Wednesday, January 15, 2003
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Wednesday, January 15, 2003 |
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Southside vote to be delayed 1 more time
By MONROE
ROARK
After some two years working on the Southside master plan, Fayetteville officials are apparently going to take a bit longer. City staff has recommended that all agenda items relating to the plan scheduled for tomorrow night's City Council meeting be tabled until Feb. 6, so that issues relating to the two development agreements can be ironed out. "We want to make sure all the i's are dotted and the t's are crossed," said Mayor Kenneth Steele. The council reached a consensus at its Dec. 19 meeting to go forward with the plan, saying that it would be a great improvement over what is currently zoned there and the city would exercise stricter controls over the development as a whole than having it develop piecemeal. "Everything I've heard has been extremely positive" since December, Steele said. "I've had no negative comments." The discussion at the December council meeting came on the heels of the fourth and final meeting of the Southside master plan task force, a group that met for about two months with Urban Collage representatives in an attempt to find out what all interested parties landowners, developers and existing residents want in the area and come up with a solution that benefits everyone. "The task force was the smartest thing we ever did," Steele said Tuesday. "The results from that group are so far superior to the original proposal, there's no comparison." Even if they are tabled, the Southside issues are still on tomorrow night's agenda, and a public hearing must be conducted. Steele will allow further comments at that time. "It's not going to be extensive," he said. "We've been down this road, for nearly two years." Changes in the city's zoning ordinance during the past few years have helped the south side of Fayetteville immensely, Steele said in December, beginning with an attempt by Wal-Mart in the mid-1990s to locate a supercenter at Pine Trail, on the north end of town near where the Uptown Square shopping center currently sits. That led to the development of Fayette Pavilion, and a series of zoning changes that restrict further "big box" development, Steele said. Steele said that the recommended establishment of commercial nodes in such locations as the corner of Hwy. 92 and Jimmie Mayfield Boulevard is preferable to long strips of commercial development such as those already in existence on Hwy. 85 North. These are complemented in the Southside plan by open space, ample buffers and step-down zoning, he added. The townhouse zoning now available in the area was split into a couple of locations. Steele noted that the townhouse area next to Kingswood has been reduced from a possible 120-plus units to about 48. The Southside master plan now consists of 267.2 acres of land on the south edge of Fayetteville, encompassing portions of Ga. Highway 85, the Ga. Highway 92 connector, Jimmie Mayfield Boulevard and Bradley Drive. With the exception of a few residences and the Ingles supermarket on Hwy. 92, this land is still mostly undeveloped. The site currently includes 97 acres of commercially zoned land and 170.2 acres of residential zoning, with 21.3 acres of that zoned for townhomes and the rest for single-family houses. The 53.2-acre Simpson tract is in unincorporated Fayette County, zoned residential-agricultural. The task force was formed early in the fall after a large number of residents in the area came to the City Council with concerns about proposed development in the area, specifically from previous Southside master plan proposals. The council tabled all action relating to the master plan for 60 days, then for an additional month when last week's final task force meeting became necessary. The final master plan includes a land use plan, a conceptual site plan displaying potential development patterns and a development agreement between the city and the relevant property owners and developers. It calls for 124.5 total commercial acres, 19 total office and institutional acres, 109.2 total residential acres, and 14.5 acres of open space. Commercial property under the plan is consolidated along Hwy. 85 and at the corner of Hwy. 92 and Jimmie Mayfield (long-term plans include extending the connector from Jimmie Mayfield to Jeff Davis Drive), and a small office-institutional node is suggested at the corner of Jimmie Mayfield and Bradley Drive. The rest is residential land, bisected by a 300-foot greenway along Perry Creek north of the Hwy. 92 connector. The plan includes three significant open spaces: a 4.8-acre parcel on the northwest corner of Bradley and Jimmie Mayfield; a parcel of 3-plus acres to the west of Jimmie Mayfield at the city limits; and 2-plus acres on either side of Perry Creek north of the Hwy. 92 connector. The proposed pedestrian paths literally wrap around the entire Southside master plan, running through the large greenway along Perry Creek and along the southern edge of the site, as well as north across Bradley Drive where a portion of the proposed townhomes would sit. At the westernmost portion of the tract, the proposed Publix shopping center, which would have an access point on Hwy. 85, is also accessible via a series of interconnected streets from elsewhere in the section north of Hwy. 92, giving accessibility between various residential and commercial sites without venturing onto the highway. According to the report, 97 acres of commercial land currently exist within the city with the ability to accommodate about 550,000 square feet of commercial space. Also, the Fayetteville Towne Center shopping center across Hwy. 85 has set a precedent that forced the task force to assume the probable county rezoning and commercial development of the Simpson tract, which would bring the entire commercial area to about 120 acres and some 650,000 square feet of total building area, the report stated. The master plan does not decrease the total acreage of commercially zoned land, but it relocates commercial zones to create a node at Jimmie Mayfield and Hwy. 92, "rather than a sprawling mass of commercial buildings along Jimmie Mayfield and Bradley Drive," the report said, and the master plan and accompanying development agreement would allow the city to regulate the size, type and character of commercial buildings "to create more of a neighborhood/village-oriented commercial node rather than a regional marketplace." Representatives Urban Collage briefly reviewed what was accomplished by the 22-member task force during four long evening meetings the past two months. They emphasized the four key objectives outlined in the report: minimizing the impact of commercial zoning on residential areas; limiting high-density housing to specific areas; developing a meaningful open space; and encouraging development north and south of the Hwy. 92 connector to be self-contained with interconnected streets and paths.
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