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Community Corner

'Our Little 5 Points,' Give or Take a Point

The corner of Sessions Street and Campbell Hill Street forms the heart of a diverse, artistic and friendly neighborhood.

   Wally Daly calls his neighborhood “borderline Yuppie.” He says it in a nice way.

   When he first moved to Sessions Street in 1989, it was “pretty rough around here. It was the slums; homeless people, houses falling down, pretty rough.”

   So borderline Yuppie -- whatever you may think about Yuppies -- isn’t so bad. Wally is enamored with the place.

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   Today: “I’m not going to say ‘funky,’ ” said Daly, a self-employed woodworker and artist who lives in a rose-colored house that was a grocery store when he bought it. “It’s more Virginia-Highland-ish. Virginia-Highland-wanna-be-ish. Also semi-historical.”

   The crooked intersection of Sessions Street and Campbell Hill Street, the heart of the neighborhood, is “our Little Five Points, although I’m not sure we have five points," said Daly. "The way the corner sets up, you have roads coming at you from all directions.  It looks like more coming at you, anyway.”

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   He’s right.  And he’s also just the kind of guy who fits in on this quirky corner of restored and historic homes, newer cottages and bungalows, a Yoga studio, a folk art store and a Greek restaurant -- the Sessions Street Grill.

   “I personally know a handful of neighbors who are involved in art or are working artists,” said Daly. “Not starving artists, working artists. Big difference.”

   Most of the neighborhood is in the Church/Cherokee Historic District. Sessions Street, as it runs west off Church Street, is dotted with restored Victorians and other homes that date back to the late 1800s.

   The Sessions Street corridor includes more small businesses and some light-industrial areas as it runs north up to Roselane Street. New townhomes and converted lofts take over as you get nearer to Wellstar Kennestone Hospital at the northern edge of the neighborhood.

    Campbell Hill Street, lined with tidy bungalows, runs north past Lewis Park to the hospital. The railroad tracks are off to the west, and the Brumby Lofts to the south are a boundary to the Marietta Parkway.

   Kee Carlisle opened his business, Session Street Folk Art at the corner of Sessions and Campbell Hill, in 1999.  Four years later, he and his wife, Karen, bought a house at 29 Sessions Street, a stone’s throw away from the art shop.

   “I found this place because I quit my job with a Buckhead ad agency,” said Carlisle. “I had decided to get into the business of being an art dealer, concentrating on folk art. I took a job with a little marketing company and said I only wanted to work with them for a while because I was looking for a place to start my business. That worked out with them."

   “Right after I started, they moved their office to just up the road on Roselane," said Carlisle. "I heard about Nick's (Session Street Grill) and went to lunch. First time I had ever been there. I looked across the street and saw the place was for sale. I knew in a flash it was the right place.”

   At the time, the Carlisles were living in the Brookhaven area of Atlanta, near Oglethorpe University. When Karen Carlisle took a job in Marietta, they were both commuting. “Crazy,” said Carlisle.

   They went house hunting in Marietta.  They actually looked at the house they are in now, but it hadn’t been renovated. “We’re not real handy,” said Carlisle, “So we didn’t buy it.”

    They moved into a subdivision across from Marietta High School but didn’t like it. “I was up and running in the store, and before long I knew almost everybody in the neighborhood,” said Carlisle. “It’s just that kind of place.  Boy, I wanted to be here so bad.”

   A few years later, the house came up for sale again, and this time it had been totally renovated. The Carlisles grabbed it. “That worked out pretty good,” said Carlisle.

   The neighborhood has not disappointed them.  “I love it,” said Carlisle. “If I’m outside working in my (front yard) garden, I’ll have a neighbor spot me and come over and start talking," said Carlisle. "Before long, two or three other neighbors will be out and we’ll talk for an hour. It’s how we learn what’s going on around us or with the city."

   Carlisle said that happens all the time. "I like that kind of atmosphere. The relationships with your neighbors here are meaningful," said Carlisle. "It’s not just being polite.”

   When they first moved to Sessions Street, the Carlisles began what has become an annual New Year’s Day party for neighbors and friends. City officials and politicians are also invited. The Sessions Street crowd does not shy away from politics.

   Over the past couple of years, the railroad crossing at Kennesaw Avenue and Roselane was closed, and Campbell Hill Street became a dead end to allow for hospital expansion. 

    Closing off the neighborhood from Kennesaw Avenue has hurt businesses, said Carlisle, and he and his neighbors fought hard against the closing of Campbell Hill, worrying about cut-through traffic.  “A downright nasty fight." A community group now meets regularly with hospital officials about continuing problems, he added.

   Carlisle has spent the first seven months of this year wrestling with city officials over a storage shed behind his art shop. The shed was damaged in a storm, and a complaint about the mess was filed with the city. When Carlisle went to get a permit to do the repair work, he was told the original garage attached to the shed had been built out of code (before the Carlisles owned the building).

     Carlisle’s request for a setback variance included letters of support from all adjacent property owners, as well as several dozen emails from others. Carlisle was granted the variance in late June, but he said it took him three more weeks of wrangling with various city departments before he got the permit to begin work.

   After the zoning hearing, he wrote “Thank you, neighbors” on a drop cloth and hung it over his business sign for a week.

   “The neighborhood is diverse enough that it’s hard to get everyone on the same page,” said Carlisle. “People have different visions of things. We bought here for that diverse feel. We bought here because of the nature of the place.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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