Avondale Estates annexation foes fear: ‘They want to run us out’

Mayor defends city’s quest to claim, clean gritty area
By April Hunt

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Vi Nguyen’s small voice is growing loud with anger and fear.
The Vietnamese immigrant has spent 13 years building up Decatur Auto Tech in the gritty little commercial district between Avondale Estates and Decatur.

There was a time when much of DeKalb County had pockets like East College Avenue: clusters of used-car lots, auto shops, gas stations — worn at the edges but not run-down. Unlike the rest of the county, though, the 1-square-mile strip is sandwiched between two cities, one that spent the past decade gentrifying and one that wants to spend the next decade doing the same.

Decatur, of course, transformed itself into a quaint walkable town of fancy boutiques and trendy brewpubs. Avondale, often overlooked as Decatur’s smaller, less-improved neighbor, wants to refine its Tudor Village downtown and spiff up the strip that leads into town.
To do that, it would annex most of the East College tract and create a continuous line of prosperity from one city to the other. And that’s what frightens Nguyen.
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