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Wednesday, January 14, 2004 Homes still going up in Peachtree City By J. FRANK LYNCH Permits issued for new home construction in Peachtree City increased 22 percent from 2002 to 2003, a sign that housing development in the 45-year-old planned community is accelerating even as the amount of available land left to build on shrinks. For a couple of years, city officials have been suggesting that “build-out” of the city’s residential component is emminent and bemoaned the end of sure and steady population growth, which meant yearly increases in revenue from property taxes and construction impact fees. But if the pace of new homes permitted last year is an indication, the so-called “build-out” remains a boom. The final tally on 2003 construction permits issued by the city’s building department showed 286 new houses were permited, compared with 234 in 2002, for an increase of 52 homes. A spike in permits late in the year was credited to a couple of new subdivisions that came on line this fall, said Kathy Gray of the city’s building permits department. • Chadsworth at Ashton Reserve, accessed from McDuff Parkway at its temporary end, is carved from piney woods just north of Wynnmeade. It will include 89 houses when complete, Gray said, but only 20 have been permited so far. • Maple Shade is an estate subdivision on Crabapple Lane across from the new elementary school designed to hold 45 lots, with the developer selling off the lots to different builders. Together, they should make for another healthy year of single-family construction in 2004, Gray said. Two large developments are quickly selling out, including John Wieland’s mixed-used Centennial community on McDuff Parkway north of Wal-Mart. Land is available there to eventually build an elementary school. On the city’s Southside, the Wilshire Estates neighborhood at Holly Grove Church Road and Ga. Highway 74 South has fewer than 10 lots left, said Gray. But there is vacant land zoned residential remaining among the 15,000 acres within the city’s corporate boundaries, much of it west of Hwy. 54 or in pockets here and there. The city has a moratorium against annexing adjacent unincorporated tracts of land for housing development, an attempt to preserve the master plan and not overburden the city’s services as it ages. But by continuing to apply smart or adaptive uses to some of the remaining acreage zoned residential, the city could see another four or five years of healthy home building — and as many as 1,000 new houses — before “build-out” actually arrives. Other new home developments still busy with activity into 2004: • Governor’s Row is another Weiland neighborhood, this one featuring 36 executive sidewalk homes across from McIntosh High. Prices start in the mid-$300,000. • Lexington Circle, also near McIntosh High on Ga. Highway 54, is moving forward with its next residental phase — a mixed-use project that, if approved by the city and given the greenlight, would feature office and retail space on ground-level floors and residential above, for a “live-work” atmosphere. In various pockets around the city, redevelopment is already starting to take place as older homes are bought and torn down to build new ones, Gray said. “In about five years new homes will really drop off, and then a lot of the older houses especially will be rebuilt or torn down,” said Gray.
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