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Target nixed in
PTC; lawsuit next?
By J. FRANK LYNCH
jflynch@theCitizenNews.com
The Peachtree City Planning Commission unanimously denied a developer’s
plans for expanding the Kedron Village shopping center on Monday night,
but it was little victory to the hundreds of homeowners in the Georgian
Park area who’ve organized to fight the project.
The 5-0 decision against allowing the 266,000-square foot addition, to
be anchored by a 125,000-square foot Target store, forces developer Faison
on to the next step in the process: An appeal to the City Council, maybe
as early as November.
While there is no precedent to indicate how the council might vote on
the matter, a denial at that level would almost surely mean that Faison
would sue the city, staffers say. A constitutional challenge to Peachtree
City’s “big box” ordinance may be the end result.
Mayor Steve Brown, who tried to negotiate a compromise between homeowners
and the developer in the early going, conceded a quick solution doesn’t
appear likely anytime soon.
“It doesn’t look like there’s any resolution on this beyond
it going to court,” he said Tuesday morning, indicating that the
project doesn’t have the support of council it would need for approval.
“The developer has too much money invested in this thing just to
drop it.”
Faison officials seemed to say Monday night they were in it for the long
haul. “This is our property and we should be able to do with it what
we want to as long as its within the law,” said an attorney for Faison,
demanding the commissioners vote to deny or approve the plans Monday night.
According to the city’s chief planner, the Faison plans and subsequent
compromises met legal requirements on density and zoning and went well
beyond the earlier vision for the site.
“It’s our opinion that the style of buildings is exactly what
we want in Peachtree City,” said planner David Rast. “It gets
away from the strip center we have there now, and as designed it meets
every one of the legal requirements.”
The city’s planning staff had recommended approval of the site plan,
even though the Target store qualifies as a “Big Box” retailer
outlawed under a 2000 ordinance adopted by the city.
But a letter, written that year by then-mayor Bob Lenox to the developer
addressing fears about the ordinance, appears to exclude the Kedron property
from the new rule, which was originally zoned for large-scale commerical
development in the late 1980s.
Homeowners contend that letter isn’t binding, and the planning commission
just wasn’t sure.
They felt just as uneasy about the accuracy of traffic studies that suggest
as many as 4,000 cars per day will access the Target by way of Georgian
Park, a four-lane collector road running between Ga. Highway 74 and Peachtree
Parkway behind the site.
The homeowners, most of whom live in neighborhoods along Regents Park
off Georgian Park, offered their own estimates that as many as 6,000 cars
per day would use the route.
Spokesman Tim Wedemyer surprised city officials when he read a letter,
which he said arrived unsolicited on Monday from Police Chief James Murray,
supporting their views that the project would have a significant negative
impact on traffic in the area.
The primary access to Target would be provided by an extension of Regents
Park into the shopping center site.
The developer will pay for improvements throughout the neighborhood, Rast
said, including traffic signal improvements at Hwy. 74 and Peachtree Parkway,
and installation of signals where Georgian Park and Ardenlee meet Hwy.
74.
“We have no plans to install a light there otherwise,” said
Rast, adding that the roads in the area were all designed and built to
handle future development of this size. Faison will make improvements
to some intersections “where there is no need,” Rast said.
Complicating the issue further, in the minds of the Planning Commission
anyway, was whether or not the plan represented phase two, phase three
or a combination of both.
“The issue here is whether this is one piece of property and one
project, or is it a moving target?” questioned Richard Hubert, attorney
for the homeowners, suggesting that the city was manipulating the original
zoning plan for the sake of the developer.
Conceptual plans okayed by the city in 1995 when the Kroger phase of the
center was started show more than one “big box” occupying the
site, but nothing close to the 265,000-square-foot proposal by Faison,
which in addition to Target would have room for three or four smaller
“power center” type retailers, dozens more shops and restaurants,
and second-floor professional space, similar to The Avenue.
Explained Rast, “Often a developer will want to build just part of
a project and we will ask them to go back and show us what it will look
like in the worst-case scenario at build-out.”
“I really think that’s what happened here.”
Homeowners say if it is built as proposed, Kedron Village will be the
city’s largest commercial center. Rast disputed that, saying it was
a matter of how you count outparcels and the like.
Commissioner Bob Buckley blamed city planning staff for forcing a vote
on a request that left too many legal questions unanswered.
“I lay the blame for this at the feet of city staff,” he said.
“You’ve really given in to the wills of the developer.
“There is no victory here whatsoever for the homeowners. It just
takes it out of our hands and I’m afraid it will end up going the
way of the car wash,” he said, referring to another developer’s
request last summer in the same neighborhood. The city council failed
to act on that appeal due to lack of a quorum, and it ended up being settled
out of court in favor of the car wash owner.
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