Amid the races for governor, and senator, and representative, and thousands of state offices, there was an election in Henry County, Georgia, over the future of the town of Stockbridge. White residents on the edge of this diverse community put forward a plan to rip the incorporated town almost exactly in half, turning the high-income neighborhoods and the city’s profitable commercial district into a new community called “Eagle’s Landing.” The leader of this effort justified the destruction of Stockbridge by stating that she wanted the kind of town where she could get “a Cheesecake factory” instead of a “Bojangles’.” Or, as the Henry Herald put it ...
Tuesday’s vote marked the culmination of perhaps the biggest story in Henry County this year and the culmination of 22 months of effort from Eagles Landing supporters, who wanted to break the country club-based community into its own city.
The plan to draw a mini-Mason-Dixon line through the town of Stockbridge was carefully constructed so that most of the residents of that town couldn’t even vote. Only the people who would be in Eagle’s Landing got to vote on the formation of Eagle’s Landing. The people would be left behind could only watch from the sidelines. To get things into that sorry position, where a richer, whiter town could be created by ripping off select pieces of an existing incorporated town, required action from the Georgia legislature and executive action from Georgia governor Nathan Deal. Authorizing this kind of intra-community cannibalism in the state caused Moody’s to downgrade the credit for every city in Georgia. Both economists and business leaders warned against it. But Republicans pushed the bill through, Deal signed it, and on Tuesday night the creation of Eagle’s Landing went up for a vote with only the residents of the high income neighborhoods allowed a vote.
And it failed. It failed.
As of 11:30 p.m. Tuesday, “No” had 1,517 votes, or 56.77 percent of the vote, while “Yes” had 1,155 votes, or 43.23 percent of the vote.
More than half of the tax base of Stockbridge would have been taken away if the vote had passed. It would have left the city not just unable to continue with the services it provides to residents, but struggling to pay for revenue bonds that were passed based on the existing boundaries. It filed court challenges to the new law allowing the Eagle’s Landing vote. Those legal challenges failed in every court, up to and including the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia—where the chief judge is actually a Clinton appointee.
Everything came down to the vote. A vote that almost seemed like a foregone conclusion. After all, the people who would be most injured by a victory couldn’t pull a lever. Only those in the “country club-based community” would get the chance to determine if they were getting that sweet, sweet cheesecake. The founder of the Eagle’s Landing movement was “in a fantastic mood Tuesday evening.”
But Eagle’s Landing was voted down. Voted down by the people who would have been able to split themselves into a much paler community.
Not every vote in Georgia went in favor of diversity or justice on Tuesday night. But this one did.
Stockbridge is the heart of an area that’s been called “Hollywood South,” where the television and film industry has become a major part of the economy. The affluent communities that would have made up Eagle’s Landing weren’t there in spite of Stockbridge. They were there because of Stockbridge. They are already the beneficiaries of the energy and money that Stockbridge’s position in the entertainment industry have brought to the region. And it seems that a majority of the residents there recognize that fact.
Scenes for Black Panther were filmed both in a quarry outside of town and right in the middle of Stockbridge. It seems entirely right that the result of this vote should be celebrated.
Voters said no to a new city of Eagles Landing at the polls on Tuesday, and Stockbridge will remain whole.
Stockbridge Forever.