Wednesday, February 5, 2003
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Wednesday, February 5, 2003 |
Southside plan gets one more lookBy MONROE
ROARK
The Fayetteville City Council is set to hear all of the various rezoning requests and development agreements relating to the southside master plan at tomorrow night's regular meeting, after tabling everything last month so that all of it could be considered together. The agenda includes the proposed adoption of two separate development agreements the Simpson (Concordia) agreement, which covers three separate tracts being targeted for annexation and rezoning, and the Southside agreement, covering nine parcels already in the city and up for rezoning. After the city's Future Land Use Map was reviewed and approved during the past year by both the Atlanta Regional Commission and the Georgia Department of Community Affairs, it was revised to reflect the plan proposed by the Southside Master Plan Task Force. Those changes do not necessitate sending the map to ARC and DCA again, according to city staff. All outstanding issues with the rezoning applications supporting the changes to the Future Land Use Map have been addressed, and city staff has recommended that the resolution to amend the Future Land Use Map be approved at this time conditioned on the approval of the Southside and Simpson development agreements and associated annexations and rezonings. The apparent resolution of all of these issues is the culmination of about two years of study regarding the southside, including about four months of work by the task force and an Atlanta consulting firm. 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 of 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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