A Work In Progress

This week, I celebrated my one-year anniversary here at Patch. Actually, I began doing part-time work for Patch in July 2010, but didn’t officially become a full-time employee until late September of that year.

This site ultimately launched the day before Thanksgiving last year and sometime in the coming days we’ll publish story No. 1,700 and counting.

We’ve covered a lot of Smyrna-Vinings (and Cumberland CID) related stories, but there’s no doubt that we’re missing many stories, too. Nobody wants to hear excuses, but I sometimes wish there were more hours in the day. Or at least I could clone myself.

Or even better yet, get more user-contributed content. Hence that’s why this afternoon I posted a video tutorial explaining how to post items at Patch. I hope you’ll take a brief moment to check it out and maybe submit something in the near future.

And I hope you’ll hear me when I say I’m going to try to do a better job of delivering the kind of information that you want. Often times, I’ll have a story that just isn’t complete for a variety of reasons and it just sits around and gets stale. That needs to change; the information needs to be delivered.

For example, I’ve been trying to garner a response or update from someone at Tri-Land Properties all week. Ti-Land of course is redeveloping The Crossings at Four Corners in Smyrna. The project, located at the corner of South Cobb Drive and Concord Road, is to be anchored by a 96,000 square-foot Kroger, the company’s largest grocery store in the Atlanta market.

Clearly, progress is being made and as I understand it, the Kroger is still on course for a Christmas rush opening.

As far as the Kroger fuel center opening by early October, that doesn’t look as promising now does it? And staying on topic, I’ve heard that when the Kroger across the street from The Crossings closes to move to the new development site, a possible tenant is ready to fill that space.

The current rumor is that a Value City Furniture will take the grocery store’s spot. Is this confirmed? No. Am I working on this? Yes. Do I want you thoughts on this? Indeed!

Now a Smyrna City official didn’t tell me this, but a council member did tell me recently how frustrated they were with the slow progress being made at the Hickory Lake Apartments. The rebidding of the asbestos removal last spring delayed the process, but the good news is that finally, building demolition is underway at the 48-acre complex property.

What’s going to replace the crime-riddled apartments? That’s still in the air, but as I understand from a councilperson, two or three national firms are in the process of doing due diligence and looking at the site.

Speaking of due diligence, I did speak with Ted Sandler today. He of course is the representative of Jonquil Village owners Todd and Cheri Maxwell and he told me there are some new developments with regards to the eventual selling of the 14-acre property. At least new developments since last weekend’s story on this much discussed and delayed project. I’ll provide those updates Saturday on the property located at the corner of Spring and Atlanta Roads.

And yes, Atlanta Road - no doubt you’ve noticed the work being done on the Atlanta Road Multi-Use Trail project, which extends from Concord Road to Ridge Road. This trail is a component of the City’s and County’s master trail plan and is expected to be completed in early November.

You can expect to experience periodic lane closures of the right-hand southbound lane on Atlanta Road, periodic construction vehicle use of the center lane on Atlanta Road, and periodic construction at driveway and street connections to the west side of Atlanta Road.

And here’s some more facts:

• Project Length: 1.4 miles
• Engineer: Arcadis
• Contractor: Baldwin Paving
• Construction Budget: $593,101.89 – Federal funds: $474,481.51 (80%); SPLOST funds: $118,620.38 (20%)

If you want to see how the trail connects with the County’s existing and proposed network, then see here.

OK, so it was my intention to give updates on the progress of the new Smyrna Fire Station No. 5 and how the construction of the Campbell Road Bridge is coming along. But the reality is, and a drum roll would be nice here, the reality is that I’ve got to get to a parade.

The Campbell High School Homecoming parade that is, so those construction updates will have to wait. But not for too long, I promise.