By JOHN MUNFORD
jmunford@TheCitizenNews.com

The West Village Task Force will make a decision Aug. 9 to affect its future.

Mayor Bob Lenox has asked the task force to consider approving a master plan for the area that has been created with input from the task force. He asked each person to decide if he or she thinks a new, more detailed plan presented this week was “better for Peachtree City” than if the city leaves the property under Fayette County's jurisdiction.

By annexing the property, the city would control how the area is developed, Lenox argued.

“If we're going to go for control, we need to have absolute control,” Lenox said.

Some task force members, however, questioned if the county's plans for allowing development in the area would be acceptable.

“If we decide to go forward, then we need to talk to the property owners,” Lenox said. “It might fall to me to go to the property owners and developers and say, `Can we do that?'”

The task force is scheduled to meet Wednesday at 3 p.m. in council chambers at City Hall to conduct the vote.

In fact, before the task force discussed voting on the plan next week, a citizen in the audience urged them to speed up the process since the task force seemed to be rehashing issues it visited previously.

“I think the time has come for you to take this matter to the city council,” said Peachtree City resident Mark Klynott. “This is the best possible outcome for this area.”

Judging by the contentious questions posed by some of the task force members, it is not clear whether the new plan will meet approval or not. It is also unclear how the voting procedure will take place, though Lenox said he hoped the group would come to some sort of a consensus.

As for his feelings, Lenox said he would be “hard pressed to think we could have come up with something better” in terms of what's shown on the detailed plan that was presented to the task force Wednesday afternoon by representatives of Wood and Partners.

It was also said that the task force could modify the existing plan in several ways to make it more palatable to what the group wants to achieve.

Wood and Partners is a planning consulting firm that helped the task force create the master plan during a planning charrette, which was a lengthy meeting one day followed by a meeting the following day to show off the initial results on paper.

That plan was tweaked based upon later comments from the task force and input from the developers on the project.

Mark Baker of Wood and Partners said the more detailed plan has a focus on making the village area “pedestrian in nature.” The rough numbers include between 1,600 and 1,700 residential units, with higher density areas in the middle of the 900-plus acre tract and some areas of one-acre-plus lots on the fringe area of the proposed development.

Built into the design for the area is a bridge crossing the railroad tracks to provide access to Ga. Highway 74 at the northern end of the property. The village plan also includes several small parks scattered throughout with size graduating up to a 20-plus-acre park that could have a pond attached.

Wood and Partners also suggests putting in a buffer wall to provide a barrier from the sound and vibration that comes from the railroad track that borders the eastern side of the proposed West Village property. Another recommendation is to keep intact a 100-foot buffer of vegetation along the railroad track.

The plan includes several mixed-use elements also. It includes a village green area in the center of the parcel

If the task force proceeds with the current plan, the next step might be to develop a special set of building codes for the area. If it decides not to proceed with the plan, its job may be over.

“If we don't need to annex it, then we're done as far as I'm concerned,” Lenox said.

During Wednesday's meeting the planning consultants were grilled about the logic they used in designing the village. Task force member Willis Granger said he wanted to see more one-acre lots in the village.

Some of the other task force members said they still had problems with the density issue. But Lenox argued that the property will eventually be bordered by two four-lane highways once Ga. Highway 54 is widened.

“This is where you put your density,” Lenox said.

Several overtures were made to determine if the bridge could be funded another way so the developers of the property could lower the density figures.

The density is lower in the area along Line Creek and along the rock quarry, Baker noted.