Wednesday, November 12, 2003
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Wednesday, November 12, 2003 |
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Westside: ‘You have to see it to believe it’ By J. FRANK LYNCH Welcome to Peachtree City! That’s the unmistakable impression city leaders hope the proposed West Village/Ga. Highway 54/Livable Cities Initiative redevelopment project will make on motorists coming from Coweta County, if and when the ambitious plan is completed. The Peachtree City Planning Commission got the first look at the detailed guidelines and site plans for the West Village LCI Monday night, approving development plans for three commercial buildings that will mark the initial phase of the project. What started as an idea tossed about by a loose gathering of city staffers and interested residents has resulted in a redevelopment proposal that has won multiple grant awards, earned the adoration of the Atlanta Regional Commission and led state highway officials to reconsider their entire approach to road-building, said Mayor Steve Brown. City Planner David Rast was admittedly gleeful Monday that the years-long effort had finally come to the building phase. “Peachtree City is a planned community, and this is the premiere plan within the entire planned community,” Rast boasted. “We wanted to make it look really special.” If all goes as sketched out on giant boards in Rast’s office, it will be “special” because it will all have been “planned” — from concrete ornaments adorning the new bridge over the CSX Railroad tracks to the color of light poles, traffic signal swing arms and even the awnings above every doorway. Among the visual images Rast related Monday: • Coming from the west, motorists will one day cross the county line on a new four-lane bridge over Line Creek, and suddenly find themselves on a wide boulevard, with a 40-foot-wide raised median lush with mature landscaping. • At night, the median will be illuminated by decorative light posts, shining up toward the sky. Cooper Lighting, the big lighting manufacturer in the city’s industrial park, will design those, along with streetlights to line both sides of Hwy. 54 from the county line to The Avenue. the designs will be unique to Peachtree City. • On both the north and south sides of the highway, motorists will be encouraged to park and walk by dozens of street-side shops and restaurants arranged around public spaces and set back from the roadway at varying positions. • Connecting the commercial “villages” will be a meandering multi-use path, appropriate for walking, biking or driving the golf cart, set beyond the highway amid new trees and buffer vegetation. • To cross from one side of the highway to the other, residents will access the “Gateway Bridge,” which appears as a cable-supported span in early proposals. It will be one of two such bridges in the neighborhood, the other running parallel to the highway crossing over the CSX Railway tracks, providing easy access to the West Village from The Avenue. • Visitors will know where they are going with the aid of decorative “monument” signs situated at each of four intersections along the route from Line Creek to Hwy. 74. • The four “lighted” intersections at McDuff Parkway, Line Creek Parkway, Planterra Way and Huddleston Road will provide the only allowable curb cuts for the one-mile stretch, reduced from the 17 that exist today. Huddleston Road one day will be extended as a loop “access” road to provide an additional approach to Wal-Mart and Home Depot. Rast’s presentation was greeted positively by the commissioners, who weren’t asked to act on anything Monday night. Design details will be brought back to the panel for final consideration at the December meeting, then the City Council will need to sign off on the overall plan. That won’t stop the first phase of development, however. Planners OK’d plans for three stand-alone buildings to house several upscale restaurants, a Washington Mutual finance company, and a Tires Plus automotive store. That’s just the tip of the iceberg for what may eventually one day be built in the West Village, said Rast. He estimates the district has 41 acres of undeveloped commercial land left, on top of the 639,281 square feet of retail that exists now. The total tract of 1,500 acres has room for nearly 1,800 houses and 4,000 people eventually. “This really gave us a fresh perspective on what is happening on the Westside,” said Rast of the study. “That part of the city is really changing. If you haven’t driven through Wynnmeade lately, it’s really coming along.” But the clearest benefit of the experience, Rast said, was the newfound relationship with the DOT. “When complete, I think a lot of people are going to look at the Hwy. 54 West corridor and see the benefits of working with the DOT,” said Rast. Brown said that at every turn, the DOT was willing to experiment and commit to trying something new. “I think they saw this as a feather in their cap because it includes so many alternative forms of transportation,” Brown said of the DOT meeting the city’s creative whims. “The federal government today is demanding that states include alternative transportation methods in order to get funding, and they see this as the future.” “Nobody else in Georgia is doing this on the scale of Peachtree City,” said Brown. “It’s realistic, it’s innovative, and it works. Not only will it be beautiful, but it will be functional and affordable.” The cooperative effort extends beyond the highway department; property owners have been mostly cooperative in selling their land to RAM Development, the primary broker for the area, though the Line Creek Baptist Church acreage remains in legal limbo because of old title issues. Funding for the design work has come mostly from grant awards, including two LCI grants totaling more than $1 million. “The City Council basically said, ‘If you want to do this, go out and find the money to pay for it,’ and that’s what we did,” said Rast. “That has played a key role in our relationship with the DOT.” And Cooper’s investment represents more than just good will: They intend to use the stretch of roadway featuring their lighting as an outdoor “showroom” when trying to convince clients to purchase their products, Rast said. RAM Development’s Doug McMurrain said the experience has benefited his entire company. “This has been nothing but positive and it’s held us to a higher standard that has clearly benefited the city,” said McMurrain. “It’s unusual for us to work this closely with any city. It hasn’t been easy, but it’s been a great process.” McMurrain suggested that nay-sayers be forgiven if they just can’t see the “potential” of the strip, like Rast, Brown and others do. “You have to have a vision for this, you have to see it to believe it,” he said.
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