North Fulton Tech Corridor

Lyrics

[Intro]


[Verse 1]
It wasn't a river. It was a road.
Georgia 400, the spine cut north from the city.
The North Fulton Chamber of Commerce published their annual report in 2002.
They used the word *potential*.
Before that, just red clay, a few barns holding on past 1995.
Land appraised for cattle, then for cotton, then for the patience of the families who owned it.
Then the first rezoning signs went up, staked in the weeds.

[Chorus]
Exit 9 for the North Springs MARTA bus.
Exit 10 for the ADP campus.
Exit 11 for Windward's sprawl.
A corridor of glass and tinted steel.
Verizon, Comcast, AT&T Mobility.
The new crop, harvested in the server farm's hum.
The cul-de-sacs fill up behind the new sound walls.
Alpharetta becomes a line-item on a benefits package.

[Verse 2]
At 7:30 a.m. the headlights are a solid, crawling line northbound.
A thousand SUVs sipping coffee from the same three drive-thrus.
By 5:15, a river of red taillights flowing south toward the perimeter.
The shuttle turns off Old Milton Parkway.
The bedroom community wakes, works, and logs off.
A different kind of seasonal rhythm, based on fiscal quarters, not the path of the sun.

[Bridge]
The environmental site assessment, filed with the county in 2005.
It notes the old farm wells.
Drilled through granite a hundred years ago, hand-dug and brick-lined.
Capped with concrete.
Buried under Parking Deck C, space 113.
You can't draw water from a memory.
You just pave it over, paint a new line, and assign it a number.

[Chorus]
Exit 9 for the North Springs MARTA bus.
Exit 10 for the ADP campus.
Exit 11 for Windward's sprawl.
A corridor of glass and tinted steel.
Verizon, Comcast, AT&T Mobility.
The new crop, harvested in the server farm's hum.
The cul-de-sacs fill up behind the new sound walls.
Alpharetta becomes a line-item on a benefits package.

[Outro]

Dusk on the access road.
The smell of humid pine mulch and cooling asphalt.
The glass goes dark, floor by floor.
That hum is the only thing growing here tonight.