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Help get just compensation for Sleepy Hollow Ent.

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My husband and I need help to pay for legal fees to keep from loosing everything to the DOT. My husband is Art Millican Jr., a former Disney Imagineer with work in all the major theme parks all over the world. He was also friends with Michael Jackson and helped him to complete his dream of building Neverland Ranch. We have been featured on 2 episodes of HGTV, Georgia Traveller episode 902, Fox5, 11Alive, only to name a few. We recently were featured on a Fox5 Atlanta I-team report. (https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/make-believe-meets-reality-gdot-planning-to-seize-fairy-village-to-widen-highway) in an effort to bring our situation to light. 15 years ago Art invested everything he had into opening up Sleepy Hollow Enterprises, a free attraction in the North Georgia Mountains. He's worked 10 hours a day, 6 days a week for the past 15 years to create custom playhouses, birdhouses, fairy houses, and fairy doors. We try hard to keep our costs low so that his work will be accessible to everyone. All we needed was enough to pay the bills. We expected to be here doing this forever AND THEN... In 2012 I Googled our address and found that the DOT had already approved a project to widen the our highway and take our land....And our house, And our store, And our workshop and storage buildings totaling almost 7,000sqft of space. They are going to take our whole world and we hadn't even been notified. Fast forward to 2017 the DOT finally sent out appraisers who  were unsure of how to appraise our property because we are so unique and there isn't anything comparable. I walked the property with them and even helped measure. I was told the appraisal would be ready in a month. Fast forward again to 2019 the DOT finally has our appraisal ready. Our initial offer by the DOT was  for ONLY $437K for everything we owned. We were gobsmacked! They valued my 3000sqft home at only 1500sqft for $110K. They valued our commercial property at only $40K. We have almost 3 acres they're only paying us for 2.3 acres. The rest of the land they'll render unusable. There are so many mistakes on this appraisal its ridiculous. I asked them immediately to redo their appraisal to correct all of these mistakes. They refused. The DOT says that they are ready to start condemnation, meaning they will put what they deem as "fair compensation" into an account, pay off whats left on the mortgage out of it and we get whats left and only 60 days to vacate our property......Where do we go with only $300K? It's not even enough to buy a house and you can't get a bank loan with no equity or job. We have hired an attorney but its turning out to be unbelievably expensive. At the moment we are being billed about $2500 a month and if this goes to court it can take up to 2 years to fight and cost upwards of $300K.........all of this just to get what is fair.  We've loved meeting so many of you throughout the years and we've gotten so much joy out of being able to share a little bit of Disney with everyone (without the theme park expense). We'd love to rebuild and continue to spread joy for years to come but we need your help to fight this injustice. We are asking anyone who would like to help us to fight this to donate what you can. Any amount large or small will help. Our world is crumbling down around us. We don't want to have worked so hard only to end up homeless. Please help save Sleepy Hollow Enterprises. You have no idea how much your help means to us. https://youtu.be/cFxcO1hPI8Q   Thank you, Wendi & Art Millican Jr. www.whimsicalfairygarden.com https://www.facebook.com/sleepyhollowent https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/make-believe-meets-reality-gdot-planning-to-seize-fairy-village-to-widen-highway https://www.pbs.org/video/georgia-traveler-georgia-travelers-eposide-902/
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    Organizer

    Wendi Mitilinakis
    Organizer
    Blairsville, GA

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