Atlanta Highway Part Deux: Last week's cover story on revitalizing Atlanta Highway generated quite a bit of reader feedback. Lynn Hardman, who moved his business, Southern Waterbeds & Futons, from downtown to Atlanta Highway in 1981, wrote in to express concerns about the state Department of Transportation widening the road to eight lanes near Georgia Square Mall. "The Mall entrances will be changed , with most of the other free-standing  businesses being forced out, and the ones that aren't will be smashed up against the Atlanta Highway," he says. "The DOT told me last year they would be back early this year with their offer for taking about half of my parking lot. I will no longer have customer parking, and the Atlanta Highway will be as ugly as you can get."

Turns out, this plan is moving along pretty quickly by GDOT standards. They're about to start negotiating with the owners of 56 parcels to buy right of way, according to spokeswoman Teri Pope. Construction is scheduled for 2016. The total project budget is $37.5 million, she says.

On the other hand, University of Georgia economist Richard Martin says rumors of Atlanta Highway's demise when a new mall off the Oconee Connector opens are greatly exaggerated. He notes that other big boxes like Kmart, Target and Hancock Fabrics were quickly filled without any government incentives when those retailers left. He thinks "the private market should be given a chance to work its magic."

Runnin' for Office, Boss: Carter Kessler is the Republican candidate for an Athens state House district, running against Spencer Frye, the Democrat who knocked off Rep. Keith Heard, D-Athens, in the July primary.

Carter Kessler. Not pictured: Spencer Frye, wearing a pair of mirror aviators and holding a German shepherd on a chain leash.

Kessler has two DUIs on his record. He got the most recent one last September while pushing a moped downtown, for which a judge sentenced him to 240 hours of community service, among other things. He could have done the work at any one of dozens of local nonprofits or government agencies, but he chose Athens Area Habitat for Humanity—where Frye is the executive director. Awkward! Kessler says he did a bunch of his hours at Habitat's ReStore because he doesn't have to schedule shifts in advance, and it's close to his house on Holman Avenue. Frye describes their relationship as "respectful" but says the situation was "very strange."

Kessler, of course, can't drive because his license is suspended, but he says that hasn't affected his campaign. "A lot of people have helped me, and Athens is such a walkable, bikeable place, I've been able to get around," he says.

But can he eat 50 eggs?

She's a Brick Hotel: The Athens-Clarke Planning Commission approved a new Hyatt Place hotel next to the Classic Center last week. The full scoop is at Flagpole.com, but long story short, developer Robert Small and architect John Wyle used, for the first time, an alternative compliance procedure to deviate from downtown design guidelines by working closely with planners. The first, kinda Redneck Riviera-ish design had a lot of stucco. Planning commissioners asked for more brick, and they got it. Now the design looks great, and the whole thing took less than a month. As Wyle put it: "This process has been very constructive and will be helpful to any architect who comes along and tries to wade through all the regulations." Who says Athens isn't business-friendly?

Lights, Camera, Athens!: Trouble With the Curve, filmed partially in Athens earlier this year, opened Friday. The movie stars Pete McCommons as an aging baseball scout who chooses an empty chair with the No. 1 pick in the draft. (Kidding. Actually, that's Clint Eastwood. Pete's an extra in a scene shot at the Globe.) Other scenes were shot at Oconee Hill Cemetery and the corner of College and Clayton streets. But don't expect to see much of Athens in the final cut. "You'd be amazed how long shoots go on and how little makes it into the final cut," says Athens-Clarke County public information officer Jeff Montgomery.

The movie looks terrible, but it did provide some small boost to our local economy, employing extras, caterers, hotel employees and off-duty police. Local officials will continue trying to lure film shoots to Athens, according to Montgomery and Chuck Jones, executive director of the Athens Convention and Visitors Bureau. The CVB also plans to start pushing sports, Jones says, using University of Georgia football to lure conventions and tournaments.

Fratpocalypse: Cobbham residents who oppose a proposed fraternity house on North Milledge Avenue (and that would be pretty much all of them) turned out in force for a Historic Preservation Commission meeting last week, arguing that the HPC doesn't have the authority to approve a design until the Athens-Clarke Commission gives Sigma Chi permission to put a fraternity house there in the first place. The HPC tabled a decision until December, so stay tuned. This one is already ugly, and it could get worse.

It's All Mathematics: The hugely unpopular news that budget cuts would force Secretary of State Brian Kemp to close the state archives in Jonesboro to the public is another reminder that, in government as in everything else, you get what you pay for. Kemp says he had no other choice when Gov. Nathan Deal ordered state agencies to cut their budgets by 3 percent yet again. The alternatives for the hodgepodge of a department, he says, were to violate federal law by defunding elections, take securities fraud investigators off the beat or the delay the licenses many professionals need to go to work. And it's not as if no one saw this coming. "For the last two years, I've been telling the legislature this day would come," he says.

Kemp won't go so far as to say the legislature should raise taxes—that would be political suicide—but he sounds fed up with the constant cutting in state government since the Great Recession started. "We're chopping off arms and legs," he says. Do we really want to be the state that lets a copy of the Declaration of Independence rot in some warehouse? I doubt it, but we're also unwilling to pay to keep it safe and give the public access to it and thousands of other irreplaceable records. As President Clinton reminded us not long ago, that's not a sustainable course.

Deal said last week he'd restore funding for the archives, but at press time it remained unclear how he planned to do so. Keeping the archives open will cost $733,000.