Wednesday, January 1, 2003
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Wednesday, January 1, 2003 |
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PTC eyes no-bid sale of prime parcel By JOHN MUNFORD
At its meeting Thursday night, the Peachtree City City Council will consider selling a piece of prime real estate on Ga. Highway 74 without a formal bidding process so a local business can expand its parking lot. Frank Cawood and Associates (FC&A) has agreed to purchase the property at the corner of Hwy. 74 and Paschall Road for its appraised value, according to city documents. FC&A, a direct marketing and book publishing firm, will also donate funds to the city to build and maintain a park in memory of former Fire Chief Gerald Reed and the volunteer fire department. FC&A is owned by Frank Cawood, who is also one of the directors and major stockholders of Fayette Publishing Inc., the parent company of this newspaper. In a strongly-worded memo, City Planner David Rast recommends against selling the property to FC&A since its current design would require a number of variances. The plan is also not aesthetically pleasing, Rast indicates in the memo. "It appears that the idea of utilizing this property to develop a memorial to Chief Reed and the Volunteer Fire Department is being compromised by the addition of a large and impersonal sea of asphalt," Rast wrote. The city has received numerous offers from developers, organizations and businesses who were interested in purchasing the tract, which is just under an acre and is the former site of the old Leach Fire Station, Rast said. Service stations, banks, restaurants and various office-related businesses have inquired about the property and city staff have been instructed to tell them it's off limits. But according to a memo from City Attorney Rick Lindsey, the city "probably can convey the property without taking bids." Lindsey cited a state law that allows the city to bypass the bidding process if it is selling real property in "established municipal industrial parks" or in "municipally designated industrial development areas" for industrial development purposes. The property is currently zoned for light industrial use. Another state law allows the city to circumvent the bidding process if the parcel is "... so shaped or so small as to be incapable of being used independently as zoned," Lindsey advised. In that case, the city must give all abutting property owners an equal opportunity to purchase the property, Lindsey wrote. The proposed site plan for the parking lot would require a number of variances to the city's building setback and buffer requirements, Rast wrote. In January 2001, the city council agreed to develop the site as a passive park area including a memorial to Reed and the volunteer fire department. Since then, there hasn't been enough funds on hand to dedicate to the project, although the old fire station has been demolished. Reed was the city's first full-time fire chief who led the transition from an mostly-volunteer squad to a mix of career and volunteer firefighters. The city had also considered using the property as a site for the satellite auto facility or for extra storage space and staging areas for the public works and recreation departments. But because the property was such a visible location "it was determined that the property would not be appropriate for those uses," Rast wrote in his memo. The city's buffer ordinance requires a minimum 60-foot tree save and landscape buffer off Hwy. 74 and a similar 50-foot buffer off Paschall Road.
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