Clients

Wired Life: Superfast intranet binds community

Connections. That's the name of the Pathway game. Pathway is the outfit that gave us Peachtree City, the pleasant planned mix of residences, businesses, recreation and more south of Atlanta. It's the community connected by pathways traversed by foot, golf carts and bikes.

Now meet SummerGrove, a brand-new Pathway community that may mushroom to 1,500 homes or more starting this spring. The SummerGrove connection is a virtual pathway - the Internet. It will be one of the first residential projects in this region where people, homes, recreation and organizations will be knit together by the communicating power of computers, including a special intranet just for the SummerGrovers.

An intranet is a special network that establishes a high-speed connection among all the families in the neighborhood so they can conduct their own chats, follow the doings of the clubs and groups, and look at continually updated calenders of events. It also provides an up-to-the-minute directory of phone numbers, e-mail and other information volunteered by and about the residents. If you like, it will remind you of the birthdays of the kids and others in the neighborhood.

The super-fast Internet connection comes under the auspices of Newnan Utilities, the municipal utility that became the first in Georgia to provide cable service and fast access to the Internet. The system will allow SummerGrove residents to connect at 50 times the speed of the ordinary 28.8 kilobytes per second modem.

Recently, I had a face-to-face chat with Elliott Stotler, the planner behind the new Pathway community, to understand the strategy of the Internet theme at SummerGrove.

SummerGrove, Stotler said, is an attempt to be appealing and sensible , given the environmental and other challenges in the high-growth region. The magic of the SummerGrove approach, he said, is that it meets the growing appetite for communication, and it enables people to work from home.

"Companies are trying to implement telecommuting initiatives to enhance productivity, while addressing air quality issues," Stotler said. "At the same time, employees are looking to telecommuting as one way to decrease the amount of time they spend in the car and increase the amount of time they spend with their families."

Families and togetherness are a high consideration in the plan for SummerGrove, where homes will range from the low $100,000s to upward of $300,000.

The community, an easy 30 minute drive from the airport and within five minutes of I-85, will have the amenities Atlantans have come to expect - golf course, pools, tennis courts, clubhouses and more.

In addition, through the use of the computer connections, a server hosted by Newnan Utilities will contain information that keeps the community together socially. For instance, one feature will not only let residents know who is interested in baby-sitting, but also which nights they are available.

The electronic pathway into the homes will have the speed and capacity to provide, on a routine basis, not only the fast Internet connection but four telephone lines and high-definition television - and that can be updated as technology improves.

Also, each home's wiring will allow an in-house network so that all the household computers can share data, data storage and be able to print from one printer - just as offices do.

"It means that you can choose a high-quality printer to serve all needs, and not several cheap ones, one for each computer," said Stotler.

Unsurprisingly, some of the early interest in SummerGrove is from engineers and people who work with computers, officials said. "I can hardly wait to move in," said Sam Edge, a Georgia Tech engineer and employee of the state Environmental Protection Division. "I am looking forward to the convenience and the flexibility it will give me and my family. The quality and usefulness of the technology infrastructure depends on how well it will be maintained."

The ease and convenience of high-speed communication may persuade people now on the technology sidelines to become more active Internet surfers and users of computers.

The new technology may also determine the nature of the new population in SummerGrove and may influence their neighborliness.

Recently, the board of directors of the Metro Atlanta Telecommuting Advisory Council selected Clayton College & State University to make SummerGrove a case study to assess the effect of technology on commuting, use of distance learning and "social connectivity."

Meanwhile, managers of Newnan Utilities, which brought high-speed Internet connections as well as a competitive cable TV system to its small city, are satisfied that other residential communities and businesses will be attracted to the Newnan area.

Pathway, which got started in 1979 as Peachtree City Development Corp., is developing two more "master plan" communities. They include a Pathway community in Henry County and Avery Park, near Newnan.