Group wants portion of Hwy 138 renamed Lake Spivey Parkway

On a map printed in 1999, it is called Stockbridge Road. Records at the Georgia Department of Transportation show it as Charles "Ed" Holcomb Highway. According to Google Maps, it's called GA-138 E. The county's official map shows the name used by most county residents, Ga. Hwy 138. Some people are pushing for a new name for the road between Jonesboro and Interstate 675: Lake Spivey Parkway. "The idea is to use that name to help create a positive brand," said Michael Edmondson, a Clayton County Commissioner and Spivey-area resident. "Creating an identity would help create a destination." The highway would keep the state route designation and the name honoring Holcomb, a Korean war veteran who served in the state legislature. The new name would be overlaid and, supporters hope, come into common use. The renaming proposal comes from Lake Spivey Community, Inc., a neighborhood alliance made up of 16 area homeowner's associations representing more than 1,000 households. The community has defined "Lake Spivey Community" as an area stretching from Noah's Ark Road to the north side of Hwy 138 and from Jonesboro's city limits eastward, to Rum Creek. The name change will not affect the west side of 138 named for the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. It runs from Tara Boulevard to the Fulton County line. According to its mission statement, the community alliance's goal is to insure responsible growth, create a sense of community and a "positive brand" name for the area. Last year, the organization took the renaming request to Clayton delegation to the General Assembly. This year, they have spoken to state Rep. Wade Starr (D-Fayetteville) and Rep. Mike Glanton (D-Jonesboro), Edmondson said, but plans are still in the first stages. "There's been talk about it," Glanton said, "but no one has sat down with me, at this point, and talked about how to proceed or what the plan is." The Lake Spivey alliance advertises the area with the slogan "The Place to Live," but its first goal is to get people to think of the area as a place, creating an identity and a community. In March 2006, the organization looked at getting the United States Postal Service to list all of the area's mailing addresses as "Lake Spivey, GA." Edmondson, then the community's treasurer and now a Clayton County Commissioner, wrote the organization a memo outlining his attempts to get the postal service to make the change. The USPS told Edmondson, according to the memo, that it didn't like the idea because the outlined area crossed the Clayton-Henry county line and included two zip code areas. "[The renaming of the road] is one piece of a puzzle to brand a broader area of Clayton County," Edmondson said. "There's an opportunity there for responsible growth that could lend itself to positive economic impact." Edmondson recently brought the suggestion of renaming the highway to the board of commissioners. The resolution supporting and requesting the General Assembly change the name was on the commission's agenda, Tuesday night, but no action was taken on the measure. According to Commissioner Wole Ralph, it is a good idea, though the county government doesn't have the authority to change the names of roads. "They're trying to create a sense of place," he said. Developers and planners may look for the name change to create a community identity, said Kc M. Krzic, a land use planner at The Collaborative Firm, LLC. "The idea and the rationale is to create a sense of place, so you would identify an area with a certain goal," Krzic said. "The sense of place helps people identify a true regional area and it helps to create interaction between people in that area," she added. A community identity is intended, by planners and developers, first to cause the people living in an area to think of themselves as connected, and second to cause people outside of the area to identify it as a place. Planners attempting to create the sense of place are working to make people think of a loosely-joined area as a place, and will say things like "When you're in Lake Spivey you're going to know you're in Lake Spivey." The goal, according to Krzic, is to have residents use the name when they tell people where they live, and then to have visitors and tourists use it. "Name recognition has a lot to do with how a people perceive a community," Krzic said. "If you have a good active community, generally everything flourishes." The identity can be emphasized with signs. If the state approves the renaming of a road, the only physical change may be a few signs, said David Spear, a spokesman for the Georgia Department of Transportation. Changing a small sign costs GDOT a few hundred dollars, but an overhead-panel sign costs several thousand dollars, he said. "On the maps, just for clarity's sake, we'll leave the state routes," Spear said. The GDOT spokesman said road names come and go. Some years there is a spike of renamed roads. "Recently, and we certainly don't mind this, you see a lot of things being named for servicemen who were killed in Iraq or Afghanistan," Spear said. "It kind of comes and goes in spurts. They seem to be doing it a lot lately."