everything!!”
“A great sex life.”
“Bow-chika-bow-wow.”
“Live and let live.”
“Find something better to do with your time.”
“I’m all for it. Why drive all the way down to Fulton and DeKalb county to get your gear? Keep the sales taxes here in Cobb.”
“I might just have to go to the grand opening of this place solely because everyone is acting like this is a 1620s Puritan village whose morals would undoubtedly be destroyed by a store that sells porn and adult toys to adults.”
“It’s a date. I’ll wear my scarlet letter.”
What some East Cobbers may not know is that we’ve had a sex shop in our area for quite a few years now, and seemingly without incident.
No, not the Tokyo Valentino store pictured at the top that opened on Cobb Parkway two years ago, not far from the Big Chicken.
But even closer than that. It’s called Elations, and it’s on Powers Ferry Road near Roswell Road, facing the shopping center where Harry’s Farmers Market once was. It’s also in the city of Marietta and has been there for years. Before that, another adult store was in the same location for a number of years.
Judging by the car traffic when I passed by on Saturday, Elations does a pretty good business. It makes no bones about the adult erotica items it sells, but also prominently promotes CBD items and “smoking accessories,” which as one of my readers pointed out to me, probably keeps it in business.
An East Cobb resident I talked to this week says if something like that comes to Johnson Ferry, it will “spread like the Coronavirus.”
While Elations is in a commercial area that’s been run-down, it’s actually closer to a nearby residential community than 1290 Johnson Ferry Road.
Those homes may not be in the same price range as Princeton Walk, but it’s where people live and are raising families.
Nothing else like Elations has spread in the vicinity. It sits across a parking lot from the Marietta Burger Bar, and Williamson Bros. BBQ and Hoyle’s Kitchen & Bar are nearby.
Another reader who mentioned Elations chimed in thusly:
“If they don’t shop there; it’ll go OUT of business. Pretty straightforward. Maybe stop making up imaginary crises and focus on real things that need to be dealt with.”
To which he got this response:
“I’m not against these stores, I just don’t like them in my neighborhood. It’s a fair opinion.”
Fair enough.
Tokyo Valentino also sells “smoking accessories” at its Marietta store and five others owned by Atlanta adult retail impresario Michael Morrison. Since 1995 he’s had an adult store on Cheshire Bridge Road and Piedmont Road, and he’s battled the city of Atlanta almost as long.
It’s where video rooms and private bedrooms and massage suites can be rented out—on top of an admission charge of $20 minimum (all of his other stores are strictly retail).
When I reached Morrison last week—as he was hiking in Arizona—about an East Cobb store, he said he had no idea what I was referring to. When I asked him about the 1290 Clothing Store application, he said he knew nothing about it.
He’s said elsewhere that business associates may have been working on a “sub project” without his knowledge, and he doesn’t know what may go in the old Mattress Firm space.
That story clearly doesn’t sit well with a lot of East Cobbers. Morrison’s name is on the business incorporation documents. The new owner of the old mattress store building is a Miami entrepreneur who has adult retail business interests. Morrison’s past includes prison time for tax evasion.
His Sandy Springs store also was originally going to be for dancers’ clothing, but now is a Tokyo Valentino store.
Cobb commissioners got an earful about this during the public comment session at their regular meeting Tuesday, but none of them responded. Even to allegations that 1290 Clothing may have gotten its business license in dubious fashion.
When I asked Cobb Commission Chairman Mike Boyce this week if it’s possible the county could invalidate the business license, he said “We’re looking into it.”
A factor for the county also would be whether it would want to get entangled with Morrison, who has a continuing lawsuit against the city of Atlanta and disputes with other local governments.
That might be the biggest headache associated with having an adult store in East Cobb. It would be a new jurisdiction for him to test in the courts, as well as a new retail market.
At the East Cobb SNOBs Facebook page, some were trying to put this into perspective, and just have a little social media fun:
“In a world where men are murdered for their skin color, I’m not going to lose any sleep for having to lie to my kid about what ‘adult toys’ are.”
“Hey at least it will be considered an essential business for the next lockdown.”
“Isn’t Johnson Ferry tacky enough?”
At the EAST COBBER, which was kind enough to link to our story that broke this all out into the open:
“This can’t happen in East Cobb!! They should put in a cute little bakery/coffee shop. That is what we need!!”
“Sounds like some of y’all need a sex shop in the area so you can loosen up a little bit.”
“I smell a rat. Funny how this shop wants to move in (in the middle of a pandemic) *just* as there is a push for East Cobb cityhood. Could this be a ploy to get people to support cityhood, ergo stricter zoning?”
“Sex is healthy. I feel for your partners.”
“Not all of us need a sex shop to be happy with our partners. I feel sad for your partner that you need more.”
You get the drift. As I said, social media invites this sort of thing, although I do think it shows that there’s not unanimous condemnation of an adult store.
