Your DeKalb Farmers Market, where have your trees gone?

• Joeff Davis
• Construction crews have cleared former woods to start first phase of Your DeKalb Farmers Market expansion

A few weeks ago, Your DeKalb Farmers Market embarked on the first phase of an expansion. The multiyear project could, once finished, create one of the largest grocery stores in the country. Before construction begins, however, crews cut down the thick woods that once stood on the store's western edge. In an open letter to the YDFM, Decatur resident Melanie Maxwell says she's disappointed in the loss of trees.

To whom it may concern,

You might have made a mistake. I understand about progress but I want you to evaluate your recent decision to expand. Specifically, the method of your expansion.

One could say that the driving force of my returning home to Georgia in 2006, after a decade of residing in far-flung states, was to be able to shop at your good store. On a trip home in 2005 to visit my family, we went to Your DeKalb Farmers Market and I fell in love. I moved to Decatur. I made YDFM my primary grocer. I often neglected local farmers markets for the convenience, comfort and consistency of YDFM. I am not proud of this, but I am proud to have supported such a fine grocery store for so many years, and I am proud to have encouraged many others to shop there as well.

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• Joeff Davis

I also loved the location. The woods surrounding the store were thick, and on the western side along Ponce de Leon Avenue was a small meadow flanked by a wooden fence. Such natural areas are rare in metro Atlanta, those places where the tree line lends away to field. I have heard the bluebird's primary habitat is in this transition zone, and that it has been disappearing with development. The open space there on Ponce reminded me of the old battle grounds at Kennesaw Mountain. I always thought a cannon should be resting by the fence.

Several weeks ago, I went to the market with only a scraped hillside of red dirt to greet me. At that point, a few medium-sized trees were still abutting the parking lot on the west property, but now those few have been cut down too. I drove around by the dog day-care, to DeKalb Industrial Way, and I saw the leveling reached all the way down to that road. It was enormous. It was ugly. It reminded me of Marietta in the 1990s when irresponsible condo developers and strip-mall builders would level a hillside to put in their hideous buildings. They would leave nothing, and there was nothing left. The straggling trees they replanted, yes, and these areas have started to recover. But that has been 20 years now.

• Joeff Davis

So I think you have made a mistake. It isn't pleasant to go to your compound anymore. I heard you are expanding. I am happy for your improvements. But for a store steeped in offering holistic food products, as well as extensive recycling, I am appalled at your lack of sensibility in your new development. There are ways to build sustainably. There are ways to keep shade trees and ensure the work environment of your employees remains a positive experience. What are you asking your future construction workers to endure? A hillside of mud without shade. What are you asking your customers to tolerate? Ugliness and another blazing parking lot without trees. How much did you save to build this way? I pay much more money to buy wholesome, organic food made locally at your store, rather than packaged items at Kroger. I would have paid more to preserve some of your former forest.

In this city, where builders make it a practice to demolish historic buildings on weekends (when government officials are not working) and then only pay a small fine for their actions, and where so much development has occurred on such an irresponsible path that we no longer have the infrastructure to navigate it, I am hurt and saddened by your decision to bulldoze your property.

I am not saying I will never shop at your grocery again. Of course I will return. But every time I go there my stomach clenches, and I think how very unhappy it makes me. Before your store was a place of international celebration and crowded fun. Now, I get my things and go. I am not saying I will boycott, but I will not be shopping there as much as I used to. This is a good thing. I will support farmers in the markets around town. I will pay even more to them, and the products will be less predictable, but I will be happier. It is what I should have always been doing.

I wish you the best, and I thank you for years of wonderful food, but I think you made a mistake. Even if you replant, I don't have two decades to wait.

Melanie Maxwell is an Atlanta native who now lives in Decatur. She practices digital asset management for an Atlanta company. She rescues cats, dogs and sometimes opossums.