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  • Driveway polarizes neighbors

    The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
    04/13/05

    Driveway polarizes neighbors

    Judge to decide if Buckhead homeowner owes city millions and jail
    time

    By TY TAGAMI

    To Sarkis Agasarkisian, the massive rock pile signifies beauty,
    strength and peace of mind.

    The free rock from a city sewer excavation buttressed his crumbling
    and dangerous driveway, the immigrant from Armenia said. "My driveway
    today is like heaven."


    T. Levette Bagwell/AJC
    (ENLARGE)
    Sarkis Agasarkisian says he built his rock driveway with city
    approval; a judge decides today whether that's true. What's not in
    dispute is that the project divided Agasarkisian and his Buckhead
    neighbors, who consider his effort ugly.


    LOUIE FAVORITE/AJC STAFF

    To his neighbors in the swank Buckhead area, the pile of so-called
    "tunnel muck" is straight from hell. They see it as an eyesore that
    has silted a downstream lake and damaged their property values. They
    see the rocks and the trees he tore down to place them there as an
    obvious act of environmental devastation and arrogant disregard for
    the law.

    A judge will decide today which side is right, but several things
    already seem clear: The Agasarkisian family has a history of moving
    soil and cutting down trees in Buckhead, and the family from "the
    land of stone" and their neighbors in "the city of trees" have
    fundamentally different notions of beauty.

    Agasarkisian, who came to the United States in 1979 at age 21 and is
    now a U.S. citizen, was fined nearly $50,000 for felling the trees
    without permission. He could end up paying much more. Observers say
    he piled anywhere from 50 to 700 dump-truck loads into the ravine
    between his ranch-style home and West Conway Drive. Atlanta Municipal
    Court Judge Lisa West said after the bench trial last week that she
    would rule today whether he dumped the rock without a permit and did
    so too close to a drainage ditch, as the city has claimed.

    Agasarkisian faces fines of more than $1 million, and his attorneys
    say he theoretically could be sent to jail for more than 100 years.
    Shel Schlegman, a neighbor who has led the fight against the
    driveway, said he and the other residents in the Mount Paran Road
    area believe Agasarkisian has ruined his property. "It looks like a
    logging camp," said Schlegman, an architect. "It's all just stone.
    There's nothing green there."

    Schlegman said he believes Agasarkisian thought he could act with
    impunity after watching his brother do something similar to his own
    property, without apparent sanction.

    Agasarkisian's brother lives a mile away, in a ranch-style house
    surrounded by similarly unhappy neighbors.

    The residents of Swims Valley Drive say Aroutioun Agasarkisian, or
    Harry, as they call him, cut down dozens of pines that once hid his
    home from the road. They say he hauled in soil and terraced the
    sloping yard into what they derisively call the "rice paddies," then
    allowed weeds to grow. A brick ledge that peeled off the front of the
    house is still where it fell, and a stone fountain near the street
    stopped gurgling soon after it was built and has been dry ever since,
    they say.

    "It's an unsightly mess," said Al Goodgame, whose house at the end of
    the street overlooks a forested ravine. "He mows his grass once a
    year. It's almost like it's his revenge for when we made a stink when
    he cut down the trees."

    Goodgame, a retired landscape architect, wrote a letter to the
    neighborhood association president in April 2000, complaining that as
    many as 45 mature trees had been toppled and that the city had done
    nothing about it.

    Why 'ugly homes'?

    The letter, signed by nearly all the residents on the street,
    described a chaotic scene. It said chain saws buzzed on the property
    from mid-February until late March of that year, often until 11 p.m.
    The letter said car headlights provided illumination and a sport
    utility vehicle and a Ryder truck were used to pull down partially
    cut trees.

    The residents of Swims Valley Drive worried that the city would not
    penalize their neighbor for cutting down trees without a permit.

    Sarkis Agasarkisian said his brother was not fined because he got a
    tree-removal permit after one fell on his house, damaging the roof.

    The city's senior arborist, Frank Mobley, would not talk about the
    case, saying records did not exist from that period.

    One question lingers. Even if Sarkis Agasarkisian thought he could
    build a massive driveway with impunity, why would he want to?

    Schlegman, the architect, insists Agasarkisian could have repaired
    the drive with much more subtle engineering - a road that hugged the
    contours of his property and retaining walls that held a lesser
    amount of rock under the lowest point. He said he was baffled by the
    site development decisions of the Agasarkisian brothers. "Why do
    these people want to live in ugly homes?" he asked.

    Goodgame, who has lived on Swims Valley since childhood, speculates
    that Armenians and Buckhead natives may have different ideas of
    beauty. "It's cultural: I'm beginning to think that trees are
    something they don't like," he said.

    One expert on Armenia said there may be cultural issues at play.

    Dennis Papazian, a history professor at the University of Michigan at
    Dearborn, said Armenia is called "the land of stone."

    Built for the ages

    "There are a lot of rocks there," said Papazian, who directs the
    university's Armenian Research Center. He said Armenians have built
    with stone for 3,000 years. "There is a tendency for Armenians to
    overbuild. That is a cultural characteristic."

    On a visit to post-Soviet Armenia, he noted how newly prosperous
    farmers were building farmhouses. They used steel and stone and
    concrete. "They look like little fortresses, and they're fairly ugly,
    to be honest," said Papazian, who was born in the United States. He
    said Armenia was the site of frequent invasions, which led to
    deep-seated psychological insecurity.

    "If you didn't build for the ages," he said, "they would tear it
    down."

    http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/atlanta/0405/13driveway.html
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