The Wiz of Stonecrest: Mr. Lecester “Bill” Allen & New Black Wall Street
I became a citizen of the relatively new City of Stonecrest in south DeKalb County Ga in June 2020. My wife Taunia had been a resident for about five years prior to our wedding and we decided to make it our domicile as a newly married couple. I was nominally familiar with Stonecrest as a recently created municipality in 2016, due to my consulting work in the City of South Fulton in 2017 where I was instrumental in founding the South Fulton Food Policy Council. Among other characteristics, I knew them both to be hyper majority Black cities with lots of promise and potential. But that was pretty much it. Essentially following my heart and matrimony, I came to Stonecrest for love.
Some months after me and Taunia’s marriage in October 2020, I began to look for ways to become a fuller part of my new community and sought to understand the nature of it. As a civic leader, community organizer, and social activist for most of my life, it is a natural instinct for me to get involved politically and otherwise wherever I call home. When I relocated in 2005 to Georgia in southwest Atlanta, I joined the West End Neighborhood Development neighborhood association and became its Code Enforcement Committee Chair. Following this orientation to the community, I subsequently ran for and was elected to first Vice-Chair and then Chair of Neighborhood Planning Unit T (NPU-T) which is a citizens advisory council to Atlanta city government. While offering service in civic spaces, I also remained true to my activist roots and became involved with the Occupy Atlanta movement in 2011, as well as becoming staff of its spin-off organization Occupy Our Homes Atlanta (now renamed the Housing Justice League). I pushed further into public service and ran in 2012 for the District 57 seat of the Georgia State House of Representatives as a member of the Georgia Green Party. Consistent with my long record of active involvement with the affairs of my home community, I saw a need this year for better representation of the Stonecrest City Council district where my wife and I lived and chose to run for that seat with a campaign we named Cubby4Stonecrest.
I share this short summary of my career in activism and public service to make clear that it is both my habit and instinct to build community and fight injustice. Like most folks, I was enthused about Stonecrest as a new kind of Black mecca and tabula rasa for all kinds of possibilities. My wife and I were particularly thrilled about New Black Wall Street Market (NBWS), still being developed at the time we discovered it in May 2021. As ardent supporters of Black excellence, we were impressed by what appeared to be “top of the line” standards being implemented in the renovation of the former Target building and with its marketing campaign. We visited the property before its opening and took pictures to promote it on social media due to the authentic pride we felt about its potential, not knowing very much about how it would operate and who was behind it. It was Black, we are pro-Black, and that was that.
I learned a lot about Stonecrest during and after the weeks of my campaign for city council. Ours is a wondrous little evolving society with a full spectrum of the beauty, grace, and often contradictions that is the human experience. I am a cheerleader of my town and remain confident of our continued success! However I was given pause and shocked to learn about the endemic corruption that was also part of our extraordinary story. Our founding mayor is accused of and has been indicted by federal authorities for stealing COVID-19 relief funds intended for struggling businesses. When I first became fully aware of this unfolding scandal, it caused me to suspend my campaign for city council due to my grave concerns for my family about where this road may lead us to by becoming involved with public life here. My gut told me that a crime this rotten would not only involved many others, but was also a likely indication of deeper ethical issues in the power structure of the city. I found this to be true as I resumed my run for office and witnessed more corrosive behavior by others in the inner circle of Mayor Lary’s regime.
Mr. Lecester “Bill” Allen is probably the most influential person within the City of Stonecrest. Due to a $700 million revenue bond deal he struck with the Stonecrest Development Authority in 2019, he controls more than 500 acres in the city in addition to his other financial interests. On the surface it seems like a wonderful thing to have a developer and so-called “philanthropist” like Mr. Allen committed to Stonecrest with multiple business projects in the works, ostensibly to bring jobs and encourage minority entrepreneurship as the NBWS project promises. I hope this all to become true and wish for the best like most others, despite emerging concerns to the contrary. However what has been proven is that Mr. Allen is willing to use his enormous influence and resources to defend a corrupt and politically regressive regime in Stonecrest through the nefarious group Committee for Progress in Stonecrest and other means. He erected huge signs on his properties around the city which promoted a slate of candidates in the recent city council elections who sought to replace the two incumbent councilpersons Jazzmin Cobble and Tammy Grimes who have led the push back against Mayor Lary’s abuses of power and malfeasance. Why??? Why would Mr. Allen align himself with bad governance and corruption while seeking to remove those from office who stand for accountability and integrity in public office? The obvious answer to this question is that Mr. Allen has something to gain and protect with the current status quo represented by Mayor Lary. We should all wonder and worry about what that is.
In the adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz story that was “The Wiz”, the actor and comedian Richard Pryor plays the shadowy figure that is revealed to be something other than who he presents himself to be through the apparatuses of projected control and power. More than a one dimensional villain bent on evil, this “wizard” had is own story of why he did the things he did which ultimately had a deleterious impact on others. As the Wiz of Stonecrest, perhaps Mr. Allen also has a method to his madness and reasonable reasons why he attempts to tear apart our city while purportedly building it up. Without greater transparency and direct representation of his intent instead of being filtered poorly through his representative Matthew Hampton, we citizens are left bereft of belief and bewildered by his proxy conduct. We deserve better from our Wiz and will follow the “Dorothy” spirit embodied by Ms. Cobble and Ms. Grimes until we get it from Mr. Allen.
Within a Facebook Group focused on Stonecrest concerns, I issued a call yesterday for a boycott of NBWS due to both exploitative business practices towards its vendors as well as the behavior of the owner as described above. While there also was some tepid support, I was mostly met with a vociferous backlash that included threats against my person and punitive actions against my business in response to the boycott call. While these reactionary comments did not sway me much, I did listen to the reasoning from community voices like Donna Priest-Brown and Khari Lewis who have advised or encouraged me during my city council campaign. I know they have the best interest of Stonecrest at heart as well as believe in the integrity of my intentions. One of the things which I think it is critically important for our leaders to have is humility and the capacity to change course when confronted with better wisdom. I seek to be that kind of leader and therefore have withdrawn my call for boycotting NBWS for the sake of the vendors as well as the reputation and unity of our community. I remain determined to challenge the actions of Mr. Allen when they contradict the best interests of Stonecrest and I will continue to call for higher standards in business practices across the board for everyone (including myself). All the best to the vendors of NBWS and all the best to us.
Kwabena “Cubby” Nkromo was a 2021 candidate for the District 1 City Council seat in Stonecrest GA (campaign website HERE) and is the Founder of Stonecrest Sustainable Enterprises (SSE).