Morrison has bigger issues, as he was ordered to jail last week by a DeKalb County judge for contempt of court, in a long-running dispute over his store in Brookhaven.
He’s appealing, as East Cobbers promise to keep an eye out for what goes up at 1290 Johnson Ferry—perhaps chattering about it at their favorite cute little bakery and coffee shop.
This week had far too much excitement for some citizens in East Cobb, but it did jolt us out of what has been a dispiriting lockdown.
We return you now to your regularly scheduled pandemic programming.
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Late Friday afternoon, I turned into The Avenue East Cobb and couldn’t believe my eyes.
A practically empty parking lot, save for a handful of cars.
And two pedestrians taking advantage of the surroundings to enjoy a late afternoon walk on a glorious spring day.
On a typical day, the place would be packed, and the roads leading to it would be groaning with vehicles at one of East Cobb’s busiest bottlenecks.
Instead, like many busy places in the community, The Avenue East Cobb felt like Sunday morning, before church traffic and those seeking a late breakfast or brunch started hitting the roads.
Just a few stores remained open at that retail center, and it wasn’t alone in looking abandoned.
My drive through East Cobb on Friday felt the same way: From the Lower Roswell-Johnson Ferry interchange, and along Sewell Mill Road, Roswell Road, Robinson Road.
Bereft of cars, and lined by more individual human beings walking than I can ever recall seeing.
One of them was a young father, pushing his twin infants in a double-stroller along Johnson Ferry Road near Mt. Zion United Methodist Church.
Many others were making their way up and down the rolling hills of Shadowlawn Drive.
Those who were getting out for something other than exercise were having to take the precautionary measures that have become iconic for our new extraordinary time.
A dozen or so shoppers were lined up outside Trader Joe’s, standing six feet apart, waiting for their cue to move ahead by an employee who was sternly enforcing foot traffic at the door.
The supply of Two Buck Chuck I had in mind for the weekend will have to wait, I thought as I drove by.
I am not comfortable with this. Nor with the sight of masks, which are becoming more commonplace as the days go by.
Or the eerie, dystopian phrases that are now part of our everyday language. To hear, or write, “social distancing” gives me the chills.
Human beings were not designed to do the things we are now having to undertake to combat a deadly virus that has taken the world by storm, and claimed many thousands of lives.
Sometimes I think I’m in a state of denial, although for the past month I’ve written about little but COVID-19 and our community’s response to it.
For weeks now, the days have bled into the nights. At times I forget what day of the week it is. With a few moments to spare, I’ve broken down to consider the monstrous losses that have piled up thus far, and that are sure to continue.
The number of people getting sick and dying.
The businesses closing and workers losing their jobs.
The school kids having their academic work cut short and high school graduations nixed.
The civic and social groups that can only meet virtually.
What all of this is going to do to us in the long run.
It is a scourge seemingly without end.
But nothing hit me like driving Friday to the entrance at East Cobb Park, locked up with barriers and yellow tape.
The parks were closed along with everything else, and have been for a few weeks.
I was stunned, and sat there for a few minutes. Total silence, and stillness, at one of the hubs of our community, on a day in which there would have been a bevy of activity.
I consider myself blessed, however. There is a walking trail near where I live, and I’m an old pro at working remotely. Getting community updates to you in the way I’d like hasn’t been hampered by technology as much as a matter of time.
There’s a staggering amount of news to provide when the basics of daily life have been so disrupted.
I miss getting out and covering stories in public, and connecting with citizens in person.
I miss the human connections that make doing community news so rewarding and valuable. While it’s true that we have tremendous ways to connect—e-mail, social media, text messages and video streaming—nothing truly replaces the real thing.
We’re doing the best we can with what we have. I’m buoyed by the spirit of cooperation from many in East Cobb to observe public health guidelines, and to help those in need and on the frontlines of battling the virus.
I admire the resilience of small business owners who are fighting to survive, and parents and teachers providing educational instruction in a very different classroom environment.
Most of all, I miss the tactile greetings of Sunday mornings. Not long ago, an older woman at the church I’ve been attending gave me a lovely scarf as a friendly gesture. I’m not a member, but have been worshipping there regularly.
I sit near her and some other elderly parishioners, and I wonder about them constantly now. Will we ever be able to say the peace together anytime soon?
It’s been wonderful to say hello and follow the liturgy on Facebook Live for these last few weeks.
But more than anything, I just want to hug someone the way we used to do, before our world was turned completely upside down a month ago.
I want to sit in a restaurant and dine in. I want to take a nap under the trees at East Cobb Park. I want to shop without seeing lines of demarcation taped to the floor, spots not to cross.
I have faith those things will happen, but we’re in for a very long haul for the time being. The statewide shelter-in-place will continue at least through the end of April, and it will be months before any sliver of normalcy will return to our lives.
On this Easter and Passover weekend, I wish all of you a peaceful and restive interlude, and pray we’ll find the strength and courage to navigate this anxiety and uncertainty.
Thanks for your readership, stay safe and be in touch.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
