Wednesday, November 5, 2003
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Wednesday, November 5, 2003 |
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Somebody talk to us, 'Target opposition pleads' By J. FRANK LYNCH The North Carolina developer trying since early August to sell Peachtree City on a 125,000-square-foot Target store and expansion of the Kedron Village center filed suit against the city on Friday. The legal action comes as no surprise. Attorneys for Faison Enterprises are seeking a “declaratory judgment” in Fayette Superior Court that would clarify their client’s rights to develop the project and proceed with a 265,000 square-foot addition. Despite an endorsement from staff, the Planning Commission voted unanimously to deny Faison’s site plan in an exhausting four-hour meeting last month. At least one commissioner then laid the blame for the mess at the feet of city staff, who he accused of selling out to the interest of developers. Two weeks ago, attorneys for Faison sent a letter to City Council asking to be removed from Thursday night’s agenda, when they were expected to appeal the denial, but Faison representatives also reserved the right to return to the council “after litigation has been finalized.” As originally designed by the city years ago, the main access point for the 125,000-square foot Target store would be via the intersection of Georgian Park and Regents Park, two local roads that provide the only access to more than 250 homes overlooking Lake Kedron’s north shore: Cottage Grove, Albemarle, Sutton’s Cove, Larkin’s Landing and The Point. Members of the Lake Kedron Homeowners Association who live off Regents Park have been asking for weeks to sit down with Faison to air their concerns, mainly traffic issues, and find an agreeable solution, said group chairman Tim Wedemyer, but neither the developer nor city staff seem willing to compromise. Indeed, the suit asks the court to declare: • That Faison has a vested right to develop the property using the Regents Park-Georgian Park access road; • That Peachtree City’s “big box” ordinance does not apply to the Target store proposed for the Kedron Village expansion because Target will own the building and the ordinance specifically refers to retail “leases”; • That the plaintiffs have the vested right to develop the property under the city’s General-Commercial zoning category despite the “big box” ordinance because the zoning and tentative future use of the property had already been approved by the city prior to the ordinance. On Monday, City Manager Bernard McMullen said city staff had yet to receive a formal copy of the lawsuit and refused to comment, other than to acknowledge it had been filed. Peachtree City Holdings, Inc., the land-management subsidiary of Pathway Communities and the city’s largest property owner, is a co-plaintiff in the suit filed in Fayette County Superior Court. Pathway was known as Peachtree City Development Corporation (PCDC) until the mid-1990s, when the city started to approach “build-out.” In fact, it was PCDC that laid out the original plans for Kedron Village in the late 1980s and designed and built the Georgian Park access road that runs behind the site. According to city planning records, it was always understood that future phases of the retail center would have access to Georgian Park at Regents Park. Faison contends that it is just following a city plan that’s been on the books for years. Wedemyer and the others who live nearby admit they knew about the retail expansion plans when they bought in the area, but none had any idea that the shopping center would expand to become a regional draw. In addition to the Target store, the Faison project includes four unnamed “major” tenants of 20,000 to 30,000 square feet, comparable to the average tenant at Fayette Pavilion. Another 35,000 square feet of smaller shops, restaurants, and offices would round out the development, which would be arranged in a semi-circle layout similar to The Avenue. It would also require nearly 1,200 additional parking spaces. Though he made the fight against “big box” retailers a key issue in his 2001 mayoral campaign, Mayor Steve Brown has been decidedly ambivilant about the prospect of Target coming to town, citing a 2000 letter written by then-mayor Bob Lenox to a developer assuring them that the location would be exempt from the new ordinance because it had already been zoned and approved years prior. And privately, city officials have expressed doubt that the “big box” ordinance would hold up in court, if formally challenged by a developer. Faison’s action isn’t a threat to the ordinance itself, but rather a request to clarify Target’s exemption status, a welcome relief for Wedemyer and his neighbors who never wanted to endanger the law itself. “Our position now is that the city has laws on the books and it’s up to government to uphold those laws when passed,” said Wedemyer. “We view this as a very important piece of legislation that the city should fight to uphold. There are thousands of citizens in the northern end of Peachtree City who expect the city to defend all its laws, and especially this one, with as much vigor and enthusiasm as can be mustered.” Wedemyer cited a position paper written by City Attorney Ted Meeker to City Manager McMullen in which Meeker concludes the proposal is beyond the scope of the original plans for the Kedron site, as well as a memo from Police Chief James Murray expressing his sentiment that the center would increase traffic counts in the residential neighborhoods and affect the crime rate.
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